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I freaking love this despite each and every flow it might have. One of the first animes I've ever watched and my undying beloved.

The sheer madness of it is captivating. All the characters are incredibly charismatic and the cool levels are cranked up to 11, but just shy of being too edgy. The animation is gorgeous and the fights are pure joy to watch. The story descends into some kind of a fewer dream, but the weirdest part is, it was strangely prophetic and allegorically correct. Which is INSANE. That story should not have been relatable. But it somehow is! Holy cow.

The best series ever ... and that's it, I don't care.

Yeah, I'm not one to complain about a lack of action when compared to Season 1. I, for one, think it's great when authors take risks and lead the story in a completely different direction.
But, but, BUT! The story and character development aren't in any way an improvement over Season 1. I'd go as far as to say they are a complete disappointment.

I mean, really? That is the conclusion Thorfinn reaches? And it's presented as some divine enlightenment? Lol, yeah, sure. I get that a young mind might be impressed with his unapologetic pacifism in the face of each and every cruelty the world throws ... at him, but it's just not how it works.
I liked Season 1 for the nuance and moral ambiguity. It mostly presented questions with no definite answers, but the way it did so and the context really made you ponder different things.
Season 2, on the other hand, doubles down hard on absolute non-violence being the right answer to all the problems. In a Viking era, no less. Naive. Too naive. So naive, in fact, that it just stops being believable or relatable in any way. Even Season 1 showed just how much of a problem being defenseless poses in the 11th or so century. You simply get killed. Cause, really, who gives a damn about your lofty ideals. You get put into the ground, while your family gets graped and slaved away.
Run away? Sure, what a solution, how didn't anyone think about that? Why don't the whole Ukraine just up and run from the Russians? And then the whole Poland, Germany, France and so on. Never a better time to colonize Mars, I guess.
Extremely childish and simple-minded. The promise of Season 1 is wasted on this being the big revelation and a conclusion to Thorfinn's development. Disappointing, really.

You know the manga is good when you're approaching the last translated chapter and start to slow down, cause you want it to last just a little bit longer before you put it on hold.

Story: 8
Art: 7
Character: 8
Enjoyment: 9
Overall: 8

In short, this is definitely one of the few isekais that I can certainly recommend as a read to almost anyone. With so many of them out there, what it comes down to is the execution of the idea. Isekai is just a trope in the end. It is popular today, something else will be popular in another 10 years, but what matters is how ... you develop your story and the ideas that you put into it.

The author of this one certainly managed to do an amazing job with that. What you got here is a standard isekai formula: some dude gets reincarnated into his MMO character, he's OP AF, and starts to gather companions for that or another goal. What is rare to see in this genre though is an amazing work with the world and its lore, combined with perfectly reasonable motivations for your characters and avoidance of the majority of cliched tropes for the confrontations and such. It's truly incredible how the author manages to cleverly subvert most of the tropes in the genre, while retaining all the fun parts of it.

I don't wanna spoil anything, but it's such a refreshing feeling to just read an isekai manga where everything just clicks into place. The MC has to struggle with quite an interesting and unconventional problem. The supporting cast is fun, varied and enjoyable. The story is intriguing, fairly brutal, and has quite a few surprises. And, most importantly, there's hardly a time when you think to yourself "Why are you doing that?", "Why didn't you ask about that?", "How could you miss that it's right beneath your nose" and such. This probably shows how averagely written most of the stories are today, when the author just writes a story without characters eating a dumb pill from time to time for the convenience of the plot and you are surprised by it. Yeah, there are a bunch of Deus Ex Machinas here and there, but it's easy to ignore them because everything else is so tight.

What else? Well, it's genuinely funny for the most part and the art is really good most of the time.

Who needs to read this? I'd say anyone who is on an isekai spree like me. Anyone who wants a refresher from all the other similar stories. Anyone who's interested in an interesting lawful evil setup for the world similar to the Overlord series (it's really closer to the true neutral side, but gives off a lot of similar vibes).

Really, it was a joy to read through this and the only problem I have is that I'd need to wait 3 or 4 more years to get another 40 chapters of this joy.

I'm struggling between an 8 and a 9 as a score here, but leaning towards the 9 just because I really liked this one.
On second thought, in comparison to everything else, it is a solid 8, so let's go with that.

Story: 8
Art: 6
Character: 9
Enjoyment: 10
Overall: 8

This manga makes the wrong first impression. When you see the front panel and start reading it, you're like, well, here we go again into the classic stupid guilty pleasure that is most of the isekai stories.

But then, while this series does provide some fanservice and a very satisfying experience overall, it still manages to tell an interesting story that avoids most of the cliched tropes.

Here you'll find a lot of political intrigues, great characters, and a really wholesome romance without any teasing or harem bs that is so common in the isekai works. It's not overly comedic, the ... characters aren't stupid and it is an extremely interesting series to read overall. Can't wait for it to be completed and translated.

Its only weak point may be in the art department, cause while it's more than competently drawn, I find myself confusing characters pretty often as they look similar. Otherwise, I totally recommend it.

The fact that so many people think this is a masterpiece and rate it 10/10 is, frankly, the only proof you need that some of the ratings on this website are a complete joke.

Well, it's been some time since I watched this flaming pile of garbage, but the feeling of absolute disgust towards it is still present. Controversial opinion alert! Despite obviously low production quality of the last 2 episodes of the original show, I found that to be a much better ending to the series than THIS.

The original show was bombastic and pretentious as well, but one could definitely enjoy it. Most ... importantly, it tried to make a point. This horrid mass of animation, on the other hand, throws all of it out of the window. There's a rumor going on that when making this movie, the original creator was depressed and totally despised his audience who demanded "a proper ending" to the original series. So this whole movie is a giant "fuck you" to the fans.
The most ridiculous thing is - the fans gobbled it up and called it a masterpiece. It is not. It's pretentious just for pretentiousness' sake. The symbolism pretty much makes no sense what-so-ever and is probably there just to ridicule the symbolism itself and people trying to find a deeper meaning when there isn't one. A lot of the characters were massacred and did not receive not even a hint of the proper conclusion to their stories.

I despise this movie just as much as it despises its audience. Although it's well-made and pretty to look at, watching it was one of the worst experiences in my life. After completing the original series, it was like being thrown into some resemblance of phantasmagorical hell, where everything was a cruel parody of the world I knew.

An absolutely horrible mess that doesn't deserve even the tenth part of the fame it receives. I don't want to write even a single word more about it.

There are hundreds of in-depth reviews here, so I'll be short.

Yeah, it's really good. The artwork evolves from good to masterpiece. You'll be stopping a lot to look closer at some finer details on the panels. Berserk is worth reading just for that alone.

The story is also fantastic: dark, intriguing, and filled with characters you'll care about.
The tone of it shifts somewhere in the middle though: going from the absolutely brutal tragedy to somewhat of a classical and much more light-hearted adventure. I think it's justified and I don't find any problems with that.

The only shortcoming of this manga is that it's unfinished and ... there's no telling when it's going to be.

Nonetheless, the story ends in a good spot right now, so don't be afraid to read, it's not like you'll be left in the middle of the arc or on a major cliffhanger.

So, let me get this straight, this manga is the Gate of Hell itself. I don't know, maybe there's something even more messed up out there. Well, probably there is, especially if you venture into the doujin territory. But I'm impressed nonetheless.

Why am I reading this? Well, there is a weak spot in my heart for all the kinda "evil" MCs. I love Hellsing. I adore Overlord, both games and anime. And here I am, reading this. This is messed up to be sure. Here you'll find: torture, rape, brainwashing, unbridled revenge, violence, sexual abuse, and sexual content in abundance (harem included, this time ... for real and without any brakes whatsoever (even some sweet home Alabama stuff)). The protagonist is an absolute selfish asshat most of the time. He seeks self-justification for the acts he commits. Sometimes it's fitting, other times it is total bullshit, yet he enjoys that nonetheless.

I'm sure a lot of people will be appalled by this manga and rightly so. As for me, I find it genuinely intriguing and want to see how it will go on. The whole revenge plot is refreshing enough for me to be interested in this, even though it's not like there's anything exceptional about the story or its characters.

Overall, highly recommend this series if you are interested in the premise and are prepared for a lot of economic talk, politics, and stuff like that. It has great characters with some layers to them and a really interesting story.

My biggest problem with it would be the inclusion of a low-key harem trope that wasn't really necessary, as there are few enough romantic moments between the main characters. And then there is the inconclusive ending of the series for its main characters. So that took away from my overall enjoyment of the series, but I still enjoyed the time I've spent reading this.

7/10. ... A good read, but be prepared for a somewhat disappointing dynamic between the main characters and not that really satisfying of an ending, IMO.

!SPOILER DISCUSSION AHEAD!

So, as I've said, IMO the harem inclusion really took away from the amazing dynamic Hero and Maou had at the beginning of the series. They were so adorable in their shy attempts to show affection and become closer to each other. Then the story rocketed ahead, often splitting the two for prolonged periods of time, and adding to that, the inclusion of Female Knight and that low-key harem, essentially halted the development of their relationship to a stop, which is probably the biggest problem this manga has. The characters themselves grow up and change a little, but their relationship remains the same except for the part when they kinda decide that it's fine to be a threesome.
In the series where we had several panels of sex between Ash King and Lily bitch, we didn't even see any of the main characters kiss! Even at the end, which I've found to be really disappointing. This may sound like a petty gripe, but when you spend a lot of time with the characters, it's really anticlimactic to end the series without really showing their relationship grow.

Plus, what was that ending? For some unknown reason, the author decided to throw the main trio of characters onto the other continent to continue their "adventure" and end the series with a somewhat open finale, but that doesn't make sense! They wanted to see "what lies on the other side of the hill" and often repeated that, but that wasn't a literal thing, was it? They wanted to see the world change, so why would you throw them out of that world like that in the end, leaving all of their close friends behind as well? Especially considering that you left the head maid in the mansion all alone.
I understand that the world didn't need the Hero or the Demon King after the whole thing and that was the point, but couldn't they just settle in a mansion to live a peaceful happy life together? That ending was such a downer that I'll probably knock 1 more point from the overall score.