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Mary Sue (Marty Stu?) Isekai. It feels like it is either a low effort translation or poor writing skills on the part of the author, or both. After trying to read this boring, uninspired cookie-cutter isekai at least five times, I am sure it is a case of both. I made it to the third of the first volume.

Nothing bad happens to MC, MC always solves problems immediately, he is capable of everything, he is always right and if not, he seems to be able to bullshit his way out out of everything. Every paragraph and every "part"(chapter) feels like an introduction to the story, ... written in emotionless language, filled with useless fluff and stretched out for no reason with no end in sight.

He is OP since day 0, he has no enemies, no desires, no nothing. He is content and just goes where the author takes him without telling the reader anything about the direction or the reasons.

This is the most boring kind of power fantasy.

Story about reincarnation in the same world. MC has not lived that many years, but still portrayed as quite knowledgeable and experienced person. Story is okay - court intrigues with a mix of magic and swords. Action is mostly packed into the final boss chapters. Overall it is written quite well, but there are a few flaws that do not let me rate it as a masterpiece:

First of all, the age of MC and her companion does not correspond to their actual behavior. There are few excuses why this is the case for both of them, but they are simply too calculating and understanding for ... their supposed biological age. The lack of visible flaws due to inexperience in various areas is not portrayed at all.

Second, the girl (MC) is not exactly a feminine character, more like a tomboy and a go-getter, which are nice traits to drive the story, but they do not help with her low likability. There are few scenes where she acts in the 18+ visual age range, thanks to magic, but not much of interest was portrayed.

Hence, third, there is a general lack of anything even remotely related to fanservice. Not that this story needs it, but the lack of anything hot is just sad.

And finally, there is an absence of actual goals for MC. "Live as I want" is too vague and generic. And with point 2 and 3, it makes the story a little boring.

Not isekai, just the reincarnation of a random guy who seems to be from the same world with magic and stuff. Though the MC's logic and actions remind of the usual isekai stuff (magic training, acquiring young female companion(s), reinventing some modern things for quick gold). The story progresses rather randomly. The MC does not have a clear goal, which affects the quality of the story. He is often distracted by some unrelated activities that are meaningless in the long run.

Main flaws:

- Long "training sequences" where the author just randomly reinvents modern things in his fantasy medieval magic story through the MC. Pretty boring. ... Later they are mostly replaced by magic training sessions, which are a bit more entertaining.

- The hunting companion is poorly written. She appears out of nowhere, no backstory, minimal interaction except on "hunts", and she agrees to become effectively his slave. She feels unnecessary to the story, no relationship/tension shown between them, no purpose to speak of.
At some point, it is just wild to see their strictly working relationship and no moves from either side until the very end of the first volume (which seems to go nowhere).
Same problems with other female characters that appear along the way.

- Underdeveloped aristocratic life of the MC. Almost no information or backstory is given. He goes to school once, then has some brief interaction with his family and household staff. After that, he basically lives in the forest.

- There are a few instances where characters use knowledge that they cannot acquire in a medieval setting without some explanation/justification from the author. Knowledge of meteorites, knowledge of the basic composition of air, use of the metric system. There are more, but these are just glaring inconsistencies for which no justification is given.

- MC does not abuse his powers, which is extremely boring. Was he some kind of monk in his previous life? He is basically impotent considering how he is portrayed. Like, come on, by the start of vol.2 the guy is basically swimming in beautiful elf (and a few wolf) girls.

- Starting with Vol.2, the amount of flattery aimed at the MC becomes unbearable.

With all these flaws, it is still entertaining to read the author's take on the usual isekai (the story effectively becomes a standard isekai power fantasy after some time). Starting with the second volume, it looks like a take on building a nation of monsters (kinda like that slime isekai), but it's so mediocre thanks to pointless chapters where he uses magic to create something like armor, wine, or whatever, that it just becomes overbearingly boring.

1 vol. - 6
2 vol. - 5 (lost interest half way through)

Decent fantasy story about magic and swords. A "talentless" kid(MC) who overcomes obstacles and tries to follow his talented friend to a place of great importance. The whole season can be summarized in a few paragraphs with all the "twists" and whatnot, but thankfully the animation and fights are nice and well drawn and pick up slack where you would die of boredom otherwise.

Motivation of MC is underwhelming and mostly unclear. Why does he want to reunite with his friend so badly? Why the hell cant she just come down on weekends or invite him to hang out sometimes? And why does she look like ... she is in her mid-20 and he is somewhere around 15, but they supposed to be about the same age? No idea or explanation. If you ignore the lack of decent reasons for the characters' behavior and the presence of boring lore dumps about magic, it is a decent watch.

Not that good, but decent. About halfway through the season, the obliviousness of the MC starts to get on the nerves, but it is watchable. There is not much interesting happens, average war between micro one-city kingdoms that ends in a day with the help of OP characters.

This dude just does some manual labor and being oblivious to his own power while saving everyone around him. Throughout the season, we get different perspectives on him from different characters, and that is pretty much all the story has to offer. And of course he stays oblivious till the end.

Beside average story, anime have some obvious problems ... with backdrop, especially when depicting war - yellow rock flat ground is everywhere in background. Feels a little too cheap at times.

A great isekai story, although it has some problems in the beginning. The first is that vol.1 is full of rather extreme situations, which does not help to relate to it. Second is the number of independent storylines. Two of them are almost completely parallel (isekai/Japan) and one about MC's neighbor rarely intersects with the Japan story. It is vexing to read and follow the relationships of two different sets of characters at the same time. Third, by the end of the 2nd volume we are introduced to at least 4 different magic system concepts, which is mind boggling.

First two volumes are not that good ... (I would say about a 7). From the very beginning, this isekai has the main focus on how to launder money from cross-world illegal trade. Unfortunately, the author did not do much research on money laundering or smuggling. He also has a rather poor representation of the government's secret agency. From the first encounter and the first mission, it is riddled with gross incompetence and inability to provide backup for agents. Later this is explained a bit (vol.4), but it does not help with the first bad impression.

Chapters of neighbor girl POV. You can see them as a super slow, semi-independent 3rd storyline, which intersects with the MC's Japan one and there are almost no named characters in her story plus it spans across all volumes. It is rather extreme on child neglect, not that it could not happen, but a mother who neglects her child like this is sure must be rare in our time, I hope. Not willing to feed your own kid and still have her to live with you, while actively making her life miserable, is bizarre af. And she has a father(and extended family) who also does not show up at all. Sad chapters, bread one especially. This story become with progress kinda weird, but ok.

I would also note two more things:
Immense amount of apologizing (It is kinda a japanese thing, I guess, but it feels rather boring to see the amount of it).
Story has some gore battle descriptions and some weird sexual innuendo stuff (Which is generally a good sign that the author is not afraid or constrained to write as he sees).

All in all, starting with vol.3, the author seems to level up his game and actually does some research on the topics he touches on. Reading all the books in one go is very enjoyable, but if you take a break for a month or more, I can see problems with picking up all the different ongoing plots in independent storylines. There is a lot going on compared to average isekai.

Comparing LN to anime. LN have better pacing. It feels to me that anime goes too fast, condense story too aggressively, and internal monologue is just poorly adapted. 1/1.5 volume in 1 season would be more adequate, than 2 in 1 as it is.

1-2 vol. - 7
3-7 vol. - 9

A decent story about selectively dense girl living her life in "unfortunate" circumstances with cheat powers. There is an obvious overreliance on miscommunication to move the story along, but usually it does not hurt the quality that much. Problem arises when this device becomes overused and goes from cute and entertaining to stupid and torturous. The longer the story goes on, the more it looks like the characters' growth has been replaced by their gradual transformation into a caricature of themselves - especially evident with MC and how she reacts to leveling or her social awkwardness. The whole love confession and wedding planning thing is ... just torture to read.

The anime adaptation of this story contains only a somewhat modified first book (main differences is the in boosted role of Alicia and her relationship with MC, so it can have a happy ending in one season). If you have seen the anime recently, you can probably skip to the last chapters in vol.1 and start there, as the ending is somewhat changed by the absence of "game plot power", which is the anime thing. In the book Alicia is just kinda strange or more like a normal person which was traumatized by MC.

The story has a lot of references to Japanese pop culture, sometimes you can guess that a few of them have been localized into western variants. In both cases, they feel underwhelming, as localized references look out of place and Japanese just go over your head.

1 vol. - probably the best volume.
2-5 vol. - entertaining to read, decent plot progression.
6 vol. feels like filler, a tangent to the story. Not completely disconnected, but still meaningless.

Well, that was a great LN series. A protagonist with a passion for books who stopped at nothing to make her dream come true. Along the way she got a top tier husbando and (potentially) the biggest library there is.

It is kinda isekai, but there is no heavy focus on that trope and thankfully no stupid game-like system of any sorts. Very interesting blend of magic and exploration of the power dynamics between the have and have-nots ( in terms of wealth, magic and status), as she gradually rises from peasant to nobility. Author also did some good writing on the transformation of morals when ... you live in this kind of world. Some casual peasant genocide is just like another day, value of (mostly peasant) life is extremely low here.

It saddens me that the last book felt more like a wrap-up than a logical conclusion. It left with some storylines unfinished (especially with those left in her home duchy) and we did not get to read about how she would use and abuse her new status (only the epilogue, measly ~20 pages). Sad, but author probably had her reasons for cutting it off at that point.

After this squad solved its first problem with the time limit, I just cant find myself caring what happens to them next. The story is generic isekai, which is not bad in itself, but absence of an MC who you can relate to, makes this too boring and unwatchable.

A lot of questionable artistic decisions. One of them is some weird map that replace action sequences of their travels. Another is the presence of some flashbacks with Joker, which do not help either, as they are just time-wasting fillers.

The main problem is the lack of any clear personal goals for the main character cast to ... which you can start to relate to. Without them, they are just a bunch of overpowered monstrosities running around without a clear goal. Boring.

Pretty brutal isekai. Though there are no graphic depictions of grotesque scenes, there is no shortage of fights to the death or death itself. The amount of these battles is also high (too much for my taste) and all books are told in the first person. Can be tiring to read non-stop combat chapters back to back. It gets a bit better in 3-4,5-6 volumes, as MC have more opportunities to fool around and get involved in some political problems, but still this isekai remains to have main focus on action scenes.

There is little (almost none) focus on MC's past life, this is mostly ... a "monster" focused story with minimal mingling with humans. He does not build a monster nation or anything like that, just basic survival and some application of human knowledge to make his own daily life easier. The monsters he actually interacts with are quite human-like, so there is a very thin line between intelligent monster and human.

MC has few needs (only social, to have someone to talk to), which leaves him with a lack of obvious motivation to do anything and often leaves the story to progress artificially by some deliberate push from the author. This is the biggest problem, which is especially evident in the beginning of the 4th ark (volume 7). It feels too artificial and shoehorned in, basically degrading to volume 1-2 levels. Battles happen as if the author is filling some quota without regard to the story. Seeming inability or unwillingness to write political intrigue, no direct conversations within the MC party (only a few bonus chapters do this outside the scope of the story).

There are also some inconsistencies in the magic system - after the 3rd volume it starts to change a bit, and by the 7th volume it feels like the author has completely forgotten how the skills were learned before. There's also a change in the frequency of MC using his skill to view enemy stats and get detailed info on enemy specific skills (which is kind of a big deal) to strategize the fight. At some point you can see this as an overconfident lapse, but it becomes apparent that this is not the reason and more likely just a convenient way to play out the element of surprise.

That said, the story is entertaining enough to read and enjoy. If I were to give my overall rating for each volume:
1,2 - 7 (overdose of battles, quite tiring)
3 - 8 (improvement from 1,2)
4,5,6 - 9 (best stuff here)
7 - 7 (feels like 1,2. Plus somehow, out of nowhere, MC starts caring about his past life?)