Reviewed by sa090 on
Finally!!! I read the first volume to what I personally consider the best Isekai show ever.
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This, from what I’ve seen, compared and remembered of the Isekai shows I actually watched remained the one I would easily say is the best one. Now that I have finally read its first novel, I can for sure say that if you want an actual story of struggle, extremely weak starting protagonists and a world that feels real then look no further than Haruhiro & Co. Now, the novel starts out pretty slow with them exploring this new world and trying to fit into its rules. The thing I like the most about how the premise of the series starts, is that our protagonists don’t even realize that they are in a world that’s not their own. Their memories are not 100% intact and their only lead as this being different is the fact that they remember or say things that don’t make sense when you look around, but they do it anyway. Mystery aspect? Check, now I have to wait for the reveals.
I mentioned struggle earlier and I stand by that, since Haruhiro and those with him struggle for real from day one and unlike a certain wrongfully represented as a “weak struggling protagonist” in Isekai, these guys are literally at that pathetic state you are put into in any rpg style game at the beginning. We learn the basics of the world when it comes to money, banks, guilds and similar basic stuff. The book doesn’t go into huge details when it comes to any of them, just enough to deliver the message or the scene which I personally believe is enough for now and especially assuming that none of the mentioned elements actually end up being very relevant later on. If we’re going deeper later on, then I expect (and hope for) a lot more than this.
Character wise, there are too many of them. I do get that a party needs to have multiple characters and that’s fine, but I didn’t expect that I will be meeting so many others as well. I did watch the anime first so the main main ones did stick around in my mind and made it easier to breeze through this novel, but I do kind of wish that they were presented later on in smaller groups, or better yet, made memorable enough that I won’t feel for a second that I don’t know for sure who this one was. To counter that in a way however, Jyumonji-sensei gives some of his characters quirky personalities, so those were pretty easy to remember because of that so win-ish situation. I did get to meet one character who didn’t make it into the anime so I’m really glad about that and I can’t wait to see more.
Speaking of quirks, he does have Yume, Ranta and Shihoru displaying these as well in their speech patterns. The girls were okay, Shihoru grated on my nerves a bit, but Ranta is in a freakin league of his own. Damn bastard, I can’t believe that this guy is in the main party and he will be there most of the time, it’s just exhausting for me. On that note, stellar performance Yoshino Hiroyuki, well done.
About the actual happenings of the novel, many things do in fact happen. However, it’s more of them coming into terms of their current roles and the realness of Grimgar than an actual progression of the plot. Which I personally thought was pretty cool, especially with the way Jyumonji-Sensei took it. Having his characters be extremely week that even one goblin would be issue is a fantastic way to start, not because I like to watch people suffer, but it’s a new world and having them be great enough or presented with all the tools to immediately make the best of a bad situation is not logical. It’s fantasy, I know but doesn’t deny that your world continues needing logic if you want to keep me and people like me interested.
Loss and having to find replacements were also interesting things to be put into the very first volume of the series, but I believe that it sets this series apart from the other Isekai series where danger is highlighted many times, yet you never actually see an application of it before our already OP protagonist end up being too cool for any struggles. I liked the emphasis on party dynamics and how you need to be to make it work in some ways and this really could be an amazing series if this stays true till the later volumes.
My complaints are minuscule when it comes to the novel, I hated some things concerning the used “nicknames” if you well, as I don’t believe that they are necessary. And I also disliked the lack of illustrations, unlike other novels which are broken up into 6 big chapters, this one had 23 chapters so I expected many many illustrations and I’m kind of bummed out that we didn’t have that in the same quantity I greedily wanted, but like I said, minuscule. It’s a good one, slow for sure, but it knows when to accelerate when needed.
Final rating: 4/5
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 18 December, 2019: Finished reading
- 18 December, 2019: Reviewed