無職転生 ~異世界行ったら本気だす~ 1

A story about Family (review for the entire series until volume 21)

Mushoku Tensei is known as "the first" Isekai. Other works in the genre copied it, but only the worst parts.

good

So this series is a bit different, it has elaborate world building and actual character growth.

The protagonist doesn't just get transported into another world to be a hero but to start a new life without the mistakes from the past one. The world feels big and realistic in it's inner workings.

And it's written in so much detail with a good pacing. If you like seeing characters slowly grow from childhood to becoming adults and getting more powerful, making experiences, living their lifes, you will like this. There are actual ups and downs throughout his new life, lessons to be learned.

The biggest theme I noticed is family, building family, getting along with each other, forgiving, protecting.

not so good

But there are a few downsides to this story.

First of all you have to bear with the protagonist, even though he gets better with growth and it's definitely on purpose by the author, he's quite unlikeable sometimes. Especially when you get some elaborate monologue about his crazy ideas like brainwashing his childhood friend into becoming his future wife (which he fortunately does not do, at least to this extend).Sometimes I really hated him.

But as much as it is amazing to see the characters and cast grow it becomes harder for the author to keep it interesting the further the story developes.

I really really loved the first 16 Volumes. I read Volumes at the speed of 2 Volumes per Week at my peak, but everything afterwards just became a pain to read for me. When he kinda settles down, it became quite repetitive in a way and I stopped feeling any stakes in the story since he became so powerful and made so powerful allies.

It kinda hurts me but after dragging this for way to long I finally dropped Mushoku Tensei at Volume 22.

As for language learning, this was very helpful to me. I sure struggled with the first novels but after a few volumes I really got a good, and fun flow. It also helped to listen to the Audiobook while reading. The writing is not easy but I wouldn't call it very hard either, just right and it is really enjoyable.

conclusion

All in all, if you are fan of this kind of story where you can follow the whole life of the characters in much detail and you like elaborate fantasy worlds go for it.

But if you want a consistently interesting story with high stakes I can't recommend this unfortunately.