Quote:
Originally Posted by obnuchious
how would it be like AD?
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Well I guess you could have replaced that with any other average school fantasy romcom (absolute duo, rakudai, asterisk, etc.). I need something at least above average in that genre to fit into my reading time.
So I went through the first volume of the LN and for a novel that "seems to be [a] fairly popular novel recently in japan", I was a little disappointed in some aspects after I was finished. Not really going to make my first volume impression too long or have much spoilers.
Spoiler for Some spoilers:
So i'm not going to address the characters too much since the manga pretty much gives a good idea in terms of what I've seen from volume 1. I do like the interaction between Sisti and Glen, especially Glen's catchphrase for her which is "You're talented...but you're arrogant" and when Glen throws Sisti down from the fourth floor lol. I am afraid of Lumia overtaking Sisti later on due to her royalty background and she is an exception among magic users. Nothing against Lumia, I just like Sisti more at the moment. Hints of Glen's past make his character a bit interesting and it's largely implied that he was a bad guy since not all the details were provided in the first volume.
The magic piqued my interest at first but there is more to be explained or at least I hope there is. Once the terrorists approached a few other ideas get introduced. The state of one's mana flow (neutral, low, and chaos) and how you can't cast magic once you enter the chaos state, there is alchemy (creatures created from dragon tooth I believe), and there are exceptional talents like in any other series (the ability to unleash a unique power without the need of magic in this case, which Lumia possesses). I probably need to create a spells listing for myself due to all the different types of spells introduced.
The way everything came together in the fights was a bit disappointing. It was pretty much just the MC doing all the work and the girls providing some support, only being there for critical moments. Now if the final boss was more interesting, perhaps I would have overlooked it. However we are dealing with the classic school terrorists (why do terrorists these days always target schools in this genre....) and the head of the terrorists is basically a suicide bomber. His reasoning for doing so was absolutely ridiculous imo and it was probably one of the worst boss fights I've seen. "Gonna go boom because my life has no other meaning and was told to do it"...essentially. I know this genre isn't supposed to have the most intriguing bosses but come on we could have done better than that.
Overall I'll give it another volume or two before deciding whether I'll continue this series. I like Sisti, the humor, the MC and magic system are alright, but I need to see improvements for the antagonists, the fights in general, and I hope Sisti and Lumia will take a more active role when the going gets tough. It was also a little tough for me to read a new series with a lot of magic terms since I have to get a sense of what exactly is going on magic wise. Next volume should go smoother.