When my curiosity got the better of me in the afterlife, I ended up reincarnating with several things I wasn't supposed to have, like my memories. But I got a second chance at life, and I wasn't going to waste it. Making a nice home in a dungeon, adopting an abandoned girl as my little sister, for someone who died alone, poor, and full of stress, I had everything I wanted and all the stuff I hated were gone.
But while my back was turned, immigrants and refuges?! Land management and negotiations?! Why are you making a country in my backyard?! And everyone wants me to be the leader?! And while I desperately tried to get peace and happiness to my new life, now someone wants my admin powers?!
Ignoring the many many grammatical/spelling/punctuation and other mechanical errors (it's != its), the story starts with AMAZING POTENTIAL.
And then chapter 34 happens.
It's bad. It retroactively ruins previously good chapters. It makes the time spent reading previous chapters feel wasted.
And it hasn't recovered.
There's a reason no chapter since then appears in the Top Favorites statistics.
It's not just that the previously OP MC becomes a doormat (now even killing Goblins, fantasy-worlds' cockroaches, is bad?!), everyone also comes down with a case of the Stupids. The MC talks about how their actions might have unintended life-ruining side effects, and they should try to think things through more... then immediately starts enacting a plan that might have unintended life-ruining side effects.
And the cartoonishly evil villain...
is ignored and ignored until the problem couldn't be ignored anymore, and then taken out anticlimactically in like two sentences. Where did the clever protagonist go? Were the early chapters a lie? Better hide near the body so you can give a first-hand account of what happened? Why be associated with it at all? Why act so suspicious with the butler? Do you WANT to be caught? Why not just say you were picked up your first day in town, so there's no home for you to be escorted back to? Also, why is the butler so STUPID? Hey, maybe check her ID? Hey, maybe it's suspicious if she doesn't HAVE ID? HEY, remember those devices at the Adventurer's guild that correlate a person's identification with their UNIQUE MANA SIGNATURE? HEY MAYBE DON'T LET THIS ALLEGED EYE-WITNESS JUST WALK OFF UNTIL YOU'VE AT LEAST VERIFIED HER IDENTITY?? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
The author can write whatever story they want. It's THEIR story. I'm just frustrated that the story we're getting now is NOT the story we were previously going to get. You want a yuri vampire story about post-traumatic stress disorder? Great. I wanted a story about a programmer using their Admin access to stomp all the evil in the world. We're just different in that way.
I powered through the awful first city arc, but it didn't really get much better. Will it ever? I don't know.
Also, some negative reviews have been removed, so be aware there are more complaints than you are currently allowed to see.
TL;DR: Read at your own risk, and don't be fooled by the excellent beginning.
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I've as of yet read up to chapter 54 in this story which I think is enough to formulate a fair opinion on it. I don't usually write reviews but this story is a really intriguing one so I really felt the need to. The reason as to why is because I feel that this story is so incredibly close to being really good but falls just short due to some major issues so this review isn't really meant for potential readers as much as just feedback for the author since I truly feel they have a lot of potential. That being said, spoilers ahead so if you haven't read it yet I suggest you stop reading this review and read the story because it is very interesting despite its flaws. If you've dropped it or have already read through all of it, then hop aboard!
Grammar - There isn't really much to talk about here, the grammar is good with the occasional spelling error or grammatical mistake here and there. Nothing that really detracts from the experience from the novel.
World - Now here is where I feel a large portion of the potential lies. The author has managed to create a world that while not being original feels very real, it could use some more description to really flesh it out but they have succeeded brilliantly in creating a medieval world that actually feels medieval. Now that might not sound like much but most novels I read that take place during the medieval times or a world with similar technology have a lot of modern beliefs thrown into them, meaning the inhabitants as well as the world itself kind of works as it would were it to exist in present time. But this, this right here is the good stuff the working class are just as helpless and desperate as they should be while the upper class are just as asshole-y as you'd imagine. The world feels very harsh which is really established in chapter 23 and gets even better onwards.
Plot - This is the most conflicting point in this entire review, it's almost hard to believe that all of this novel was written by the same person, that's just how much it varies. It starts off really strong with the main character dying and basically skipping the queue in limbo and sneakily reincarnates himself how he likes. Okay, this is really interesting as it sets up a crapload of possibilities for the story. What are the gods gonna do? Is he going to be hunted down? Do all the different doors lead to different worlds? Can they like hop between dimensions, is that going to be relevant? Super intriguing start, A+ really liked it.
Then comes the part right after reincarnating which is equally strong. The dungeon is really cool and this is where Scarlet is at her best as a character. In the beginning she's cautious, careful not to be overzealous and she realizes her own naivety when getting hit by the suns rays for the first time. She feels extremely human and this gives a really good base to build her character upon. I especially liked the part where she gets to the insect and skeleton floors and just goes into a frenzy because she's so desperate for food. This part is simply oozing with the despair and hopelessness the author is oh so good at portraying. Sadly it's at this point that it kinda takes a nosedive.
The point where Scarlet discovers she can teleport between floors is also the part where she starts just becoming overpowered to the point that she feels no urgency towards anything. I have almost never witnessed a story that had me at the edge of my seat the entire time just lose all its stakes that fast. The writing kinda takes on a more relaxed tone and you never once feel like Scarlet is truly in danger. You never once feel those incredibly high kill or be killed stakes that made the first part so incredible as she kinda just breezes through the rest of the dungeon until floor 87. What makes it worse is that this part is way, WAY longer than it should be. Most of this time is spent on filler explaining skills for paragraphs upon paragraphs that I didn't really care about. Since she already became overpowered at this point I didn't care about all her extra skills making her just that extra bit overpowered, I know she's just gonna beat the sh*t out of everything anyways so why even bother reading all this about her skills.
After this she meets up with Alicia and the story is suddenly good again. It's still very non-serious but the content within the context of the story this time supports the less serious attitude as she's just kind of fooling around with Alicia. And then the plot twist hits like a truck. It's a complete 180 from what you think is gonna happen even with all the setup it got and it's really well done. Seriously great job on this part, it sets up the story and the main characters motivation super well.
Now there's just one more thing I want to mention about the story. There are these sections in chapters where Scarlet is trying to figure out the system in order to create a body for Alicia, and personally I found these exceptionally boring as they're pretty long winded and 90% of them don't actually lead to any substantial discovery. It feels like pointless filler that just takes up space without actually contributing anything to the story. Bringing back Alicia is Scarlets main goal in the story, instead of it being possible to bring her back with normal mumbo jumbo magic, make it so that she needs to collect some artifact or something in order to revive her. Really test Scarlets spirit and devotion to Alicia, have her go through intense trials and overcome them all for the sake of reuniting with her sister. And if you really want to include the programming bits, have the artifact be in some admin-only room or something that she has to figure out how to get into, just something to make her go on a journey with a clear goal, she wants to see her sister again, the first person she ever met in this world and the one who saved her from solidarity. Not go on a journey because of no real reason and try to save Alicia as a side project when the others are sleeping.
Characters - Now this is kind of where the huge problems begin, in fact I would say the characters are the absolute weakest part of this novel. Now I'm about to sound very critical here but just to be clear I don't blame anybody, especially not new writers for not writing amazing characters right off the bat, cause writing three-dimensional, nuanced characters is freaking hard.
I will begin with the side characters as they're much easier to identify the problem with. The main problem is that there are basically only two character archetypes in this novel, and these two archetypes play into the problems with the main character. These two archetypes are 1. Cute girl who really REALLY likes the main character in a non-s*xual way, or 2. Characters who either s*xually, romantically or both constantly drool over the main character, or if not they just gawk at how beautiful she is.
The best of the side characters is Alicia, who at least gets some sort of personality trait in that she's very mature for her age and because she's the first one to inhibit archetype number 1 you haven't grown a resistance to them yet. Then when the city arc hits she's kinda replaced by Flix who has absolutely zero personality other than being part of archetype number 1. She's later replaced by Claret who's basically also the same, only difference being that she knew the previous reincarnation of the main character and can therefore spout a bunch of exposition.
Then comes character archetype number 2, which basically all the other characters that I didn't mention in the previous section fall into. Now that is a bit harsh, there are some exceptions like the receptionist lady, Machoman McStrongear and the other girl whose name I can't currently remember (I think it was Mary?). Who I actually ended up kinda liking, they felt very refreshing. But for every character like them there are like 3 others who just gush over how beautiful the main character is. The noble guy, the 2 other guys hitting on her on the street, the cat dude, Philia etc. Though Philia is kind of developed more? She got like half a chapter from her perspective where she talked about never having fallen in love before but in the end she mostly just talks about how pretty Scarlet is. Other than that her character is meant to be like a sort of mother figure to Scarlet. She constantly gives her a bunch of advice which doesn't really come into play other than the fact that she decides not to morph her face with the slime ability she got. If she just got a little more time to develop and we got to know more about her, like her motivations, goals and why she is the way she is she had the potential to be a really strong character and that way we, the readers would be just as sad as Scarlet when parting with her. This is a running issue with all the major side characters, we just don't know them enough to really care that much about them aside from Alicia.
Now onto the main character. You probably noticed something from the two mentioned character archetypes above. And that is that none of them includes thinking badly of the main character. And that is because the main character is really really plain. She absolutely has the potential to evolve and become a really strong character but she's just not really there yet. This whole thing with the protagonist not having any antagonist and everybody just automatically loving her gets old really quickly. The main form of "conflict" if you can even call it that is the main character trying to accept who she is because she hates herself so much and feels guilty about everything even when doing good things, something the novel describes as kindness but what really just feels like a weird form of naive self indulgence. Now everyone in the other reviews seem to be complaining about chapter 34 and how she's afraid of other people when she gets to the city. Now while I don't think this was very well established I see no issue with having her be this way and later on trying to overcome it with the help of Philia. In fact I thought this was a really cool plot point that has a lot of potential, the problem is the payoff as there really isn't any. Scarlet just straight up axes the guy and then she's just completely fine afterward and has no problems with people or at least significantly less after. This was a perfect time to have her character go through an evolution, have her work hard to achieve what she wants, have her fight tooth and nail, crawling on the ground, struggling to move forward as she tries to get over her personal issues. That's what makes an intriguing character arc, that's what make people connect to a character. Actually why not throw Philia into the mix too. Have her getting to know Scarlet better in order to try and help her with her mental issues and support her in her fight against herself, then she could go through an arc as well and both her and her relation to Scarlet could become stronger.
Conclusion - This novel really has the potential to be fantastic. This author absolutely has the potential to write amazing stories with just a bit more practice, I hope you don't take my critisism too harshly as the only reason I'm writing this is because I believe in you and your work and that you can become truly great, I hope I could inspire you with something or if you think my advice is terrible that's completely fine too as I don't even write stories myself, I'm just an avid reader. I will be looking forward to more from you in the future, thank you for the great time I had reading! :)
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I just can't continue reading this anymore. Spoilers ahead!
A perfectly healthy male cheats reincarnation and chooses the vampire race and specifically chooses to be as attractive as possible (even if the slider doesn't work). It's explicitly mentioned. Then he for no apparent reason transforms into a sheltered, anxious little 11-yo girl and has problems with her looks. Hides from people (even though she is probably a demigod by the world's standards), intimidated by everyone who isn't a little child, absolutely freezes whenever a guy looks at her wrong, emotionally dense as a typical Japanese isekai hero (if not more so). The inconsistencies just pile up (I mean come on, she practically spent 2 years fighting strong monsters all alone just before that). What's wrong with the MC? What was the cause of this sudden 180 degree transformation? Why can't the author decide if the MC is a psychotic monster slayer, a boring average man or a sheltered little girl with a penchant to freeze and cry when she is scared? Why am I forced to read this idiocy? So much potential... The moment where she was seduced by some old woman... It's like the author actively wanted the MC to be as abnormal as possible. Even the love protagonists are a child, who sucked her tits (??? I'm sorry, but what was that about), and an old woman. There's no in between. It's either 6-year-olds or 60-year-olds. Author... You've got this amazing character and world and what you do with it should be consideres a crime. Well, I am out.
I will give it 4.5 stars for the generally good grammar, style and dialogues and 2 stars for the story and hate-inducing characters.
There is a story that has the same tags. Namely - genderbender, reincarnation and a very beautiful female lead. It's called 'The new journey of an old soul' and it does everything wrong here right (although it also has its problems). The MC there understands her beauty and uses it like a tool and it's an absolute treat to read. If you don't like reading about ridiculous MCs, I recommend skipping this story.
Edited. Grammar.
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If you want a story that will make you frustrated, love the words "ahh" and "umm" spoken in almost every sentence together, like typical dumb isekai protagonist behavior then you will like this story. The protagonist is a lvl 250+ vampire shivers in fear from lvl 20-50 human prey, has the potential to use a wide assortment of powers but likes only uses a few skills. Her stats are built towards battle mage style combat with flight capability's but will never ever use them properly (if at all).
Whenever the MC engages in any sort of combat with a non mob (example: wolf C), expect her intelligence and tactical combat prowess to be nerfed to the ground.
This story has some good moments. But Theres no excuse at the poor decision making of the main character. All her points into int are wasted on her.
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I am going to have to completely revise my formerly glowing review for this series, which I had left WAY back when it only had 30 chapters.
As several other reviews have mentioned, this story seriously starts going down hill after it hits chapter 35 and starts having the protagonist interacting with real people. At that point, the great potential that had been built up in the earlier chapters all started being squandered fast with the way the main character acted like a complete doormat.
In more recent chapters, things got even worse after the main character was given a weapon. The author has since begun proving that they have an extremely poor grasp of combat mechanics and strategy, and know next to nothing about weapons combat. This failing was hidden by earlier chapters in which the protagonist fought with magic, teeth, and claws. However, it has since become absolutely painful to read any instance of combat due to the very poor fight choreography since a weapon was introduced to the picture.
After the protagonist had proven herself a doormat, the OP protagonist trope remained the only redeeming quality of this series. The introduction of the weapon to the picture has squandered even that one good point.
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If you came to reading here to read about the badass adventures of a vampire girl gradually growing to eventually create your own kingdom as I have you may end up sorely disappointed as it goes downhill after about 30 chapters.
The best way to describe this novel is that it's an Action-Adventure novel that should've been a Slice of Life story. The reason I described it as such is because you can feel as you read that much of the passion and efforts of the author went through the slice of life aspects of the story. The MC's friendly interactions with other people, the level of detail that goes towards describing food and crafting, as well as the daily life she goes through are all done so well that if it were purely a slice of life story then I would've rated it much higher. However, because of what was a poorly executed attempt for an action-adventure story it ends up dropping down to a 2 stars due to how badly almost everything else in the story is written.
It should also be mentioned that the story takes a weird forced turn of events when it came to one of the MC's goals that's making me seriously consider dropping the whole story despite all else.
Scarlet, the main character, in order to help save Alicia and give her a new body looks like possible ways to achieve that and comes up with several solutions. Despite that she doesn't deeply explore any of them and the plot constantly pushes for Scarlet getting pregnant with Alicia, her adopted sister. The whole idea of a man reincarnated into a girl then proceeding to get pregnant in order to make her adopted sister become her daughter is just completely weird, especially given other possible options. There's also no real romance partner for Scarlet to help support this plot (besides the occasional fluff and fling) and Scarlet also detests the idea doing it with a man. Also the manner in which it was concluded for Scarlet to decide this was all unnaturally rushed into a single story arc with her learning she can be s*xually attracted to other vampires, that she can get pregnant (which somehow nobody knew until one vampire decided to rape a bunch of women), and that she would agree with being pregnant after seeing someone give birth in the span of a few weeks.
Characters:
She has administrative privilege that effectively lets her make changes to the System that the world runs off of. Mainly she can create skills through programming, give herself any skill she wants from a master list, or remove/change the skills of others
In the first city she arrives, she lets a bunch of thugs grope her and even let a perverted noble partially strip her despite it being completely avoidable. On another occasion she seduced another vampire despite hating it and almost ends up being raped before she decided to actually fight.
In her goal to get Alicia a new body Scarlet goes for trying to become pregnant with her own adopted sister. Her reservations of this is apparent but is forcefully pushed away by the plot where in one story arc she meets a male vampire and gets s*xually aroused (but never goes beyond being stripped partially). Later she learned that vampires could get pregnant after he told her. After that she goes and somehow learns the joy of wanting to be a mother and give birth by helping someone give birth to their own baby.
In a battle against another vampire who was stronger than her, she basically only continued to spam water spears, which were ineffective and only seen an annoyance, or light beams, which were lethal but loses effectiveness because she used it so much that the other vampire got used to it. She only managed to win by using sunlight at the very end of being severely hurt despite it having been something that could easily be thought of at the start since she had given herself a skill that stops her from being killed with sunlight and also having on several occasion shown great mastery of earth magic to be able to remove the roof entirely.
After the first celestial assassin, Scarlet is aware of there potentially being more coming after her and mentions several times that she needs to get stronger to prepare. However, she never does any extensive training or preparation the entire time. By the time the next celestial assassin, the Hero and his party, she's 8 months pregnant and was playing in the snow. In the beginning of the fight Scarlet has the advantage but proceeds to get ahead of herself thinking she already won up until the Hero brings out his trump card. When that happened everyone said to be careful of the 'cold iron sword' but Scarlet stupidly ignores their advice and starts to lose her limbs while her magic is negated. She, for some reason, couldn't comprehend why it was happening up until she's lying on the ground, greatly wounded. This tension continues until reinforcement magically appears right when everything's about to end
Her character is shown to absolutely detest the idea of being influenced by anything that isn't her own will. She worked hard to overcome her vampiric instinct to drink blood from everything and even rejects the thought of her past reincarnation as the old Scarlet influencing her behavior. Also despite being a woman, she still prefers other women over men. However that took a complete 180 turn when it came to the Bandit Vampire arc where she's learns that she gets s*xually aroused by a male vampire, that vampires can have children, and ultimately ends up being influenced when she helped deliver a baby, where she magically accepts being a woman and wants to give birth to Alicia, her adopted sister, despite previously showing she didn't like being influenced by her body. Even after this arc, she's shown to still continue to hate the idea of being the reincarnation of the old Scarlet or that she may need a male to help get her pregnant but still ultimately wants to be pregnant.
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After the tenth time the MC got flustered that someone invaded her personal space my patience was running thin he is a 30 year old man who spent years in life and death situations in a dungeon seeing him freeze up can be treated like a whore despite having both the power and the will and ability to disprove these statements is very frustrating and that's my biggest problem with this novel is a lot of frustrating moments one after another with little to no character growth if you ever feel like rewriting the story I'll be there hoping that you learn from these reviews mistakes
He's a level 250 vampire who moves faster than the eye can see he should not be getting manhandled I'm putting himself in these situations
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The author constantly jump to irrelevant points and keep stuck there for 4-10 chapters.
The MC stats are a decoration because for example magically despite be "level 255" and having ridiculously high strength "STR: 89790" she can be moved, pushing, etc by a weak nornal human as if she were a normal child, but no she is not.
The MC race is a decoration too because she is scared from a human/demi-human what are nothing more than blood bags for vampires.
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(Update: So... 13 Chapters of filler content that is poorly thought out have turned our MC into a limp noodle as far as her thought processes go. She can literally face down monsters, but her weakest potential food source of the male kind scares her. She doesn't want to cause trouble by helping the orphanage too much, but does something that will potentially get them all killed anyway because it is a possible source of even greater revenue than just giving them gold (seriously, the formulae to a luxury item that normally only a specialist would be able to make is not something you hand off to people who can't protect themselves unless it's a world that already protects such people), and finally she seems to be stuck in passive mode despite finally getting out of her cave.)
I've been pretty sick lately, and unable to concentrate on things due to pain. That said, this story is a punch in the feels thus far. I'm liking where this is going, and hope to be able to read more in the future.
Grammar: 4/5 (There are a few problems with idioms using improper wording, but other than that it hold a nice consistency)
Writing: 5/5 (Great wordflow, pacing, and world building)
Story: 4/5 (I've never seen this take on reincarnation, nor the way that the character doesn't seem to be instantly OP thanks to some very OP abilities. It's a learning experience that the readers get to ride along for instead of an info dump and instant gratification)
Overall, definitely a story I would recommend to others.
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