1. The Faraway Paladin
  2. The Eminence in Shadow
  3. Overlord
  4. Mushoku Tensei
  5. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
  6. Ascendance of a Bookworm
  7. Sword Art Online
  8. The Twelve Kingdoms
  9. Grimgar
  10. Log Horizon
  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    … is this written by AI?

    Or just by a person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about?

    Look, I love Eminence in Shadow but seriously, its worldbuilding is basically a game of madlibs that Cid himself hangs a lampshade on. It’s a deliberately hamfisted collage of stereotypes, because the whole premise is a pastiche; a send-up of stories that actually take themselves seriously. In fact, the very best part ABOUT its worldbuilding is how much meaning it EVOLVES in response to Cid’s meddling. The world he’s reborn into is basically a cardboard cutout standee of a world until it’s suddenly confronted with the “wait what OH SHIT” implications of a technological/industrial revolution hitting it like a blazing left-hook out of NOWHERE. Seeing lazy, lackadaisical nations that were fully expecting everything to continue listing pointlessly onward in medieval stasis shudder from the strain of massive unforeseen disruption is, like, the entire point.

    What I’m saying is, this article is praising a boring old paint can when the REAL thing worth praise is what was done with its paint by a madman using a LIVING, STRUGGLING, SCREAMING FERAL CAT AS A PAINTBRUSH

    Furthermore, he describes Cid as having been an UNDERDOG? Are you for fucking REAL bro??? He is so far from being an underdog, so much the ANTIPODAL OPPOSITE of being an underdog, that his making others into underdogs is a recurring arc motif. This article’s alleged writer describes cid’s abilities as though they’re something he eventually works to figure out when, VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, one of the first gags in the story is how he figured all his shit out from the very start because he was BORN with all the combat prowess he gained by being basically a high functioning psychopath who beat the shit out of biker thugs for fun back when he was still on earth! He combined every memetic meditative and metaphysical technique he could squeeze out of the mystical traditions of earth and used all of them to psychosomatically squeeze every last drop of capability out of the new world’s magic system, minmaxing himself to the fullest extent of what is ontologically POSSIBLE in the new world, within the first episode… AS A GAG.

    I like it when TEIS receives accolades under most circumstances but this feels empty and fake.