Let me be that unwanted mooching uncle at every family party just this once, because yes, I admit I’ve contributed nothing to the manga industry aside from being a filthy scanlation reader. But someone please remind me why Japan is mass-producing already-written stories?
I swear, there has to be a template system in some manga factory where they just tweak the parameters. Fucking adjust the eye color, change the party class from healer to blacksmith, add one talking slime mascot and boom, a new series that looks like effort was made. Somewhere, there is an office full of professionals overseeing a manga and an actual editor approving the 18,381,738th iteration of “banished from the hero’s party”.
Realistically, I get it. They’re churning these out to meet demand, to keep the pages filled between their real hotshot titles. Maybe it’s something in between easy to sell, cheap to produce, passable for the mass market. But I can’t help but feel sorry for the artists. Some of these mangaka have talent, and it’s being wasted on this rinse-repeat cycle of cliché slop.
Is there ever that one sane person?? Anyone who’ll just say, “Guys, this sht is stale. No one’s finishing these stories because the ending writes itself.” At this point, reading one of these is like watching Detective Conan except instead of a murder mystery, the thrill is guessing which trope gets checked off next. The betrayal? The overpowered MC humblebragging about skills he didn’t know he had? The shocked ex-party member eating dirt?
I know, I’m ranting from an ignorant high horse. I don’t really understand the domestic manga scene. For all I know, people in Japan do enjoy conveyor belt sushi stories served with slightly different sauces. I’m also ignoring the reality that formulas work, and this one sells. So riding the wave might be smart, not lazy.
I get that. I do.
But still enough is enough, nothing personal against this series specifically but it just so happens to attract me on clicking because I absolutely loved the cover art.
I am crashing out. I’m the ingrate mooch getting fed the same porridge with different toppings by the feeding foundation, and now I have the audacity to complain. I want something fresh. Something meaningful. No isekai. No villainess. No “betrayed by the party and now I’m OP” revenge trip. I don’t want to be baited by the cover art again and get feed junk food.
Don’t get me started with the titles too. At this point, they might as well just write the first five dialogue lines of the manga as the title and make the whole thing a picture book.
Please, for the love of storytelling
Give me something new.