Ichioku-nen Button o Renda Shita Ore wa, Kizuitara Saikyou ni Natteita - Vol. 2 Ch. 9.2

[Lord-Raine]

This series is the epitome of everything that's terrible with modern manga. They went out of their way to establish that he spent 1 billion years training. One billion. And yes, that is how long he spent, unless the translators made multiple mistakes with the translation. He's spent more time training than life has existed on LAND, in a geologic timescale of Earth. It is explicitly stated that every single swordsman stands on the shoulders of all who came before them, to refine and perfect their art by learning and passing it down, except for him, because nobody else has been able to just exist for a billion years and train. His style is 100% entirely his own, no one else has anything like it. His swordsmanship should be utterly alien to the modern world of martial arts, because it developed entirely in isolation. Furthermore, his style should be far more refined and advanced than ANYTHING ELSE THAT EXISTS, again because of the SHEER MIND-NUMBING SCALE of the time involved. His technique should, literally, be hundreds of millions of years ahead of every other style that exists.

And yet, inexplicably, he still gets challenged by random fuckoffs. Kids at that, not even adults. Fucking children.

If you did not want him to be that unbelievably powerful, then you SHOULD NOT HAVE ESTABLISHED THAT HE WAS. It's like the author started writing a completely separate manga and then wadded up the draft and ate it after chapter 2. This is fucking awful, I have literally seen fan fiction with better consistency than this. If some dipshit wrote a fic where Harry Potter trained in magic outside of time in Avalon for a hundred million years, then came back to real time, got invited to Hogwarts, and was pressed in a duel by Draco Fucking Malfoy, the comment section of that fic would be a sea of flames. People would be roasting the fuck out of that person.

This is the shit I truly do not understand. It's your story. The scale of the forces involved is entirely up to you. You can arbitrarily decide the power levels of the people involved. All of the variables involved are entirely within your direct control. Ergo, there is absolutely no reason for it to not be internally consistent with itself, unless you're just a blithering idiot.

I'm willing to buy the idea that the guy does not truly understand how powerful he himself is, because he does not have much of a frame of reference. Even if he beats strong people, he can't really be sure just how strong he is, because he has nothing to measure it against, and it can be hard to judge just how strong those other people were. It is a stretch to keep leaning on that trope, sure, but I'm willing to let the story have that as a premise, it's not unreasonable. But this absolutely fucking outrageous escalation of power, no. Fuck no. I'm not willing to let that slide. It is worse than awful, it's atrocious. You could, maybe, conceive of an argument, if you really reached, as to how an old and experienced swordsman in this world could fight the MC and stand some ghost of a chance, since they have real combat experience fighting against people other than themselves, as well as a distinct height and weight advantage. It wouldn't be enough to overcome the sheer overwhelming gulf of skill that should exist, but it would at least be "an" advantage, something you could leverage. But he's getting matched or pushed around by teenagers. People who, ostensibly, are the same age he was when he first got the button. Even if one of these supposed geniuses is worth a thousand of the old him in terms of skill, that STILL means he should be worth a MILLION of THEM. The difference between him as he is now and them should be the same as the difference between them as they are now and him as he was before the button. But it's not. The amount of jobbing that's going on here is insane, it's jobbing so hard it's actually ruining the story.

The more I read this, the more convinced I become that the author literally wanted to write an entirely different manga, got lazy or changed his mind, and decided to pivot and do a rip-off of that sword school series instead. The fact that the LN readers are admitting that the existence of the button and the hermit basically gets forgotten about and never brought up again until ages and ages from now, when he's basically run out of ideas for where the story can go, just cements that for me.

That's a fuckload of angry tl;dr. The bottom line is, either he's the underdog or he's the strongest, you can't have it both ways. And yet this story still tries to. That's retarded. This entire story is retarded. Even the title is an outright and bald-faced lie: I Hit the Button for a Hundred Million Years and, Before I Knew It, I Was The Strongest.

More like, I Hit The Button For A Hundred Million years, And Before I Knew It, I Was Jobbing To Children.

 

[Lord-Raine]

And before anyone says I'm just being needlessly bitchy, consider another series that actually does this correctly. "Jimi na Kensei wa Sore Demo Saikyou Desu" is an isekai about a guy who gets killed on accident and is allowed to ask for anything from God to compensate for the mistake, and he asked to be the strongest. So when he reincarnated in the stereotypical medieval fantasy world, God called in a favor and got a legendary immortal sage, the sword saint, to teach him. That world has elemental magic, various divine gifts, and several other types of powers, but main character didn't learn any of them. Instead, he swung a sword endlessly, from sunrise until sunset, for five hundred years. He trained until his clothes fell apart and turned to dust, just endlessly practicing sword swings. He became a sage himself through this training, no longer requiring food or drink, and his aging stopped. When he left the mountain and went down to the rest of the world, he was unfathomably strong. His speed was so high above everyone else's that he seems to teleport when he moves seriously, and his technique is so refined that he can dent and cut through steel plate armor and solid stone with nothing more than a wooden sword.

Unlike this MC, he actually, truly is the strongest. It is totally believable. The story makes it a point to put him up against people with cheat magic and absolute bullshit abilities, including another guy who reincarnated into this world and got a gift from God to compensate him, and the MC's overwhelming strength, speed, and technique allowed him to win every single fight. In fact, as far as I've read in the series, no fight he's been involved in has lasted longer than five seconds. And as an added bonus, the guy, while still himself at the end of his training, is much more relaxed, level-headed, and mature, as one would expect from someone who disciplined themselves for so long. He also does not have a correct perspective on exactly how strong he is (mostly because he's comparing himself to the sword saint), but he is far more mature and reasonable about how he approaches things. These are qualities the main character of this series sorely lacks.

That's how you do this trope properly. So don't think I'm just sitting here complaining to complain, when there are other series that do this EXACT same thing, but do it far, far better. And that's just with 500 years of training in a fantasy sword and sorcery world. This author is out here saying, one million, one hundred million, five hundred million, one BILLION years, but somehow the MC here still jobs to brats and edgy teenagers. Yeah, lol, sure, okay.

This next fight better be a totally one-sided curbstomp, or I'm unsubbing. I'm not going to stick around for five years and eighty KireiCake style one-tenth chapter updates for the story to pull it's head out of it's ass and remember that the MC trained for a longer period of time than complex life has walked on land, and is supposed to be the strongest living being on the planet.

 

[Haru_2]

Fuc the story, I'm reading this just to see Rose Valencia face.

@Lord-Raine hey, u okay dude? You can drop this. I'll deal the stupidity of this manga (I want to see Rose) for anyone who's done at this point. I'm already stupid anyway.

 

[litinz]

@Lord-Raine youre missing the part where the mc was bullied in school this whole time before this, thats why hes so fearful of the others. He has a major inferiority complex, and he doesnt think hes strong despite his training because of that. He hasnt lost to anyone yet but youre saying that him "jobbing" is a flaw yet that hasn't even happened.

He was the worst with the sword in a bad academy and now hes going up against one of the best ever and he hasnt lost a single time, in fact it seems that he's still holding back his power quite a bit, he just doesnt want to admit it to himself because he still sees himself as inferior to others.

"The amount of jobbing that's going on here is insane, it's jobbing so hard it's actually ruining the story." yeah we're not reading the same manga. Maybe you jsut cant self-insert yourself into the mc because hes not a perfect person who despite his trauma acts and thinks like a completely normal person and aims to become the best demon king, hokage or whatever because hes so confident, smug and badass, the kind of person teen boys want to be

As for the insane amount of time he spent in isolation? Maybe that gets explained later, like maybe he didn't actually spend millions of years there, and only got the memories of spending the time there or something. Even if theres no explanation, just turn your brain off and enjoy

 

[nueee]

Thank you!

 

[Rin2k]

@Lord-Raine lol both are terrible series.

 

[Amplifity]

so mc isn't even op even though he trained for God knows how long...

 

[The-Best]

I usually give my 2 cents after ten chapters at least but there are only 9 chapters out and who knows when I'll come back to this so I'll stop here for now, this story isn't for people who left their brain on.
It's not about MC's personality I've read enough harem manga to be used to it by now but, he seems way too weak for someone who trained that long? We're talking 100mil years alright! Those aren't rookie numbers, that's the Cretaceous period. I doubt its possible for someone who spent from equivalently the early Cretaceous period to the modern-day solely training his sword technique to be unable to detect some old dude who at most trained for 150 years if I'm generous to around 60 if I'm realistic years and feel that some kid who has yet to graduate is a threat.

Even if you suck at golf after 100 years of only golfing you would have become excellent, by 100mil years you should be some sort of divine golf overlord.

But If you turn off your brain it passes the time. The art isn't bad, the fight scenes are alright there's a little fan service and romance well as for as harem romance goes...

Edit: just remembered he used the button multiple times so really has no excuse to ever have to go all out against any of the mortals, he should really only be able to lose to the hermit of time and his mother.

 

[litinz]

@The-Best so because you find 1 thing annoying that isn't really even mentioned much at all in the later chapters you can't enjoy the manga at all? Wow. But when Dr. Stone does it it's ok?

 

[The-Best]

@litinz You must not have read what I said. If you read this manga with your brain turned off it's not bad and it passes the time. it's not something I would look out for updates for consciously which is why I said I'll stop here for now and come back whenever but to bounce off what you said when there are a couple of chapters to read and I'm waiting for a manga I enjoy more like Dr. stone to update this does the job.
I never once said I didn't enjoy the manga(If I did I wouldn't have said I'll come back to it eventually) just don't expect me to praise this manga for its "unique logic" and "forward-thinking" and recommend it to all my friends family and acquaintances.

But if you turn off your brain and ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense as I said before the art, fight scenes, etc are not bad. Yes, I said I don't recommend this to people who leave their brain on because in my experience if you try to make sense out of it you'll end up frustrated from the things that obviously don't make sense it may not be mentioned often but not only is it in the title it's a major plot point having to do with the origin of his strength, how he got into the school which leads to both him meeting these characters(those in the cover page) and the reason for his presence in the current tournament arc and lastly his connection to the hermit of time so of course I'm gonna talk about it.

Lastly, please don't skim because first off I never said I didn't enjoy the manga, and second I never even mentioned Dr. Stone let alone said it's alright when they do the same thing in my original post.
Your whole argument is about claims I've never made and you only accused me of things that that I never said or things entirely unrelated to my post. Like seriously what does Dr. Stone have to do with anything?

Edit: for example read Haru_2's post I'll just turn off my brain and read it, it doesn't need to make sense for me to enjoy it. I'd just appreciate it more if it made more sense and I didn't have to deal with what doesn't make sense by turning off my brain and just looking at the pretty pictures. If however, you do leave your brain on for example like Lord-Rain I'd recommend you simply drop it to maintain your sanity.