I remembered a line from Zero Punctuation while reading this that goes something like, "Who needs character development to make a character sympathetic when you can just burn all their stuff to the ground in the first 5 minutes."
It's a lot more prominent here, but it actually shines a light on the fact that I find almost no protagonists ever sympathetic in these new age fantasy mangas. Really wish authors would put a little bit more effort towards fleshing out characters rather than throwing all their eggs in the setting basket.