Maken no Daydreamer

[kimagure]

A lot of people and the translator have said, basically: slavery in RL is bad, but this is a fantasy story, so whatevs.

I mean, sure. It's just fiction, but part of the value of stories is the message they convey or what people get out of them. Saying something is "just a story" is basically saying that the work has no meaning or artistic value beyond being sheer entertainment. Which is a fair take, I suppose.

Different fantasy worlds can have different cultural norms, but what makes them interesting is how they address those norms and how the characters interact within them. In Harry Pottery, Hermoine is considered odd for caring about house elves, and the treatment of muggles by the wizarding community becomes a major theme. The violence and abuse of power endemic in the Game of Thrones world is very much explored in that work and plays a large part of what makes it so compelling. In the Lord of the Rings, the characters' treatment of Gollum and the corruption caused by the one ring is integral to the story's themes and plot--as is the brutality of Sauron and Saruman's forces.

Here, it feels like just another story where slavery's okay or good, with the only offered reason being that it's a fantasy world. (Chapter 41) This stands in pretty stark contrast to the discussion of socio-economic imbalance just a few pages earlier in that same chapter, where the characters seem to criticize the rich for abusing their power to get richer while the poor starve. But the thing is, slavery really wasn't typical of the medieval times. Serfdom was far more of a thing in medieval Europe than slavery ever was, but few fantasy stories have serfs. They generally have happy commoners and slaves (who are usually happy to be owned by the MC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe

In other words, it feels like an incredibly lazy treatment of slavery, that's thrown in unnecessarily, with the only excuse offered being, fantasy! This isn't even getting into what it says about the MC, who's a reincarnator who seems happy enough to abandon modern concepts of personal liberty/morality because people he knows say "yeah, I don't really like slavery, but they were cheap!"

TLR I'm glad other people are still enjoying this story, but yeah, I'm out. Thanks for the translations!

 

[kimagure]

Last comment on this, I swear.

I'd contrast this story with Ascendence of a Bookworm, where the grey priests are basically slaves who are bought and sold by the nobility. But there, the main character struggles with reconciling her modern morals and beliefs with the system of the world and she manages to come to a situation where she helps improve the lives of and saves the lives of grey priests within her authority, while also managing to stay within the boundaries of her adopted class.

Here, in contrast, the author seems to have nothing meaningful to say about slavery other than that 1) they're cheaper than paid labor and 2) hey, isn't it good that we can introduce a perky female character that the MC can buy?

What's more, the author's failure to meaningfully address slavery or think about how to deal with slavery in the world says some really negative things about his characters and story. In fact, it's even worse than that since the people who oppose slavery are portrayed as being misguided or actively wrong. Let me just repeat that. The people who oppose slavery in this story are portrayed as being misguided or actively wrong! So it's actually worse than just being lazy about slavery, since the author comes out as being decidedly pro-slavery--as long as you have a kind master.

So yeah, I don't so much have a problem with the fact that the author's world has slavery. My problem's that the treatment of slavery is the laziest, most light-novel-cliche way of introducing another female character to the story. Oh, and that the story is actively pro-slavery.

Still though, thank you translators!

 

[MonsieurWeeb]

summary:

Okay introduction arc.
Questionable second arc.

Spoiler

(Teleport to a dungeon? Why? Isn't much of a test when u already strong, finding a settlement using a map by travelling from his house is a better test due to orientation and stamina limitation)

Below average mc. (Not impactful, feels like a generic template than an mc for the reader to relate in the story)
Acceptable companion.

Spoiler

(The mc should have punished her so she doesn't feel as guilty and learnt her lesson, forgiving without punishment is stupid)

Underwhelming combat visual and fighting style
Bad worldbuilding. (we literally knows nothing about the world unless the mc literally slap his face into it)
Bad dialogue. (simplistic and bad timing, it become so predictive and important moment loss the weight behind it)
Bad character pose. (Important for first impression and introducing mood of the story)
Bad monster design except some of the mother tamed beast. (What happened to their bones ;-
Later part becomes more generic and thoughtless/bad storytelling (which means less unique story & more copy paste/ less brain more filler)

the author try to whisk by anything that exist in the story world to say "hey! My story have this!/My character did this!" but what the story have is anything but exciting and new. You will be more entertain reading history books that explain in depth of what is going on than this manga cataloguing what it have.

Even if a story has the most basic of concept like "cooking for my cat after work" it can be better than this manga, why? Because character and storytelling have more importance than concept and system in a story.

The story become boring, the mc become a body reinforcing fighter and is clueless about everything except for his unique combat skill which is not even that exciting since the author did not elaborate, children drawing for monster, terrible antagonist, one shooting everything with the most boring visual.

 

[jack500meow]

So wholesome! Not bad isekai and Minato is very reserved and looks like gentleman.

 

[Roadrunner9000]

mc is supposed to be an incubus right? looks more like a monk to me

bs romance, i don't know if the author is just bad at it but the charackters he has entering the mc's harem are psychopaths

that one girl endangers to the other girl with her bs antics and it just gets ignored... even pets get more justice

having to take care of one of them is already a full time job but he has a whole gang...
and if you like romance prepare to be disappointed because the romance is on cavemen level, falling in love for no other reason than the mc being strong, some times even literaly being punched before feeling the butterflies

in real life we have an abundance of gold diggers in this manga it is an abundance of power diggers

as for the indepth judgement of each arc i refer to @MonsieurWeeb

and i can very much confirm that its the plots mo to bs the reader in order to ride through the rougher parts of the story an example template would be drama appears but the mc cant deal with it because he has to fight now and later only the likeable parts of the drama get cherry picked and the rest forgotten

 

[CrystalPacifist]

“His senses are so sharp”
He can’t even tell she’s ripping him off, i’m on a losing streak trying to find a good manga to read

 

[Charlie025]

so they just dropped the translations on this one? That's just sad.

 

[bmxlord90]

does his mom carried all of the child that she has or she just adopt those childs?

 

[Vellss]

This is absurdly shit the MC is just idiotic and the plot is below average.

 

[ReYoN]

Booooriiinnnggg. Just remove romance and harem tag from this shit

 

[Akule]

I think this is really all you need to know about the author of this comic: Won't someone think of the slave traders?

Spoiler: MC Lecturing the "naïve hero"