Maou-sama no Machizukuri! ~Saikyou no Dungeon wa Kindai Toshi~ - Vol. 3 Ch. 13 - Oath of the Beginning Apple

[Psychronia]

I'm...pretty sure the weapons are being grossly underpriced. They should fix that quickly for a lot of reasons.

The cultural invasion begins once again.

I don't mind the "Glorious Nippon food" thing because, simply, eastern cultures are really serious about their food. It's a medium for networking, doing business, and in general a way of life. To me, it's totally realistic for isekai protagonists to crave food set to modern Japan's standard in an isekai fantasy world, despite not having had any real Japanese cuisine myself.
And while I'd appreciate more inherent cultural palette clashes, it seems reasonable for native residents to be impressed by the food simply due to the different standard of quality.

 

[welcome2atlantis]

The management of a city. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous.

 

[Akito_Himenokoji]

Looks like a job for El Presidente

 

[phil777]

Why must there be an onsen? For easy fanservice scenes OFC. Why are you even asking about something so natural? D:

 

[RedScaleWyrm]

I don't think Wight has a tongue. No one shared an apple with him. I feel like he got gimped from the apple :^(

 

[jokerxhisoka]

mate, why does every isekai mc that sells something hos to sell it cheap to the point of throwing money away? Seriously, that's just stupid, paying high and selling cheap... really stupid!!

 

[Vincentius]

@Kayriel A large part of it has to do with how the two swords are portrayed in various forms of media: the longsword (or any Western sword, for that matter) is a chunky bar of steel that's better used as a mace to batter an opponent into submission with no real style or technique, whereas the katana is a graceful lightsaber that can cut through anything and everything it comes across, except another katana. Then you've got the weebs you'll take this at face value, especially when paired with the myths (read: flat out lies) about Japanese soldiers in WW2 cutting through Thompson barrels with their "katana" (I'd hesitate to call that cheap, stamped out gunto a katana except in the most literal of ways), which just exacerbates the problem.

Plus, and while this is wholly subjective thanks to the fact that I design medieval weapons of various types, katana are extremely boring to look at. When it comes to blade profile, there's really only two that get any attention: the shinogi-zukuri (the most default) and the kissaki-moroha-zukuri (the double-edged tip); all others are such minor differences that they could be attributed, in manga and anime at least, as inconsistencies in the art. The tsukamaki is basically always the same style, the fuchi-kashira are basically always plain and barely worth considering, and while the tsuba may be different, that only really matters in close-up shots where it's actually being inspected, because in profile they basically all look exactly alike.

Compare that with the Western sword, which has 26 different blade profiles (13 if you exclude subtypes, but that would be a mistake) just in Oakeshott's typology alone; which doesn't cover falchions/messers, migration period, bronze age, iron age, renaissance swords. Or the early modern military sabers. There are so many different kinds of European swords that to see yet another katana and to hear yet again about how superior it is, especially when the user has no background in kendo at the minimum, just comes across as cringey.

 

[Kayriel]

@Kaarme
@Vicentius

Thanks for the in-depth look into other perspectives, guys. I still don't see why people would expect or demand different from a 'by Japan, for Japan' comic, but I understand why people would feel that way in general, now. It's all backgrounds and preferences, projected onto the subjects that we like (manga in this case) which tangentially deal with those backgrounds and preferences.

 

[ak0ztik]

i'm worried also about that cheap price, it's better if it's a sale price for a limited time, but it hasn't been mentioned.
Other than that i don't care if they introduce onzens or other japanese culture or whatever's there is in japan, well duh, this is a japanese manga so the target reader of this manga is japanese people, we can only read this because there's scanlators, thanks to them, btw.

 

[Shiroi_Kage]

@ak0ztik If they're thinking about this enough then this could be thought of as a temporary government subsidy to enhance the economy of a newly-established town. If things go well and more people start coming, as well as working in the city, then pricing could be left to the market and the city could start levying tax. They should phase out the demon workers (part of the reason why things are so cheap) and allow more residents to move in and start working there. Once you do that you would have a normal economy that can be maintained with normal type of regulation.

 

[yarielist]

...
Merchant, eh ?
Good luck with that ...
In most story, human like being usually pictured a lot worse than monster ...
Usually politician, religion and ... merchant ...

 

[yohane]

@yarielist nah, merchants are loyal as long as you can guarantee them some profit... unlike the other 2 kinds

 

[Moridin69]

The thing about coin cost for him (ignoring the trope from most isekais that usually compare to a modern economy) is that he doesn't care about money at all. Its DP that he wants. He has mines that provide all the coin material he could need (easily, so far), so to him he just wants people to come and spend time; however, as a commentator mentioned, having full/part-time workers that he needs to pay is a good way to increase DP income at a cost of SP/GP. Though he spent a little bit of time in a town and talking to this merchant before, he likely didn't bother to really learn enough about the normal economy of the world so as to just 'undercut' the prices noticeably but still reasonably.

 

[flannan]

@yarielist - merchants are people. There are good ones and bad ones, but most are quite willing to cooperate and keep their word, because that's the way to profits. Politicians and religious leaders are more dangerous, because when things are bad for the commoners, it's good for them. Well, religious leaders are pretty much politicians, except they are dressed in religious clothes.

 

[StarGasm]

I love these kind of stories, it's a really good shift from the usual fighting isekai, not saying they're bad, but changing from chicken to beef is not a bad idea sometimes eh?

And for the love of ecchi! These women are THICC!!

 

[The5thSeraph]

Kuina seems to have reverted to a loli, just about. Or her initial burst of boobs were just inflatable.
At least we got some big tiddy adventurers instead.


@flannan
The difference between good and bad merchants tends to correlate with how successful they are at parting people from their money. People don't get rich by being fair and generous unless they've got luck enough to compensate.

 

[flannan]

@The5thSeraph - parting people from their money is what any merchant does. A successful merchant is one that makes people want to do it again.
Generosity and fairness are not as important as willingness to strike a deal that will keep both sides happy. Because if you can't strike a good deal, you'll be left without a deal.

Spoiler

This merchant was particularly pig-headed, though.

 

[The5thSeraph]

@flannan

parting people from their money is what any merchant does.

Yes, but the more efficient they are at it, the more ruthless they become and the more distant they become from the consequences of doing it. Merchants parting people with more money than they can afford to be parted from (and more money than the merchant technically needs) is the direction this usually goes in.

Generosity and fairness are not as important as willingness to strike a deal that will keep both sides happy

Happiness is fleeting. Making people "happy" with unfair deals stacked against them, and willing to accept things that are grossly unfavourable to them (and will most likely cause them harm in the long-run) through simple ignorance of what is going on, is a very common capitalist wrongdoing. Harm doesn't stop being harm just because the victim is still smiling.
And it almost always comes about because merchants / traders / capitalists in general have no concept of "enough".

[Edit]: And I wish this site wasn't so horribly unstable. It took me 5 tries to post this, and that sort of thing is a daily occurrence.

 

[flannan]

@The5thSeraph - the way I see it, merchant getting richer is the expected outcome. There would be no point for a merchant to do all the transporting and trading if he didn't get paid for that. To do otherwise, we'll need a radically different economic system, like socialism. I like socialism, but I doubt it's viable in pseudo-medieval fantasy settings.

There are two things that make a merchant good or bad. First is, being honest - selling what is promised, keeping one's deals and so on. A dishonest merchant is not much better than a rogue.
Second is, not abusing other people's situation. Selling water in a desert will surely be profitable, but what is the worth of water to a person dying of thirst? Quite a lot.
Anyway, merchants who let their greed pull them too far into these two, usually get in trouble. Like people getting angry at them, beating them up and taking their stuff for free. There are always reasons to be virtuous.

 

[The5thSeraph]

@flannan

Anyway, merchants who let their greed pull them too far into these two, usually get in trouble. Like people getting angry at them, beating them up and taking their stuff for free. There are always reasons to be virtuous.

Like the idea of karma, it is a nice idea in principle but reality isn't so convenient.
I mean we're living in a world where "merchants who let their greed pull them too far" pretty much rule the world, or at least a great many countries. They're the people who can bribe their way through the legal system to get away with just about anything. Consequences are something they can cheat their way around with the money they filched from their victims. They're the people who have institutionalised and normalised poverty so the poor people don't even try to fight back. The buy-to-let landlords who have ensured that nobody under the age of 40 can own their own home any more as anything even close to cheap is snapped up in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The directors of big companies who pad their own pockets while paying only a pittance to those who actually do the work to keep their companies running.

Much like someone physically strong enough can tyrannise others through physical violence, we're stuck living in a world where the rich tyrannise people through financial violence. Only unlike the physical variety, it doesn't fade with age, and is transferable.