Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita - Ch. 80 - Evil Human

[Goldenzeal]

I think this is what happens when characters are suddenly introduced to be clear villains, with nothing else to their character. It's fine to make the world more complicated and have the hero deal with something more complex than random monsters and thugs, but I feel like we need to see the villains actually operating as part of society first, and interacting with the MC in some capacity. That way, when it turns out they're the bad guy, it's an "oh no!" moment. As it is, they just feel like paper thin plot devices.

Fran has a personal goal and a well-defined background and personality. She deserves obstacles with comparable development. Not villains who we're just supposed to fear because some rando tells us they're powerful and dangerous.

Well....
This whole arc was mostly a setup to introduce important characters.

Spoiler: Medium/big spoilers

Most of the characters introduced in this arc are going to be coming back later.
Even the less important ones like Cobalt and the adventuring party who helped Fran with her food store.
Granted it is going to be quite awhile before we see ALL of them again...

This was basically the cults endgame for this particular mission tho and most of em just leave.
Their cults mission is to forcibly convert a large population to resurrect / free one of the 7 creator gods ( who is the evil god )
But we are going to see all of them again later too...

From here it is going to be a lot of "evil" people and we are going to get more into the gods and their dynamics.
As the evil god's corruption and their followers are the overarching antagonists of the whole story.




Zelos is basically the main antagonist for multiple future arcs.
He is probably morally the worst of the bunch but is a pretty funny character...
His motivations are also pretty interesting from a story perspective...
To not spoil too much, let's just say he is really interested in magic and alchemy and is willing to do anything to learn more.

The berserker is going to come back as well.
He is mostly a mid-boss and just wants to be strong to fight strong people, but he does have other motivations too.
not going to spoil his motivations because that would ruin a few future story arc.
As learning his motivation is kind of going to be a plot twist reveal.

The old man is going to bite the dust in this arc as far as I remember.
But his job was mostly to be an overzealous follower and also introduce all the other characters.
( unlike the others who only serve as a means to a personal end )

Including one who is going to drive Fran´s own quest to evolve forward...

Spoiler: more spoiler....

Thanks to him we are going to learn about a special Cat-kin empress who also managed to evolve and is serving the evil god.
From her, Fran also learns how she can Evolve herself...

She is also going to meet another evolved Cat-kin who serves one of the "good" gods, but managed to evolve before her race got cursed.

Both Cat-Kin are super old, and the one serving the evil god is the reason for why the Cat-Kin are hated and cursed.
She single-handedly ruined her own country by serving the evil god and she was in charge of guarding 1 out of the 7 seals that binds the evil god, and she willingly removed the seal to get more powerful.

The fact this seal was removed is also the reason for a lot of bad shit that is going on in the story.
Even with 1/7 seals removed, the god's power is leaking out and corrupting a whole continent.
That continent is now in constant war against corrupted creatures, and every single country has to send their best to try and contain it every year.

This is supposedly the reason we don't see a lot of super-powerful characters as most of them are off fighting.

The other evolved Cat-Kin is bound to a special location most people never go to, so there are only like 3-4 people who know she even exists and she mainly serves as somebody to explain the history of the Cat-kin and god lore.

We should be meeting her in the next arc, so no spoilers about her...

Spoiler: The way to evolve a black cat-kin

The way for them to evolve now is to kill like 10,000+ demons / "evil" creatures by themselves.
Which normally should be impossible as Cat-kin are weak without evolving ( but where famous for being strong afterwards )
And the only reason Fran can do so is because of MC.

Or they have to do a deed that is grander in the eyes of the gods than what the previous cat-kin did to remove the curse from everyone which becomes Frans motivation after she manages to evolve.

Fran manages to evolve by cheating thanks to Master.
And most of the other gods are going to be pretty angry with that because they do not want a repeat of what happened with the empress...

So MC gets nerfed in the future so that he can only have 1 wielder at a time.
As he could have effectively undermined the curse by himself and evolved every single cat-kin in the world.

....Before he gets buffed to high heaven again by more plot shenanigans / when we learn about his own backstory...

 

[Saya2879]

You are a noble, you live.
You are a commoner, you die.

Yes, I know that it's because the father was present, but... x)

 

[flannan]

I wonder what kind of skill 'Etc' is.

In the web novel, the author writes out all of the skills for most characters MCs meet. It is a terrifying wall of text for most humans and demihumans. So in the manga, only the most important ones are mentioned, and the rest are shortened to "etc".

In case you are asking this seriously, "etc" is short for latin "et cetera", which means "and so on".

Damn, we didn't get to see what Evil Stiffness does. I have some theories...

Fran is too young to see Evil Stiffness. Sword-shishou will not allow that.

I'm still confused who the bad guys are supposed to be

There is just a lot of them, so it's easy to lose track of them. Don't worry, most of them will die, and you'll only need to remember a few.

From a different perspective, they have:

• an evil cultist influencing everybody, Linford.
• a corrupt son of the city's ruler covering up their evil deeds, Brook.
• an evil trade company providing another layer of cover, Isla Trading Company.
• a whole lot of useless thugs who were mostly hired for their evilness. Luzelio is one of them.
• an evil alchemist, Zelyse.
• an evil mercenary, the only one of the bunch who is actually good in a fight. But was kicked out of all normal organizations for killing people on his side too much, out of pure evilness. Zelos Leed.

I don't really remember their names. I just looked them up in the last 2 chapters.

 

[arcosapphire]

Well....
This whole arc was mostly a setup to introduce important characters.

I'm not going to read the spoilers, but what you're saying kind of misses my criticism entirely. I'm not saying these characters aren't important to the plot.

I'm saying that since they are important to the plot, they need to be introduced in a way that makes us care about who they are and what they're doing. Not just show up, cackling evilly (in this case I suppose literally using an Evil Cackle so we know they are officially Evil...ugh), with people saying, "oh man, this guy is so smart and so strong and so evil! Better watch out!" Because that is not actually how to convince me that a character is smart and strong and evil.

It's funny that 15 years of Marvel movies of varying quality haven't made this extremely clear, but good (action) stories need good, developed villains. Honestly it's more important that they're well written than it is for the hero to be.

 

[Nolonar]

[...] because some rando tells us they're powerful and dangerous.

And EVIL. Let's not forget the most important part. Their name is "Evil Human", they drink "Evil Water", and use "Evil Teleportation"!

 

[Outflanks10]

This was a rather boring chapter to be honest

Thanks for the translation LHTranslation

 

[seekermoc]

I think this is what happens when characters are suddenly introduced to be clear villains, with nothing else to their character. It's fine to make the world more complicated and have the hero deal with something more complex than random monsters and thugs, but I feel like we need to see the villains actually operating as part of society first, and interacting with the MC in some capacity. That way, when it turns out they're the bad guy, it's an "oh no!" moment. As it is, they just feel like paper thin plot devices.

Fran has a personal goal and a well-defined background and personality. She deserves obstacles with comparable development. Not villains who we're just supposed to fear because some rando tells us they're powerful and dangerous.

For me, there's also the fact that the cooking contest arc has been dragged on for far too long. It's been 2 volumes now and nearly a year of monthly releases and it's still not over.

 

[arcosapphire]

For me, there's also the fact that the cooking contest arc has been dragged on for far too long. It's been 2 volumes now and nearly a year of monthly releases and it's still not over.

I wonder how many isekai stories there are without arbitrary contests being introduced to pad things out? Not many, as far as I can tell.

Farming Life is the worst offender, with the past 100 chapters or so almost entirely consisting of contest after contest, with none of them having any meaningful impact.