The Frontier Alchemist ~ I Can't Go Back to That Job After You Made My Budget Zero

[MangaDex]

 

[KajurN]

I like the art. The manga itself is the same old "I'm OP but unappreciated" shit with a different coat of paint. On some parts you can even tell the artist's not fully invested on this since you can see differences in how much effort they put from page to page and sometimes panel to panel.

We're at a point where these Isekai/fantasy writers and artists are all hustling trying to get some slice of that Isekai/fantasy pie and not all of them manage to do it, granted i've seen worse manga get anime adaptations so...

 

[damadicius]

I thought this would be another trash power fantasy. It’s another power fantasy, alright, but it’s not trash, so far, at least. There are some effort on hard magic system and some world building. And no random fan-service if you prefer it that way.

 

[iSiffrin]

characters written to be so retarded they'll take the flour out of the cake recipe because it's too plain

 

[HaveABanana]

I'm enjoying almost everything about this. Even the fact that it leans on well-used tropes isn't a problem, as it stays consistent and (so far) doesn't do anything too stupid. The weakest part so far is just the usual starting bosses being idiots and assuming they could just turn a talented person into a literal slave. I'd really hope that wasn't a surprise at this point.

Mechanically the alchemy is a bit more interesting than usual. We get little half-explanations, just enough to show the logic behind what's going on since the 'spells' aren't the usual "just fireball everything at 10x power of an actual fire mage". Maybe more importantly, whenever people do make choices, for better or worse, we usually see consequences for those choices down the line. So far I'm happy that few events feel wasted or on a whim.

But I suppose this also applies to the idiot bosses at the start - it's also true that they were allowed to be idiots by people going up the chain so it could be a little disappointing if there weren't many other competent people in the organization. My hope is that this trend mostly applies to the 'arms' division and that we just haven't seen much of the others but even if so, it looks like they were at least mildly hamstrung even if they weren't disbanded like MC's group.

 

[Irfanzud02]

Kinda Insteresting at first since there is Alchemy-theme on it, but turn out it's just usual "Jack of all trades MC" thingy.

6/10 for art only

 

[ExecutiveDirector]

I apparently read 13 chapters of this and I can’t remember any of it.

 

[Trig_Zero]

i have many questions
but i only wanna ask one
why hippo.....?

 

[HaveABanana]

i have many questions
but i only wanna ask one
why hippo.....?

I mean, Hippos are one of the most dangerous land animals in the world right? And they're also at home in shallow water. Not sure about their actual speed or stamina as transportation or cargo though.

 

[VonCesaw]

The person that wrote this is REALLY pissed they got fired aren't they

 

[OmnipotentCheese]

It's not bad. The pacing feels weird on a way I'm not sure how to describe. It feels jerky.

 

[Lenasien]

Story is good but ....... MC still on comfort zone and there's no life threatening tragedy up to latest chapter

 

[Junpaku]

It's alright. It's what the phrase "diamond in the rough" is made for, like a gem just excavated from the ground and you can see bits of shininess in there if you know how to bring it out. There's glimpses of some interesting stuff with the magic system and other worldbuilding, there's cute hippos and dragons and some very cute and silly moments with them I enjoyed a lot, there's some rather interesting extremely uncute chimaera of animals that should not be mixed ever that I hate and love. It would be great if it was more polished. Maybe we'll get that, maybe not. I think it's interesting enough to subscribe and keep reading but ymmv.
Oh and the comment in here about there being zero random fanservice is not true but it is pretty rare, it's mainly just the title pages except one very out of nowhere spot. TBH, you get far more ass shots of the hippo than the girls.

 

[MisterPinkie]

I was kicked out of my [alchemist guild] for being useless (but actually I'm the best at everything), and now I [live freely in the frontier town] and my [boss] regrets kicking me out because I was the only reason the [guild] was successful and has to beg for me to return, but I refused because I'm happier now and every woman I meet would really like to join my harem I (unintentionally) have!

Feel free to play madlibs and swap out the bits in the brackets (not parentheses) to describe another manga that already exists that has pretty much the exact same story as this one (but the girls have slightly different hairstyles, and the protagonist ignores a totally different power system, this manga's completely different I swear!)

 

[Solandri]

It's alright. It's what the phrase "diamond in the rough" is made for, like a gem just excavated from the ground and you can see bits of shininess in there if you know how to bring it out. There's glimpses of some interesting stuff with the magic system and other worldbuilding,

That's one of the reasons I decided to drop this. There are lots of glimpses and hints of an interesting magic system. But it's never explained or pieced together into a cohesive whole. It's like the MC just spouts random nonsense and throws random objects around creating pretty graphics in the sky whenever he casts his spells (I assume they're spells - he uses lots of objects but it's never really explained how it all ties together with alchemy).

I'm not asking for anything fancy. There was another manga where MC spouts random words, but the first letter of each word spells out the type of spell (fire, water, etc). You don't even get that here. (I'm gonna be nice and assume all this is explained in the LN, but was cut from the manga as taking too many pages to explain.)

Other reasons are:

• Too much exposition. Instead of showing us lore via example, or backstory via flashback, it's frequently thrown at us as blocks of text. With a few static pictures if we're lucky, otherwise as just the thoughts of the MC. It's like reading a history book.
• Bad guys are stupid. In reality, stupid bad guys get caught and end up dead or in prison. The smart bad guys are the ones who make life difficult for good guys.
• The other characters don't add anything. They seem to exist only so they can fail in a crisis, thus giving MC an opportunity to demonstrate (again) that he's superior and OP. The story has introduced countless side characters, and all of them except a few recurring ones are utterly forgettable because of this.
• MC who is already OP, keeps becoming more OP. I guess this is an attempt at character growth? Instead of constantly giving MC more new assets, I'd like to see MC work on developing and improving the assets he already has. e.g. Having him guide his followers in their own character growth would be a good start. (But I guess that would be pointless since they're only there so they can fail, in order to give MC another chance to shine.)
• Despite how OP and supposedly intelligent MC is, he ignores sensible advice. When the person who can literally see the future tells you you're making the wrong decision, you listen to her goddamnit. Why are you even keeping her around if you're going to ignore her in precisely the situation where her skill would make a difference?
• This completely subverts the author trying to portray MC as a selfless individual always looking to help out others. He just prioritized his own opinion over the advice of a literal seer. The very definition of selfish.

The first few volumes of this didn't suffer from these problems as much. But the more recent volumes have just become annoying to read.