Heavenly Grand Archive’s Young Master
Warning: story contains suicide, murder and occasional mild body horror.
This is the story of the strongest known man and head of a martial arts union of different organizations. MC mysteriously finds himself to have suddenly swapped bodies with some kid from a scholarly sect. It quickly becomes apparent that this kid had been suicidal for a long time and thus been kept under strict watch. MC is confused and attempting to figure out how to proceed to find out who did this to him and how he can get back to his own body. Alas his body shortly dies because the scholar kid noticed he was no longer being guarded and ends his life in the body of this old man. It's rather tragic if you think about it, but it's rather quickly implied and then moved on from. MC's grief when he receives the news of his own supposed suicide it pretty much just played for comedy, the story refusing to really go into how truly tragic this all is. MC moves on after some tears to train and convince the rest of his family that he's not suicidal anymore. It's compelling and I found addicting, for once MC acts like the old man he is, although he is a pretty open minded old man, but yeah. There's the usual beating of people that aren't MC's enemy, but for some reason it's fine and garners him no hard feelings. It really bothers me that it just normalizes such violence. Especially against his new younger brothers, like wtf, they weren't even abusive to MC, they were just exhausted and hurt and depressed. <_<;;; A lot of the comedy in this is kind of a miss for me, tends to be a bit too obnoxious, but that's definitely more a matter of taste. It's not more excessive than anything you'd find in say Inu-yasha, I just couldn't seem to laugh at it the same. I do like it enough to continue with the plot though. As of ch 69 there's still no progress on who and how MC ended up in his new body. Also he's confided in no-one despite running into quite a few acquaintances so far. I don't require my MC's to be morally good, but somehow on occasion I do find myself pulled out the story and not liking MC's choice to kill someone. Like he's presented as righteous and shit, yet... I dunno in recent chapters it felt like he killed someone a little too lightly? Like it made me go: wait what? He actually killed him? Why?? What made him deserve that? Usually in these stories the author make sure to bring the audience on board with the MC's actions, mostly by keeping him consistent with the character presented, and yet here it felt weirdly out of place. Like why??? Anyway, I'm hoping i was just missing something and later new chapters will put me at ease again, cause otherwise it's been pretty ok.
Actually now that I think about it even in the beginning MC's retaliations on occasion have been... um... extreme in a way? Like he didn't seem the type but he still does what he does. I dunno, it's weird.
The art is good, the translation is understandable and also avoided a lot of inconsistency by being pretty much all by one scanlation group. Which is nice. I like the way the action is depicted through Mc's perspective in a way that we see what he sees, like for examples, which attacks are illusions and faints and which are real.
Also so far there hasn't been any love interests. MC doesn't even entertain the idea and unlike in other stories where an adult finds himself in the body of a teenager, MC doesn't blush and is otherwise unaffected by children making moony eyes at him. It's so tragically refreshing considering the amount of these types of stories where the older MC just sort of... reacts to children like they are viable love interests despite acknowledging their previous age, which they clearly identify with more. 9_9 Like this is how you handle romance in this kind of story. If you're having your middle aged or whatever grown ass adult somehow end up in the body of a teenager, interacting with other kids, the way to have romance is to not have romance.
Battle Through The Heavens
Couldn't really get into it. Didn't really like the art.
Chronicles Of The Martial God
The strongest martial artist in the world, gets sealed away by some immortals for... reasons. I think he may have done a bad? It's very vaguely explained. The guy stays sealed for 1000 years and then our story actually starts when he's already out and comes across a little girl about to starve to death. He eventually decides to raise her as his own and goes about trying to build a life where that is possible.
It starts pretty good and interesting. You don't really know where it's all going but the dynamic with the daughter is cute. However it's a bit odd. Supporting characters get introduced, but they aren't really properly fleshed out and some (like the poor magistrate) kind of get shunted right out of the plot, despite still kind of being there. It's really odd. It also feels like the story is fighting against it's own set up? Like the kid starts school, someone raises concerns about schools having bullies or whatever, and then it's just promptly abandoned. We also have the "training subordinates to get stronger" and that too is abruptly abandoned. At one point I seriously thought I missed a chapter or some pages were missing. I went to other sites to check. The plot segues from what I thought was going to be character development for a member of the supporting cast to something connected to MC's past and it gives you whiplash. There are attempts at world building, but why would I want to know that at the expense of getting character development??
A shadowy organization is introduced later on in the story. They are vaguely threatening, but not really because they aren't a threat to MC, merely to people he knows but aren't under his protection. Because of this it's hard to get invested or care about what is clearly meant to be looming threat.
I can see what the author's trying to do with the found family and not losing sight of what you already have themes, but it's not executed all that well. The people that end up joining MC's family are interesting when first introduced and you wonder what will happen next and are excited for how they'll grow, and then they're just there. Stagnant with no development in their relationships to one another. Everyone immediately loves the daughter, this is fine for the most part but she gets no chance to be an actual person. She's a therapy dog at best. There's been opportunities to do something with her, like that thing about making friends at school. Unfortunately it was just skipped over, even though there was set up! The classroom was depicted as kind of cold, and not wanting to accept her. Presumably the author didn't want to focus on that, but then, why bother with the set up? Why bother sending the kid to school? What's the motivation here? Was it there just to be a PSA on how education is important? It has no affect on the plot or on the little girl herself. She seems happy to go and excitedly tells MC about the stuff she learned on her first day, but it's never brought up again. And then later on we see she has friends. Apparently it was all fine despite the difficulties it was implied the girl would have to overcome. ?????? Thanks for not having any stupid one note bullies??? I guess???
Another character catches MC's eye as he sees himself in this other person. He sees a deep hatred in this other person's eyes, so he tells him to get rid of that hatred as it'll fuck with his growth as a martial artist of something, and the other character just goes "ok". What is this hatred? What's it directed at? How does it relate to his drive to become the best? I don't know. It's not brought up again. He presumably stops hating I guess, because he's honestly just a mellow dude who doesn't talk much. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The story and characterization isn't executed that well, so I ended up dropping the story.
Standard of Reincarnation
A one armed swordsman from the branch of an important family struggles with the main family's successor until he is eventually locked up in prison and dies. He reincarnates in the body of a young boy 500 years in the future. At first it's ok, but later some revelations happen than had me rolling my eyes, especially in regards to the "arch demon" and all the weird politics. The politics while apparently somehow important are nebulous and poorly established. Rather than making me want to find out more, it made me drop this. Also MC was almost 30 when he died, but he reacts and loses his cool like a child a lot in this story, which bother's me cause he was an extremely experienced swordsman before he died. As is usual in these stories everyone's got beef with MC because they think him weak, but it's very annoying that they continue to do so when he's done the work to get to the stages he needs to. To get into the weird school thing he had to beat a demon, and yet the school's dean acts like he's not done the work and is weak and worthless. As if the head of the family would allow him to enroll at school without having proven himself. In fact, the story made it seem that MC could try killing the demon at any time and as a result of that he'd be then sent to school. So I dunno how it was supposed to make sense for the dean to be so prejudiced. It makes him look like an idiot who can't reason simple things out on his own.
The art is alright, relies a lot on light show stuff, but ok. Now the translation is weird at times. You can make sense of most sentences easily but the names of things can be quite stupid. Like the heavenly exoskeleton. Does the translator not know humans don't have those? Did they think MC is a beetle? Or a lobster? If this heavenly body shit is about storing mana in your bones then it's just heavenly skeleton, 'cause you know, MC and all the humans in the story have their bones inside, and not outside like most insects do. >_> Just cause you think it sounds cool doesn't mean it's right. And this is either the fault of a translator or the author. My money's on the translator not knowing the difference between bugs and people.
Duke Pendragon
Ugh, I've checked out a few of this author's other works and none of them so far have been for me. I like the art and the premise of most of this author's stories, but the execution always feels off for me. Here we have an overpowered dude who reincarnates, with girls instantly salivating over him and it feels mediocre rather than the "epicly cool" it's obviously aiming for. Well, it feels too try hard for me anyway. All the women do seem to be useless for anything other then admiring and fawning over protag-man. I don't necessarily want some strong warrior woman up in her, just... I dunno, for all the women not to immediately fall in love after MC treats them contemptuously. Also for them not to be incredibly annoying baggage too. That would be nice. The women characters could be nice baggage instead.
Worn and Torn Newbie
Eh... I've tried to get into this one a couple times, and I just can't for some reason. I can't even quantify what that reason is exactly, but I just want to click away and stop reading every time I start reading. Not for me, I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years
Some powerful mage from the past gets into a fight with a "demigod" and gets sealed away for 4000 years. For reason's as yet unknown he is released upon the suicide of a young bullied mage attending an academy. He reincarna- erm... transmigrates(?) as the child who just committed suicide and decides to continue attending the academy to learn about this new modern world as well as get stronger than he was 4000 years ago to get a rematch with the demigod who sealed him.
Not for me. A lot of these stories are male power fantasies and while I usually like them, this is too much for me. <_<;; I'm sure that isn't the case for other people, so I suggest making up your own mind.
Black Haze
This is the story of some kid with a mysterious past and a secret identity. He's an over powered mage and does missions for an organization he's part of, and our story starts with him doing really mundane small missions because his master is trying to hide him from... some people. Said master conspires to send this overly talented and fully fledged mage to magic school without MC's consent on the pretext of "make friends with this bullied kid" mission. I get that I'm not supposed to think about it, but I'm betting our MC would actually be bored to tears in class and be hated by most of the professors. However this is one of those stories that's set in a school, but we never see any actual lessons happen. Unless it's gone wrong and an action scene is to take place. I've read quite a few chapters and have absolutely no earthly idea as to what the various "professors" we've been introduced to teach, or how they teach. Also one (1) faculty member is slightly concerned for bullied kid, but they barely do anything except talk to the kid, and the other teachers are shown to give less than two shits despite being aware of the bullying. Idiotic. The kid's from a ducal family, but no, the professors are pretty useless, gotta send some other kid undercover to solve this shit.
The story is pretty compelling (somehow), but the art is... well it gets marginally better, but not the way people in other comments are going on about it. The plot and characterizations also reek of "baby writer's first story". Especially the characterization. The way we're introduced to characters by the trope's the confirm to. The start didn't leave a particular good impression as it was using these tropes without knowing why or how to use them. There's the cool woman who's expressionless and for some reason a teacher at the school, but who's got absolutely no business being around kids. She's supposed to be a little like early Kakashi from naruto, or Aizawa of MHA, someone who's too cool to care, but actually does, and at the end of the day, does a really good job caring for the kids. She's got the too cool to care bit down, but seems to care nothing for anyone else except the princess character. There's the beautiful cool smart girl, her distinction is that she doesn't wear glasses despite being the smart girl character. That's the standard of characterization and while I do otherwise like the story, these aspects detract from my enjoyment somewhat. Especially at the beginning.
I'm going to drop this as I've come to my limit I guess, but judging by how highly rated this is, there's quite a few people who do like it. Thus, I'd recommend giving this story a try and seeing how you feel about it for yourself. It's trope-y as fuck, but it can also be fun and heartfelt. The comedy's mostly a miss for me, but it might not be so for you. The art... well it may be the actual deal breaker for most people. ^^;; Also this apparently got dropped by the author and I can see why, so this doesn't have an ending.
Chronicles of the Demon Faction