Forum - View topicREVIEW: A Wild Last Boss Appeared! Light Novel Volume 1
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MFrontier
Posts: 20003 |
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Not really getting a good impression from this review, but I guess OP attractive women can sell a series enough as is.
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 6215 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I like this series, the characters and the world building. Not perfect, but good enough to be entertaining and interesting.
Think the reviewer went to far into the woods on the gender bender stuff. There are no rules on this, and just how much Lufas's actual brain has on the mentality of the MC. Who knows just how much the melding of Lufas's memories and the MC's memories will affect the new Lufas. Not too mention, (really don't read if you don't want to get spoiled): spoiler[the original Lufas is still there inside.] You got an evil goddess, her faction, her minions, and her people, versus Lufas and Lufas's faction. That makes for interesting reading. Another spoiler you might not want to read: spoiler[Seems the Goddess, summoned the MC to somehow 'nerf' the original Lufas.] |
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RenimLS
Posts: 162 Location: North America |
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I liked the series went even further on that. Especially that twist on spoiler[who is the avatar and who is the original]. |
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Pentat
Posts: 11 |
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Was it? I remember that series reading really badly too, in a lot of the same ways. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 814 Location: PA / USA |
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Reading the review, my mind wanders over to Mushoku Tensei - it has some of the most amazing worldbuilding and intrigue I've seen in a very long time. It sufficiently captures the feeling of watching an older VHS "long-journey" anime with a D&D sort of a flavour, and yet it cannot seem to escape leaving me feeling creeped out when things grind to a halt to try and throw the main character into undeserved harem situations.
Worse still, the Mushoku Tensei anime keeps trying to remind the viewers that the main character is an "in-universe, creepy 34yr old dude" that's getting to feel up underage characters. On the one hand, you can argue that the scenes that show the main character like that is more a reflection of the god he's talking to trying to humiliate him, or that he himself still has a humiliated self-image deep down, but then it still doesn't escape the fact that it's drawing attention to the idea that the main character is a 34yr old dude incestuously letching up about his mom's body in the opening episodes of the show, among other problematic situations throughout. It's really, very frustrating because you have a great potential story about forgiving one's self and self-image, but Mushoku Tensei doesn't seem to have the self-restraint to avoid dipping into undeserved patterns of immaturity. So flipping back to the review, and after peering under them spoiler tags, it sounds like Wild Last Boss has an "interesting-enough" concept for a story, especially if there's more at play than initially seems, but somewhere laced under the execution of that story, it sounds like the author is making it an outlet to vent their frustrations. I'm not saying you cant write a "creepy 34yr old dude" character that has a glass-half-empty view of their personal world, but for them to be a compelling character they have to either be afforded the room to grow and change out of it (even if only momentarily), or their portrayal has to be subversive enough to justify the twist that the main character is a terrible/selfish/immature person. In my opinion, it's something Uncle from Another World does a lot better because the joke is that you can infer from what is being said by the main character, that the Uncle actually did make friends after the Isekai happened, he just has such a terrible self-image that he was socially blind and didn't realise it, and it kind of makes him a little bit more of a situationally-tragic character. IMO, that's a really great storytelling twist. One of the things I like about KonoSuba, horny as it can be from time to time, is that it immediately makes it clear in no uncertain terms, that Kazuma (and then soon after, Aqua) are terrible, selfish individuals. When they eventually travel to the town with people that worship Aqua and everyone is trying to scam them left and right, it's some of the funniest payoffs in the series because the story has laid some really great anticipation that the characters are "getting what they deserve" in a given moment, and now they have an opportunity to make a momentary improvement to their behaviour. So flipping back to Wild Last Boss, I remember hearing ages ago that the genderswap genre of anime is less about "having an academic or subversive commentary regarding an unfamiliar way of life to your own" and is moreso just an excuse to "peer through a keyhole when no one thinks you're watching". If when writing, your commentary or humor doesn't feel like it's earned over the course of your storytelling, if the sour attitude of Wild Last Boss' main character features as more of a fascination or glorification than a subversion or commentary, then at a certain point, it sounds like it's failing to exceed being interpreted as anything more than an immature/horny powertrip fantasy. |
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