If you had the ability to go back in time and relive one of the most difficult journeys of your life, what would you do differently? If you sacrificed everything for the sake of taking down an ultimate evil, do you think it's possible to accomplish the same goal without losing anything as long as you had the prior knowledge? This is a story that is far from unique in the fantasy genre. In fact, I read a story with a similar setup just last month. However, while that one focused more on taking things in a comedic direction, it seems New Saga attempts to play this narrative straight.

Our protagonist Kyle is someone who focuses more on the practical than the comedic and juvenile. As soon as he gets a firm grasp of the situation, he does everything he can to make sure he's putting the proper steps in place to prevent the reality where every one he cares about ends up dead. Normally playing a trope so completely straight would run the risk of boring me, but I was surprised at how invested I was in our protagonist's way of doing things. I think this ultimately comes down to how the story frames this idea of becoming a hero from the ground up with prior knowledge.

Like most other stories, the status of a hero is something that is thrust upon our protagonist. We have a lead who has aspirations of becoming a hero, but usually that is a position that is delivered to them involuntarily from an outside force. In this case, our lead Kyle knows that the best way to protect everybody is to develop status and the fastest way to develop status is to become a hero in the eyes of the public. So it's time to study up on what exactly makes a hero and set up a plan to achieve said status. Granted, we only see the setup for this plan in this first volume given the amount of real estate, but I will say I am thoroughly invested in seeing exactly how this all plays out.

I'm thankful that the volume has this narrative hook because outside of that, everything else is pretty generic. The art style is incredibly detailed with gorgeous backgrounds, but the character designs feel like what you would typically find in a nineties fantasy anime. I don't know if the story is trying to invoke that style specifically, but it doesn't necessarily scream unique or interesting. Plus, since this is mostly a lot of set up, we don't get much in the way of action or dynamic framing. The most we get from a stylistic perspective is some choice drawings used to visually highlight exposition that is being delivered. It looks good, but it's just not that interesting.

This one is a tough recommendation for me. It's arguably nothing that we haven't already seen before, and it's probably not the strongest example of this type of fantasy story. We have a strong narrative hook here with some tightly written dialogue that is enough to keep me at least passively invested. At the very least I want to see exactly how the opening steps of this plan play out and how well prior knowledge of the future will impact major events moving forward. How will the character dynamics evolve? Is there a chance that things could be made worse given this path? I think the follow up volume will definitely help me decide if this is a hard must buy but for now, I don't think there's anything wrong with checking it out.