OK, what if someone was transported to another world but they were ugly? No seriously, that's it. Is the story going to be some kind of biting social commentary about how beauty is in the eye of the beholder and how we don't give people a chance due to their physical appearances? Maybe the story is a commentary about how a particular type of male character design has been utilized in such negative ways throughout a lot of Japanese media, but this time we're using that very appearance as the hero of the story? I don't know; it could be any of these things, but based on these first couple of chapters, I can't say for certain.

Say what you want about the isekai genre, but it really feels like it's trying desperately to find the next interesting gimmick to keep the overall setup interesting. We've had people trapped in video games, we've had people sent to medieval fantasy worlds, we've had people reincarnated as monsters, and we've had people reincarnated as vending machines. This story asks the bold question “what if we gave a guy a second chance at life, but he screwed up and now looks like the villain in a hentai in exchange for incredibly overpowered abilities?” That is definitely a setup that can be fun, but as I alluded to before, the story doesn't really do anything with it.

There is a long elaborate stage setting at the beginning where the protagonist was always ugly and thus learned to rely on practical skills and business tactics in order to succeed. But none of that mattered because of his ugly face. Now he's transported to a fantasy world where he needs to use practical knowledge and business methods in order to circumvent the fact that he created a character with an incredibly ugly face. Does that sound repetitive? Good, because it is, since it implies that our lead has more or less gone through whatever potential character arc he is supposed to go through before he even came to this world. How he works around his limitations is admittedly interesting for a couple of chapters and Shigeru is no doubt a nice guy, but it's not enough to sustain a story, wearing thin by the very end of the first batch.

I think part of the issue is that this setup feels like it would lean more towards comedic potential, but the story doesn't play itself as an overly exaggerated comedy. If anything, it starts off deathly serious and then evens out to a more standard fantasy tone. Perhaps the story is relying on the contrast with our main character's goofy exterior but that only goes so far because the art style isn't going far enough to play up that exaggeration. Instead of committing to any strong pull narratively or stylistically, it feels like we're going for a middle of the road approach, which doesn't really succeed in anything. Even the fact that our main character is incredibly overpowered feels underutilized because the story makes him so overpowered to the point where he is not able to use any of his abilities under risk of destroying the very town that he is in.

The side characters don't necessarily help that because all of them are written or presented like a typical fantasy party. Their character designs even look very generic. You have the righteous leader, the ditzy teenager and the loli. The group's leader shows a lot of potential for depth given his backstory, and there are hints that the ditzy girl has more to her from her past life. The problem is it really doesn't feel like these characters belong in this story. I kept waiting for us to get some kind of twist that their party was actually very vain or meant to act as some kind of contrast to our lead, but instead we get exactly what the story advertises them to be, and that's kind of boring.

Overall, I did have some high hopes for this story as I do think it could be tackled from multiple angles. There's a lot of good setup here that could lead to some interesting social commentary, and we have a good setup for a lot of really funny jokes. However, while the setup is there, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of laughing, I'm left blankly staring at an incredibly bland story with characters that don't feel like they even want to amount to anything. As of right now, I don't think you're missing out on a lot by skipping this one.