Human creativity is unendingly interesting to me. We are in an unprecedented time of stories that start in incredibly similar ways, and yet, each story is different enough for us to warrant taking time to tell you all about it. Today, we are speaking of the first three volumes of Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the Strongest Fortified City, a series which, on the surface, looks like several others I have read. But where, say, The Chronicles of an Aristocrat Reborn in Another World, starts with isekai and evolves into playing house and thinking about glassware (something I found actually quite charming) this series is focused on the larger issues of building up a small, inconsequential village on the outskirts of a territory, beset by monsters and bandits into a substantial town people will want to visit. Same problems, different scale. Different skills and different techniques, which is what really keeps my attention. It's not that I'm not interested in the building of a ballista. I promise you, I am. All discussions of weaponry and town defense will be of interest to me, but I'm actually really fascinated with the ways authors are writing about architecture, defense, and commerce from the perspective of what magical skills and real material would need to combine to make them work best.

In this iteration, an adult is isekai-ed into a child's life to become a beloved and charming leader, not because he has endlessly powerful elemental magic, but because he does not. Van does have seemingly endless mana, which seems fitting for a 8 year-old boy. His magical skill is in creation, but he needs to think about the material to shape what he wants. This isn't a lesson in atomic structures, but it's kind of fun to see how far down the author is willing to take both real materials, like wood and iron, and the magical materials like armored lizard skin and meat. The details are important, per se, but they are interesting. And that is what keeps me reading a series like this.

I do want to talk a moment about how light novels and their derivative manga and anime have found a workaround to have some dude being creepy near young women. Apparently, turning teen and adult men into primary school age is the current fashion for this. It's eye-rollingly silly, but I guess it's better than making them a giraffe. And somehow, it works. I do find reading about 8-year-old Van vastly more interesting than reading about the 30-year-old miserable office worker he once was.

So here we are, with another adorably cute and likable child with the mind of a Japanese 21st century adult. As with other, similar titles, the skills of that previous life connect seamlessly with Van's new magical affinities.

I have two incredibly minor quibbles and one slightly less minor one with the first three volumes of this series. Van's desire for an “easygoing” life is nowhere to be found. He's working hard at his studies, at building his new town. He and his people and the villagers are working hard to fight monsters, bandits, build the city, establish a perimeter, and build infrastructure for the villagers and magical creatures under his protection. At the end of volume 3, politics comes back into the picture as well. Are we actually going to see some easygoing life? I don't know. Guess I will just have to keep reading. My other minor quibble is that the village had no name until Van showed up. Seriously, that is not how people work. There is a town in Cornwall near absolutely nothing called “Lostwithiel.” That name roughly translates from the Cornish to “ass end of nowhere.” People name things. No one is going to live in a town with no name at all. My last quibble is the breasts. This book could easily be listed at 12+ without that.

Those incredibly minor things and the usual golly gee, this kid is so cute and wonderful, all the girls instantly love him, that seem to be part and parcel of this subgenre, I've definitely read worse than this manga series. And if you, like me, enjoy watching someone else play a Sims-style game and build the town and the economy for you, this isn't a pretty enjoyable story.