All Yuri wants is an easy high school life, but he's been cursed with the worst luck imaginable for as long as he can remember. That's why things are bound to look up with the release of Blade Skill Online, an ultraimmersive VRMMO where luck is a stat you can actually control! Confident that a carefree life should be as simple as choosing the right build, Yuri follows an online guide and picks the summoner class with a bow for his weapon. Now reversing fortune is just a matter of dumping all of his stat points into luck to begin his blessed in-game life!

Or at least, that was the plan. Turns out he's been trolled—summoners are useless, the bow is garbage, and the game's barely playable with his abysmal stats. To top it all off, the avatar randomizer turned him into a hot girl, and now a bald barbarian won't stop hitting on him!

But Yuri's not about to let the trolls have the last laugh. With a PvP event on the horizon, he's determined to make his build work and crush the competition!

Blade Skill Online: Crushing the Competition with My Abysmal Stats, Useless Class, and Garbage Weapon! has a story by Manzi Mazi and art by Shimofuri (Laplacian). English translation is done by Shaun Cook. Published by J-Novel Club (September 18, 2025).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Comedy is always hit or miss. For me, Blade Skill Online was firmly in the latter category, largely because I didn't enjoy the writing style. Author Manzi Mazi describes herself as “a beautiful virtual twitterer who puts her face and voice on full display” and then goes on to say that “BSO grants access to a beautiful maid girl with big boobies!!!!!!” and, well, yes, it does. This also means that I can't fault Manzi Mazi for being very much herself and a fan of her own story, both things I admire. We should all be so proud of our work.

The problem is that the story itself is very thin. The premise is a spoof on SAO and similar titles, albeit without the element of being trapped in the game. High school student Yuri has the world's worst luck, so when a new VRMMORPG comes out, he's ready to max out his luck stat and go for it. Unfortunately for him, he gets some really bad advice from a hacked wiki, leading to him not only to create the absolute worst build ever, but also to have his randomized character turn out as the aforementioned buxom maid. It looks like Yuri's luck can't just be changed by boosting a game stat.

Or can it? Because once he's in the game, Yuri discovers ways to make his crap character do awesome things, much to the consternation of other players. From this point on, the book is divided between Yuri floundering along with impressive results and chat logs on an internet forum devoted to the game, recounting other players' views of Yuri's exploits. It unfolds like clockwork, with each section doing exactly what you'd expect, filled with plentiful repetition. Is it really necessary to include the opening post outlining the forum rules every single time? Apparently! Do we need to read about Yuri's bountiful bosoms in every chapter? You bet we do! It starts out pretty fun, but it wears out very quickly.

I'm also not sold on all aspects of the translation. Yuri adds the suffix “-ster” to all of his tamed monsters, which feels very out of date. (It also reminds me of the bad old subs for an early release of Magic Knight Rayearth, where “chan” was “translated” the same way – “Umi-ster” and “Fuu-ster.”) The translator also struggles a bit with names that don't translate easily, particularly in the author's afterword, as you can see below. They absolutely did their best, but it's still a bit difficult to read; it really feels like there was no good solution.

That's how I feel about this novel in general: there was no good solution. If you're in the target audience, it may be a lot of entertaining, and it certainly does try to have a lot of fun with its own premise. But it's also a mess on a few levels, and that takes away from the author's unabashed joy in their creation.