So I decided to do more light novel reviews and to start it off, I went with the last Light Novel I managed to catch up to date on the translation. I say up to date but it’s really the Web Novel version of the story.
After catching up to “Kumo Desu ga, Nani Ga?”(A WN I’ll do a possible review for in the future) I had an empty void in my heart. From there I decided to jump straight into Slave Harem and honestly, my expectations were all over the place. The story follows Michio who has a set amount of skill points that increases the stronger he gets. He’s able to use these skill points, as well as having the ability to reset them at any time, creating the over powered character we see today.
When I started the story, I was first kind of expecting quite a lot from the main character, Michio, as he started choosing what skills he wanted on his computer as he goes to another world. He quickly kills thieves doing illegal activities and then becomes a hero! An awesome start which is slowly going toward the direction of your typical OP character, except that after all of this he is a wimp. No, he isn’t being careful, he’s just a wimp. From there, the story is quite hard to go through as we are just grinding through his process to get money from the labyrinth to buy his first slave, Roxanne, who he is extremely pervy toward.
The story does get better though as soon as Roxanne is bought and Michio loses his virginity. He stops being as creepy as he was and ends up being a pretty well established human being who makes quite a lot of money from his work. When the story gets stale, he ends up buying a new slave which adds life to the story as he increases his harem further and further. Really, the characters is what gives the story life, but the plot has pretty much nothing going on. The story progression is exploring labyrinths more and more, cooking new food and perverted ideas that lead to off screen sex.
More in depth spoilers from here! Beware!
As for the characters, I’m really interested in the side characters. The Duke is an interesting character despite Michio’s dislike of him, and Gozer is quite entertaining. As for the slaves, my favorite one would be Sherry, the dwarf. The reason isn’t because she’s a loli, but she’s the one that doesn’t blindly believe what Michio says and actually questions him despite being his slave. She’s also the only character who realizes Michio’s discount ability and is actually happy when Michio fails something.
Other than Sherry, the other slaves just aren’t that great. Roxanne and Sherry had good character development from when they were introduced. However, to stop the slaves from being amazed at Michio’s ability, they’re sort of just have their reactions covered up quite fast and in turn, aren’t able to further develop their character traits.
Miria’s character development is simply just her learning Brahim, the main language used by the cast. As she doesn’t fully know Brahim, it helps shape her reactions and her character is simply that of wanting fish… and learning how to fish, and finding magic crystals to get more fish.
Vesta, the fourth slave was more interesting than Miria, but other than her becoming a tank, we get no real character development on her! NOTHING! She’s just not that interesting despite having an interesting character design from the illustrations I’ve found online from the light novel. I do like how they gave her a reason to have big boobs in the form of air sacs, but I really wish there was more to her character.
The last slave, Ritsuna simply has the characteristic of an ex-noble elf. That’s her character. Sure, she knows magic and wants to be useful, but I find it annoying how the only thing she cares about is this “lord’s assembly” that she talks about all the time. If anything, she was used more as character development for Roxanne to solidify her spot as the number one slave.
Then lets talk about Roxanne. As the first slave, she has the most character development as well as saves us from the boringness of Michio being a perverted virgin. Taking away his virginity improved his character for the better, and honestly she’s my second favorite slave due to her character development.
Michio, the main character is just… boring though. He has an over powered ability but whether or not he’s over powered is something we don’t know. We see more powerful peoples levels, in the likes of Gozer, but we’re unable to see just how powerful Gozer is. This just tells us that Gozer is powerful, but we’re unaware of how powerful he is which just gives us the illusion he’s powerful.
Really, although the story is nothing special, the web novel is quite entertaining despite my complaints. No developments ever happen but the story is just something interesting to read. I find progression really slow but I don’t mind it. I especially love seeing the absurd discounts Michio gets with his 30% off discount, laughing as he slowly destroys the economy.
All in all, if you want to give the story a chance, I don’t see why not. The story isn’t anything special but it isn’t anything bad either. As the story slowly gets updated, I’ll probably read any new chapters that come out. Maybe I’m just invested after spending so much time on this story, but I find that I like this story, especially later on when Michio unlocks intermediate class jobs. If I were to give this story a rating, I’d give it a 6 out of 10. Although I say 6 out of 10, it’d be high on the 6 scale, almost a 7 so it’s a barely passing grade and I look forward to reading more chapters that will be released in the future.
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