<This Alluring Dark Elf Has the Heart of a Middle-aged Man! Vol. 1> - What I expected was something like the “Bureaucrat to Villainess” anime where the MC approaches problems with the assuredness and wisdom that comes with age, but instead the MC in this is crippled by a extreme lack of self esteem and general lack of confidence rooted in his age. Every single page there is somehting about him thinking if he should even talk to that group of young adventurers because “on the inside he’s an 40 year old” or if he’s allowed to eat at that place because “on the inside he’s an 40 year old”. Or maybe if he is sticking out badly because “on the inside he’s an 40 year old”. You get the drift. MC is the worst kind of milktoast characters that is even afraid to answer a perfeclty normal question asked in good faith while getting lost in the mazes of their insane inner monologue all because “on the inside he’s an 40 year old”. This is probably the type of character I dislike the most. And MC here is a especially bad case. Take an early example: MC is in in the adventurers guild browsing the job board when a group of archetypical thugs show up and start harrassing MC as if their existence depended on being as cliche as possible. They then proceed to drag MC ouside and MC just thinks that becasue “on the inside he’s an 40 year old” he should probably prostrate themself on the floor and ask for forgiveness. Then they try to rape MC (remember he’s in a bombshell dark elf body) and he reists by using non-leathal magic. Here is a quote with what comes next: “A sigh of relief escaped me at the realization that I’d overcome this hurdle, but it was almost instantly followed by self-loathing. I had just deliberately attacked others. I felt sick about it.” Again just to drive the point home: Some thugs ahve dragged MC ouside into an alley and tried to rape MC and then he feels self-loathing for having defended himself. You can’t make that shit up. Maybe it’s just my western mentality and a typical Japanese reader would just nod their head as if this was normal, but to me this is like nails on a chalkboard. 0/10

<I Shall Survive Using Potions! Vol. 10> - The series is growing a bit stale. For the last volume or two it’s basically exactly the same with the town’s and support character’s names changed. It’s still entertaining to read but the series is at a point when it absolutely needs a bit of a twist or refresh. 6/10

<The Ephemeral Scenes of Setsuna’s Journey, Vol. 5> - I love how cou can see the author’s progress with each volume. The general direction of the series didn’t change, but in the first volume the emotional manipulation was forced and on the nose as if written with a sledgehammer on the hide of a dead horse. In the following voumes it was still there but less and less ham fisted. In the last one you had to look for it and in this voume it feels entirely organic. Looking forward to the next volume. 8/10

<Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me the Strongest Volume 8> - The entire volume is more or less 3 fights one after another. And let’s just say the author isn’t very good at writing fights. Instead of some epic and hype conclusion to the past 7 volumes each fight reminds me more of the sword fights in Secret of Monkey Island if instead of witty oneliners there were entire chapters of exposition between sword strikes. Here is a line form one of those fights after a character was hit by a surprise attack: “Huh?! What?! Why has a blade pierced my chest?!” totally normal reaction when you get suddenly pierced by a sword. No grunt of pain or angry scream, instead one describes what has happened. And that’s how the entire volume was to read. Just those incredible badly wirtten fights one after another that are drawn out for way to long to have the characters spill all their backstory like a Bond villain. 3/10