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Some people may have seen the relatively low-quality anime for Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou and are probably wondering why I am bothering to spout about this. Lately I've been plowing through LNs and web novels because I ran out of interesting VNs, but this is the first one I feel a need to expound on at length. Let's be clear, I am one of the freaks who enjoyed the anime, though I did so while wincing constantly at the animators' choices and the horrible monster CGs. To me, Hajime's story just stood out as being that good, despite the crippling weakness of having used up half the season on the 'buildup arc' that is the content of the first LN. However, I wasn't anticipating just how high in quality the web novel version would be. To be blunt, Ryo Shirakome is one of those rare Japanese writers who really is as good as the hype and has a very obvious love of the material he is writing. More importantly, he is very consistent with how he portrays his characters and their growth. Story Intro For those unfamiliar with this series, it focuses on Nagumo Hajime, a young man summoned with his class to another world, only to turn out to be the overall weakest of the group and in possession of a class that is both common and unsuited for battle. In the beginning, Hajime is a kind-hearted, pacifistic young man with a great deal of courage (and enough of an otaku that it survives all his travails) but no standout abilities. However, when delving into the depths of the Orcus Labyrinth, his fellow classmates get caught in a trap and they are all sent to a much lower floor... to face a Behemoth, a monster that is beyond their abilities. Hajime, despite his weakness, manages to help greatly in holding it off, but just as he is about to make his own escape, one of his classmates betrays him, directing a fireball to stray and hit him so that he will fall into the abyss with the Behemoth. He survives the fall only to have his right arm eaten by one of the beasts in the depths in front of his own eyes. In order to survive, he is forced into a corner where his previously kind heart is shattered and reforged in the fires of despair and hatred, reforming him into a man who sees the world in only two colors, those who are enemies and those who are not... and responds to enemies with death. This is further reinforced when he eats a monster and has to endure immense agony as his body is broken and remade again and again, shaving away at his humanity with each cycle, until what remains is only one step short of a true monster. Main Story assessment That's a pretty bare bones prologue for you and essentially covers the content of the first episode of the anime and the first three chapters of the web novel. Oddly, despite the horrific beginnings, this is as much a story about love as it is of hate and killing. Yue, the story's main heroine, is the reason for this. She is also the reason that this didn't turn into just another 'dark anti-hero goes out and gets revenge' story. His meeting with Yue is one of several turning points in Hajime's growth as a character and one of the most well-orchestrated ones I've ever seen (regardless of whether it is the anime or the web novel). Yue is the kindred spirit who helps Hajime stay one step away from the abyss of endless carnage he would otherwise have stepped into. This is despite the fact that she is just as broken as he is, psychologically. The way this story uses the various heroines to help Hajime regain bits and pieces of his humanity is perhaps the most emotionally powerful aspect in retrospect. Yue helps him stop short of losing his humanity, Shia (the bunny-girl) stops Yue and Hajime from becoming completely isolated from the rest of the world, Aiko reminds him of what it is to be human, and Kaori reconnects him to his past, solidifying his reasons for his journey. Without all of these heroines, it is likely this story would not have been nearly as powerful, as Hajime's journey would have probably just been a series of 'kill this, kill that, have sex with Yue, kill more'. I didn't mention Tio, Shizuku and Myuu in the previous paragraph because they serve slightly different roles from the other girls. Tio is pretty much just comedy relief as a character, despite being as in love with Hajime and the other girls. Shizuku is, surprisingly, the most 'normal' girl in the group and the one who serves as the most solid connection between the self-isolating harem of girls who are mostly disinterested in anything other than Hajime (with Aiko being the exception, given her sense of duty to her students). Myuu... well lets just say Myuu's role is fairly similar to Yue's, except that she awakens Hajime's obsessively protective instincts that come to define him later on. The story itself is dark and brutal despite the frequent humorous interactions between the characters. This is inevitable, as the world of Tortus is a world ruled by an insane god whose greatest pleasure lies in ruining the lives of his slaves. There are a lot of hugely powerful battle scenes, crazy plot twists, and hilarious results of Hajime's trip through Tortus. The ending of the main story (which will probably be published sometime next year in the LNs) is as hugely dramatic as the beginning. After Story Assessment The After Story, which is still ongoing, is HUGE. It is almost as big as the main story, but it is told in non-chronological order as a bunch of arcs and one-off postings rather than in order. Despite this, the After Story has provided me with probably fifty times as many laughs as the main story did. Part of this is because what trials and tribulations that occur are mostly overcome by Hajime's already beyond-divine power gained during the main story or the power of his OP friends, wives, allies, and classmates. Whether it is Myuu attracting UMAs, demons, ghosts, and youkai like a bug lamp attracts flies or Kousuke falling deeper into the chuuni abyss as he builds his accidental harem in Hajime's service, I haven't stopped laughing in weeks. Of course, there are some deadly serious points, perhaps the most powerful of which are the stories involving Kouki, who struggles with the after-effects of his time on Tortus more than anybody else (for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has already read the existing LNs or the main story of the web novel). However, even in these, Shirokome does an excellent job of keeping the balance from taking you too far into grimdark to truly enjoy. Overall assessment up to the present Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou does great at every aspect of what I want from this kind of story. It has great feels, it has great comedy, it has awesome characters, and its plot is close to sublime. More importantly, it is put together in such a way that all the elements enhance one another nearly to perfection. If you like isekai with a wide dark streak that can make fun of itself, this is an excellent choice.

Sadly while FAKKU does have a page for it, it is not available for purchase at all so there is probably no place to buy it now.

Well Newton VN wasn't picked up by any company, and as for the news in regard of Sol Press there's one. Namely that they've been avoiding paid the tax so that the company has been suspended to do the business (The Reddit page for more information). As for the remaining licenses, there's a rumor that it'll be sold to pay off the creditors although obviously it's still unknown whether the rumor is true or not. That said though, there's Fakku store if one want to buy Newton VN.

Oof. I've been relatively out of the loop, so while I knew Sol Press wasn't really functioning I didn't even realise their licenses to sell the things they translated may be at stake. In fact, this just serves to remind me of the Nukitashi limbo and go

I don't think so. Not yet, at least. I'm not sure how American laws work, but I wonder if it's even possible to pick it up from them without completely retranslating everything? It definitely would be possible if they went bankrupt, but they decided not to pay taxes instead, and right now they aren't allowed to any type of business, as far as I know.

Once more hath I created a new tool. This one is not so big as previous ones, but still very important. There is Silky Engine, on which where are many interesting visual novels. Some time ago I hath created a script editing tool for it's mes scripts and wrote an article of it... And all the time I through there were good enough tools for it. But I checked and... Some tools can just extract data from it, other (some tool from regonme) can pack, but, alas, without compressing files per LZSS implementation, used in Silky Engine. Therefore files was getting too big and there was no method to create actually normal enough Silky's arc archives. But that time hath come to the end. I hath tested this LZSS implementation and created SilkyArcTool, by using which thou can both extract and pack Silky archives, using this LZSS compression algorithm (I hath implemented not only decompression, as in many tools, but also a compression algorithm). Therefore Silky Engine's (and Ai6WIN/Ai5WIN's (probably) .arc archives has fallen completely. === Updated: AI6WIN (and probably AI5WIN) .arc not supported. Still I have already hacked AI6WIN .arc archives, so tool will be released soon.

frankly, i feel it would have been swell had they worked Multi (from TH1) into TH2. i understand that TH2 takes place many years after TH1, but since Multi is an Android, it would have been very much feasible for her to still be at the same school, -perhaps aged-up to her middle-teens or so in some previous upgrade even- still up to her usual school housekeeping, and befriending TH2's main cast along the way. Personally, i feel it would have been a profoundly warm and intimate way of tying the two entries tightly together, but... i suppose that's just me. oh well, i can always pretend such a thing was Canonical; not to be left out, Ruuko-chan enjoys some "OBITSU-Upgrade-Love" as well;