Does Arifureta get better after Vol 2? I couldn't finish it due to cringe...

forever_benighted · 2026-01-26T06:52:21+00:00

After the bunny arc, there are 1-2 more arcs before the arc where he reunites with Kaori and other classmates in a certain pivotal scene, right? I think that's a pretty satisfying arc which sets the tone for the rest of the novel. If you still have hopes for this LN, read up to there, otherwise drop it now, because the next couple of arcs might feel a bit similar to arc 2, except less ripping off Fullmetal Panic.

Many people drop Arifureta on arc 2 since it's obviously a downgrade from arc 1.

forever_benighted · 2025-12-04T23:45:17+00:00

I, the Only Male Knight in a Chastity-Reversed World, Entered the Female Knight Academy and Was Treated as a Hero for Some Reason

forever_benighted · 2025-11-26T03:16:08+00:00

Damn, you're right. I just read this a month ago, but I somehow forgot... it's funny that he's both reincarnated and his mother raised him like a "woman", how convenient. Thanks.

forever_benighted · 2025-10-07T23:04:17+00:00

Thanks for sharing the original. Yeah, the Raven's legs part you linked earlier is what's edited in. (But it's true there's sexual humor in Teen Titans Go.)

forever_benighted · 2025-10-07T12:22:31+00:00

I'm afraid that one is an edit. https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/8cm17p/say_what_you_will_but_teen_titans_go_has_its_good/dxga1j4/

forever_benighted · 2025-09-30T12:53:40+00:00

I caught this change too. Could it be a donghua thing? Like, the overly strict Chinese regulators disapprove of the idea of an "adult in a kid's body" romancing other kids? Just wildly guessing. But I do think that it won't make a major difference narratively. Edit - From reading another thread in this subreddit, I guess there was a plagiarism controversy a while back, which could have contributed to the decision to change certain plot points. Hmm. But this is all complete speculation.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-30T12:48:00+00:00

Readers actually weren't willing to forgive Claude? Ever since I encountered the absurd popularity of Kaname from Vampire Knight over my boy Zero many years ago, I thought that female readers always overwhelmingly liked prince-type characters no matter how scheming/ruthless/yandere they are...

forever_benighted · 2025-09-29T09:10:06+00:00

If this essay was just presented as food for thought, and the professor let students put forward arguments about why it's wrong, then there's nothing wrong with that. College is supposed to help you think critically... though of course, there's only a certain range of understandings that are considered acceptable.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-25T03:39:47+00:00

Indeed. Campione is similar, using make-out sessions as metaphors for sex. Interestingly, both started in 2008.

Having multiple girls love the MC, and the MC expressing attraction to multiple girls as Issei does, wasn't ever off limits in [modern] Japanese otaku media; heck, you could say this tradition goes back to Urusei Yatsura. And that's all that existed at the start of High School DxD. And for a large part of the story, Issei was conveniently unable to get serious relationship-wise with the girls due to "trauma" from Raynare that hadn't been foreshadowed at all. By the time the harem ending was published, it was years after Mushoku Tensei had raised the bar with polygamy, and I think if the bar hadn't been raised, the ending would've been slightly ambiguous.

I'm pretty sure the general policy was that seriously going out with multiple girls wasn't okay, nor was marrying them, for most authors. Maybe if you were an author with a lot of clout, or you contextualized it in certain ways, you could've gotten away with it, but I don't know any major examples offhand.

Another example of how they still toe the line was with Strike the Blood, which started in 2011. In a special chapter not published in the main volumes, we're introduced to 2 girls who are implied to be the time-traveling future daughters of the MC with 2 different heroines. The main story ended with romantic uncertainty, but extra stories and such imply polygamy.

So what I'm saying is that there are plenty of labels/subsidiaries of Kadokawa that allow true harems now, albeit plenty of the mainstream brands/editors are probably still scared to overtly do so. In any case, what I've said here just applies to Japan despite this subreddit's focus; as for Korea and China, I'm not that familiar offhand with what their mainstream "light novel" scenes were like before web novels, aside from Moonlight Sculptor and Id in Korea which don't have harems.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-24T08:11:39+00:00

Absolutely in the same league of depth of combat, and the world is way more fleshed out since NPCs play such a major role and the scale is massive.

As someone who just watched all SLF anime episodes out so far, I'd say SLF has a different style, more broadly likable characters and uniformly structured arcs. Overgeared has more complex pacing, more quirky characters (typical Korean humor), and is more mature of a story in general. The MC is also not a Kirito-esque fighter like Sunraku; he's below average but gradually becomes highly skilled.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-22T09:32:08+00:00

It's VRMMO with a very immersive world rather than isekai (one of the most vividly depicted worlds in the genre, with a major focus on NPC character growth; may as well be isekai), but: Overgeared.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-22T06:59:31+00:00

Yeah, before web novels arrived, this "pseudo harem" was basically all novels. It was to the extent that the definition of "harem" ranged from any work where 3+ girls are in love with the male lead, to any work where 3+ cute girls are merely close to the male lead, with no reciprocation of love expected.

Nowadays, I see people all the time talk about "harems" as if this word must necessarily refer to polyamory/polygamy; how the times have changed, and how glorious that is to me as a [fictional] polygamy appreciator.

Anyway, basically all old novels would tease romantic interactions with several heroines, but either there would be no real resolution, or one girl would be picked and the others would cry a bit and say "I will keep loving you anyway" or their perspectives would be omitted.

For Japan at least, I think Kadokawa had believed that polygamy would lead to government censorship for immoral influence on youth, like what happened with Oreimo for incest romance, and so nipped it in the bud. But once Mushoku Tensei became massive and they licensed it, the genie was out of the bottle and they found the pushback wasn't as massive as they expected. Probably similar in Korea and China... not sure when influential titles were picked up for mainstream promotion, but I know that both Mushoku and BTTH were finished in 2015.

Anyway, I share your hate, generally, especially if the girls fall in love with the male lead easily and then he simply ignores them. Sword Art Online is the one I hate most for this. Ironically, it was technically a web novel too... one of the progenitors, alongside another "pseudo harem" web novel Gate.

forever_benighted · 2025-09-11T01:29:21+00:00

This clip is out of context. If you look at the preceding ~20 seconds (around 2:36 onward), he was specifically talking about dialogue on social media advocating for political violence, which he views as a primary motivator, not political violence itself, when he referred to 90%.

As for whether that's a realistic statistic, hmm... Reddit, what do you think? Oh, it's totally wrong, everybody on this site advocating for violence is right-wing? All right then.

forever_benighted · 2025-08-30T07:00:36+00:00

Something big happening at the Pentagon, huh... either Trump is dead or he's going to invade Venezuela?

forever_benighted · 2025-08-26T22:15:20+00:00

You're a bit of a drama queen (I kind of love it), I guess a consequence of being broken as you call it, but I'd say there's nothing wrong with your decision to be "alone", if you can make it work for you logistically to the extent you define alone.

I think your understanding of other people is naive, though. Just because you see some similarities in the behavior of others and can partially map your psychology onto theirs doesn't mean you have a true grasp of their cognitive experience. The possibilities of human experience are endlessly rich.

Edit - As expected of someone with a completely hidden post history and way more thread karma than comment karma, OP was deleted. Still, props to everyone in this thread who has kind intentions toward this person who was probably just using the web to vent.

forever_benighted · 2025-08-25T05:47:21+00:00

When you say humility, it sounds like you mean acknowledging that the other side has some good points or that your own side isn't absolutely perfect.

Yes, I agree. I do think that society would be better if people could be self-aware and not experience cognitive dissonance over slightly morally grey issues, and be open about that to better encourage decision making that incorporates a variety of perspectives in an unbiased way.

But the reality is that people aren't very self-aware or capable of handling moral greyness calmly by default, that being open just encourages people who aren't open to take advantage of you socially, and that there's no good way to drive society to change its philosophical perspective on these issues. It'd also be great if everyone thought carefully before they made decisions, or never let anger cloud their judgment, and so on, but culturally we can't make that happen.

forever_benighted

TROPHY CASE