I believe this type of story is large enough that it honestly warrants its own subgenre for now. You know the drill: guy gets isekai’d, guy learns that he’s an NPC type, but oh guess what? Guy “acktually” manages to get some OP cheat skill that pushes him to be more important than the “original main cast” while “trying to blend in as a mob” or some bullshit like that. This story, thankfully, is not it (entirely speaking xD)

The first half really stuck to its guns: Aizawa, our MC, was isekai’d with nothing, and his job in the new world was just to be a reporter. The world around him then unfolded through the lens of field practice. Vaguely medieval European fantasy (that should still die) aside, the story was, for the most part, very much just the typical slow life: we have a reporter doing reporter stuff, but in another world. It’s mundane, it kinda goes nowhere, but that’s funnily enough the charm of it…

Until the second half happened, and heroes started getting into the mix. Now, don’t get me wrong; I both understand the decision to do so (because it would honestly be dumb to just keep a story with low to no stakes lol), and I do in fact enjoy the way the “bigger matters” are handled in this situation. Aizawa doesn’t *suddenly* go on a grand quest or something, what he does is still very much a reporter’s duty: exposing a hero’s scandal is by no means fighting a demon lord. But the problem lies elsewhere, and that is just the time put into this bigger plot.

It took over 50k words for the “big plot point” to be revealed. And unfortunately, said “big plot point” was resolved in the span of 3 chapters, less than 10k, maybe even 5k words. It’s an entirely disproportionate time invested especially when you consider the 50k before of Aizawa just frankly kinda fucking around. Of course, it wasn’t bad: the 50k was to set up a working world, but I’d prefer if the switch to the “bigger plot” actually gets a matching scale to really put some weight into it, instead of breezing through as an afterthought due to the time limit of the contest. Hell, it would have been a lot better if this was a 2-volume arc, with the first 55k or so as the setup for the big plot, and the next volume being the real deep dive into the heroes, demons as well as MC leading to the resolution of the matter.

All in all, while it’s still enjoyable, I feel like the story can really benefit from having more words or more time to finish the ideas that it has from the start but never getting to finish properly.