Sep 14, 2025
Thought we were getting an Arwain cameo with that intro line. Now that the story's over, time for my thoughts. Unlike other stories, isekai and fantasy are often a mixed bag for me. Even though I tend to watch shows from the genre, I often find most don't resonate with me. Thus, I feel I'm not the greatest expert when it comes to judging isekai, but one thing I can do is compare this to your previous works.
Tentacled would be the best example as like this, it's an isekai. Unlike with this one, I felt more engagement and connection with Tentacled, to the point where I felt disappointed when Maribell and Snazzy reached their end goal so soon as I wanted to see more of that world, see more adventure. Here, I feel the story feels more like a typical isekai, and concludes in a satisfactory way, but not a way that makes me frantically clamor for more content like with Tentacled.
Nothing wrong with it having a more generic feel, but it doesn't quite stand out as something special like Youjo senki, Eminence in shadow, or Re:Zero do for me. I feel most of this lies with the fact that we don't get to fully see Gideon's struggles, with the focus being more on Roze. Again, nothing wrong with this, but it does feel like the story leans a bit too heavily into being a typical isekai, in other words, playing it safe. If anything, this feels more similar to Summoned to Another World... Again? or Groundhog Day in the sense that Gideon, like Setsu, has "seen it all and knows how to handle it. We essentially get the perfect run, which while it does make a good story, seeing some of the failures and Gideon's struggles of having to go back and do everything again, maybe even at times losing his sanity and just going evil route like with what we see in Groundhog Day would have made this story stand out far better to me.
Nonetheless, even though the story doesn't quite standout as something in a class of it's own, I feel that it'd have no problem being adapted into a 12 or 13 episode anime. Not to mention, you made a significant improvement from your last contest entry, that being Jake from State Farm doesn't hijack the screen time from the main characters at all. Not to mention, Tentacled, which I feel is your best work second only to Grace 1, is getting an official publication which is a win for all of us in my opinion.
I guess I'll close things out by saying that while I did have some gripes with it, the story is by no means bad or poorly written, just a bit too in-line with the average isekai which fails to make it stand out as the next big thing. Congratulations on finishing and good luck with the contest.
