Record of Wortenia War

Carreau Dec 28, 2019

5

I'm just going to give my blunt opinion of this one. I read the first 17 chapters a while ago and I forgot about it and had a nice chunk of ten chapters to read before writing this (it releases monthly). From what I remember and the high ranking I gave this before it was a fairly generic start but not in a bad way. A strong main character without any crazy op powers, a willingness to kill an enemy without any hesitation, mc kinda seemed like a battle junkie, cute companions, and a good art style. If you look at my profile, I read a ton of this garbage isekai and wuxia stuff and have quite a high tolerance for writing. And this one you should skip. The writing in the most recent arc (ending at ch24) is so bad that even I can't stomach it. I don't mean bad translation and quality control, I just mean straight up characters go against what is shown to be their core values and concepts for no reason. It remains pretty good for the first 15-17 or so chapters before that arc though. But then the arc where they get dragged into a neighboring kingdom's civil war happens. God the writing in it is so bad. The characters are terrible and inconsistent. The arc left such a bad taste in my mouth while reading it I'm not even gonna put it in my stalled category to try again at some random day. I want this washed from me.  It gets a 5 because the art was still good the whole time and I enjoyed the first 17 chapters. Also the mc never gets bad other than all of sudden becoming really talented about battle tactics and strategy. Said Characters (Also Spoilers up to Ch24):  Elena is ok, and I like the merc combo. The introduction is ninjas was a cool concept but how the major characters of the arc are handled kinda ruins it all. It also all happens very fast and with little action (what seems to be a recurring problem for this particular manga if your looking for a more battle heavy read). Lupis is portrayed as a competent leader at the start but devolves into a girl in love who would throw away her right to the throne and the entire kingdom she is fighting a civil war for to save just Mihail. (Bad writing and tropey) Mihail throws away all his knightly responsibilies and loyalty to the princess to simply try and get revenge against Kyle who betrayed the kingdom (by joining the nobles) in a 10 men vs 5 thousand man charge during scouting after being specifically warned by the mc no fighting. (Makes no sense for a loyal and honorable knight to do in general let alone a high rank one with much value to both the enemy and his allies) Kyle who is shown to be a selfish coward who betrays multiple employeers just to save his ass and then makes a last stand to die while protecting the big bad who is trying to escape. (A big bad who Kyle either directly or indirectly betrayed before out mc group gets there to join the nobles over the princess in the first place) Meltina is just a potato brain. There isn't any real build up or reason for these characters to just randomly have these revelations. No foreshadowing, no nothing. They just all of a sudden flip from a fine functional character to a complete opposite stance because...we need this arc to end quickly...I guess?  None of these are really deal breakers as a stand alone instance in an arc. Most manga's have one or two bad characters an arc, even some where they play a pivotal role. But it felt like everyone who either mattered or had a semi focus on them for being somewhat important for this arc went completely against how they had been portrayed the entire arc by the end. Except Meltina who maintained potato brain all arc and Elena who just did in the end what she said she would in the beginning. That gives me zero faith in the authors writing. It also gives the impression that any decent sized arc or longer would follow the same style of writing full of character decision ass pulls. Even if this ends up being a throw away arc to show off some characters who will become important later, you can't let the main people who exist for just that arc be written this way.

PZcolo Aug 23, 2020

8

The story and world building are coherent and consistent. Story is the classic isekai but the MC is neither a retard nor an unbeatable which is how many isekai go, he's actually an interesting character. I admit his moral facility to kill of the bat is dubious but that is somewhat explained and is after all presented in ch1 so it's an inherent part of the char and not something that contradict what he's been presented as before so I'm ok with it, I actually find it more hard to swallow how good a strategist he is, I don't think the other characters are stupid at all, and there are quite a few crafty ones so I find it more hard to believe that a modern Japan's guy would know so much about war, his fighting skills are explained but there was no mention to him having strategic education along his martial one. Plot wise I find it quite interesting so far thou it's too soon to tell, I particularly like the approach of the MC striving to make his tale and not accepting how the dice rolled, most Isekai would just have the MC tag along with whomever summoned them. Also the progression after his escape make sense and dosn't feel forced. What I don't like is the harem subplot (so far only sub) but at least the women don't just fall for him just because he's the MC. On the other hand, the second arc does have pacing issues and chooses to not getting into details at some parts, for example, when Ryouma wins two certain people to his side, the manga dedicates 1 panel to the event and doesn't explain how he did it, the novel goes about it for several chapters. Just to get an idea, Ryouma's inner dialogues are about 1/4 (if not more) of.the content of this arc in the novel, there is none in the manga. I'm guessing the artist thought it would be too much text and boring for the manga. Like that it changed quite a bit of material which has more weight in the novel and is also less mature. In this fashion it starts to digress from the novel which I don't know if it will be for the better or not. All in all, it's too soon to tell but it's good thus far and looks promising. And after reading the novel I can say it has some good material to work with, thou the novel itself is in a slump right now. The main issue I have with this manga is the very slow release rate.

GAZAYOUTH93X Sep 30, 2023

7

Had potential but fell off the more I read.