Nozomanu Fushi no Boukensha (The Unwanted Immortal Adventurer)

  I can't say that The Unwanted Undead Adventurer is not fun, or addictive, or that I didn't watch the first four episodes of the anime and then read all the manga till chapter 59. Because I did. That being said, it felt like hentai! This guy wants to be an adventurer, which is exactly what it sounds like, a computer game "career" that involves going to mysterious dungeons and fighting and killing monsters to increase in level. However, he meets a dragon who eats him and poops him as a skeleton. Only a skeleton that can use three methods of magic and can increase in level like a motherfucker. He reaches unfathomable levels of skill in days which he failed to do as a human in ten years. And as he does that he evolves into higher level monsters.

  An interesting premise, which I hoped would reveal some sort of kinship with the creatures he mindlessly killed as a fascist adventurer and so a dilemma that can only be solved by character development, but no, he just keeps killing "monsters", gets more and more female loli allies while he gains more skills and meets more and more outlandish characters which are either fully fledged good guys and allies or bad manipulative rich enemies and nothing in between.

  I guess it is a product of this era, where people write literature and manga from the only life experience they have: other manga, TV, movies and computer games. And since movies and TV series are increasingly idiotic and losing market share to the more addictive computer games, I guess those win. And here it is: a story which is no story at all, with heroes that increase in "level" but don't evolve at all as characters and with rules that are followed as tight as a Japanese accountant's anus.

  Such a disappointment, since the story started so fun and, even if it were rooted in MMORPG mechanics, could have evolved (pardon the pun) into an interesting satire. Alas, it goes on as deadpan as it started, taking itself seriously despite any connection to reality. The characters don't behave like people, more like NPCs, the world is completely mechanical and boring once you think about it, and you almost wait for the moment when they introduce the loot box or the pay-to-win articles.