Do you believe you can change fate?
Creative Staff
Story: Hiro Ainana
Art: Shri
Translation: Jocelyne Allen
What they say
After saving Muyno Barony from disaster, Satou and crew head for dwarf territory and meet a beautiful Oracle Priestess along the way. Though their journeys take them in different directions, fate soon brings them together again…until Satou learns her true destiny.
And with the followers of a demon lord gaining power, Satou will soon face his most dangerous opponent yet…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Death March Raphsody to the Parallel World is an interesting story in that it’s one of the series I can’t figure out if I like or dislike.
Volume 5 beings where volume 4 left off. Satou saved the Muno Barony from a demon attempting to resurrect the Demon Lord, and there was a lot of foreshadowing to let us know that, even though the day was saved, the threat posed by what happened hasn’t truly ended. While I like this kind of foreshadowing, I feel like it was overshadowed by how Satou tries to do everything in secret. For reasons that are never really explained outside of “it would be troublesome if people found out I was an overpowered hero”, Satou doesn’t want anyone knowing about his overpowered, god-like abilities.
I just don’t get it.
It would be one thing if Satou had a legitimate reason for not wanting people to know he’s all-powerful to the point where he’s practically a broken character. However, outside of his comments on how it would bring more trouble, we’re given no reason to explain why he refuses to let others know how powerful he really is. What’s more, Satou claims to be the kind of person who doesn’t like getting involved in troublesome situations that aren’t his problem, but he’s constantly going out of his way to put himself in those situations—thereby contradicting everything he says about himself during his monologues. It’s like the author wanted this character who likes to avoid trouble, only to realize that having a character who avoids trouble would keep his story from being interesting and decided to ignore the way he characterized Satou.
Satou has other problems as a character too, like how he constantly admires the breasts of every woman around him… and then says it’s a good thing he’s not interested in girls old enough to be in middle school. I want to ask him why he stares at their breasts if he’s not interested. Of course, he also says he’s only into older women, but then when an older women who meets his standards finally does come along, he’s not interested in her either for… reasons. His reasons are, again, never really explained. Part of me thinks the author wrote Satou as this bag of romantic contradictions because he doesn’t know how to properly write romance, but I could be reading too far into it.
While Satou himself is a huge problem that made it really hard for me to continue reading at times, I can’t deny that there are a lot of interesting aspects to the series outside of the protagonist. All the characters he travels with are great. I really enjoy his female companions a lot. The dynamics between the characters is fun to read about.
In this volume, we have Satou and his companions traveling to the dwarf capital, and then heading to Gururian, which is another large city that is apparently known for their cakes and red bean paste. The antics of Arisa reach an all-time high, and the others are a constant and joyful presence. Even though I can’t stand how Satou is this supposedly experienced in dating but still dense protagonist who has selective hearing, I at least enjoy how the girls interact with him and each other.
Another interest facet of this series is the creation system. Satou enjoys creating a lot of things, from Kotatsu to mythril swords to holy weapons. I think he spends almost as much time creating stuff as he does traveling. The creation system seems to be what Hiro Ainana spent most of his time detailing. It is a lot more intricate and involved than almost anything else, making Satou’s traveling companions and the actual story seem more like side plots to add flavor.
Of course, this volume isn’t all about traveling and cute slice of life moments in a fantasy world with a would-be inventor. We learn that a woman we meet at the beginning of this volume named Sera is an oracle whose life is in danger. The Wings of Freedom, a group of Demon Lord Worshippers, wants to use her to resurrect the Demon Lord. Even though one plot was foiled in the previous volume, it seems there are multiple plots in the works that are meant for the same purpose—and one of them succeeds.
In Summary
Death March Rhapsody to the Parallel World volume 5 is such a mixture of aspects I find enjoyable and ones I find annoying. There’s a lot that I like such as the slice of life moments, creation system, and world building. However, there are also moments where I just want to smack Satou in the face with an un-oblivious bat so he’ll stop acting so dumb. He’s like an oblivious harem protagonist that the author tried to make not-oblivious, but only succeeded in making him more annoying by keeping to the same harem tropes we find in every light novel series of this nature. Ultimately, while this series is enjoyable, Satou’s continued contradictory nature combined with the overuse of standard harem tropes keeps this series at the level of a mediocre light novel.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: May 22, 2018
MSRP: $14.00
