Marth’s Manga Adventures: Trapped in Fantasy World Edition

This type of story is becoming a lot more common these days, with the main character usually either trapped in a game world or suddenly transported to a fantasy world with many video game powers. Here are a few of the ones I’m reading.

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari

The main character in this series, Naofumi, gets summoned to a fantasy world by a spell that is intended to summon the legendary four heroes to save the world. Each hero is given a legendary weapon, with the Naofumi’s being the shield. The video game tie-in for this series is a bit less important, with some of the characters vaguely remembering a video game that is similar to the fantasy world. This series is more on the serious side when it comes to these kinds of stories, with the focus mostly being on the judgment of society and things like betrayal. I’ve found it pretty interesting so far, but the new chapters come out monthly, so there aren’t that many chapters. I guess I just find the concept of discovering the uses of the weaker class interesting.

The New Gate

This series follows the more common video game theme. The main character, Shin, defeats the final boss of a game and finds himself transported to the future world of that game. It’s an interesting series that dives deeper into the NPC perspective of the player characters in a video game, but it’s another series that has infrequent releases. Most of the story seems to be Shin trying to find his place in this world…exploring and such. I have trouble seeing the direction of the series, though…what exactly is the end goal for Shin? Most of the chapters don’t really show a desperation for finding his home. I feel like this series mirrors Log Horizon in many ways.

Isekai de “Kuro no Iyashi Te” tte Yobarete Imasu  (In Another World, I Am Called the Black Healer)

This series is a newer one that I’m still evaluating. The main character, Kanzaki Misuzu, is suddenly dragged into a fantasy world one day as she’s walking home. With fairly little explanation, Misuzu finds herself trapped in this world with a video game-like interface as a mage of some sort. The series is still acclimating Misuzu to the world, so it’s hard to say for sure whether it’s going to continue to be interesting, but I’m sticking with it for now. I’m mostly curious what the limitations of her new powers are, since she seems to be able to cast whatever spell she wants. They are hinted at in the latest chapter (chapter 4) as some sort of backlash when she runs out of MP. Anyway, the series takes a different spin with a female protagonist…though I have to say that casting her as a healer is still pretty stereotypical.