Reviews for The Diary of a Middle-Aged Sage's Carefree Life in Another World

I enjoyed the manga of „The Diary of a Middle-Aged Sage's Carefree Life in Another World“ reasonably well and decided to pick up the light novels. Bought all 8 volumes, in fact, which I deeply regret now. Because I dropped the series in the middle of the 4th volume. I am well aware that the author tried to make jokes about close to everything I will mention here, and maybe it is the cultural difference, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone. Foremost, the protagonist is depicted as this all-powerful, battle-hardened OP cheat character, but only if it fits the current circumstances. He isalso a massive homophobe; there are at least two occasions where he meets non-female characters that are seemingly sexually interested in him. His reaction every time is to flee in a wild panic.

When I started the series, I was happy the usual harem, throwing itself at the protagonist for no good reason, was not present. That will change in volume 4, where 2 girls discover their feelings for the protagonist and start almost immediately thinking about marriage. At least they are around the age of 20 years.

To keep up with the tropes, there is an adventurer hunters guild, and the protagonist befriends a 3-member, all-female party. One is a prospective harem member, one is a reincarnator, and the other is a raging pedophile. It is frequently mentioned that she “devours” boys around the age of 12 or 13, so much so that when she is tasked as a security guard on a school excursion into dangerous territory, almost all the boys have to drop out due to “exhaustion.” But it is okay; she is an adult woman who cannot be a sexual predator, and it is therefore funny by definition.

I will not mention all the other side characters here, but every one is a caricature, reduced to one or two traits. The former duke, who handed his position over to his son, is so fixated on his granddaughter that it is heavily implied that he kills potential suitors. The current duke is a philanderer, and besides his two wives, he has another woman by his side when he is depicted.

What really killed the series for me, is the insufferable writing of the author. He constantly info-dumps whenever he can. That can be world-building, internal monologue, or complete conversations between characters. It kills any pacing of the story by semi-related tangents that go nowhere, which I realized by the 2nd volume and started speed-reading and skipping complete paragraphs. By the 3rd volume, I skipped complete sections. So much so that I downgraded the reading time of the volume from approximately 4 hours to 2. Halfway through the 4th volume, I could not take it anymore and dropped it.

This is one of those occasions where the manga adaptation is leagues above the source material.