Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Yuri, Gender Bender, Isekai

OP Adventures with a Side of Yuri!

A new week sees a series of new licenses from J-Novel Club. The first of which, Reincarnated as a Gag Character, sets us off on a strong start combining OP characters mixed with a bit of yuri fluff and comedy for flavour.

The story sees Toru Aikawa reincarnated and gender-bent as his joke vrmmo character, Nacht Schlatten into a world that definitely isn’t Real World Online. Pretty accepting of the entire ordeal, he, now she’ll explore this new world crushing bandits, monsters and demons alongside her trusty maid Aisha.

If you couldn’t tell already, this is primarily a comedy series, which I think is done well overall. Alongside the comedy that comes from the reactions to Nacht’s OP abilities, something that is par for the course of this type of story, I think the comedy shines best in the interactions between Nacht and Aisha. There’s instant chemistry between the two and their banter with each other does well to break up some of the more action-heavy and darker moments within the series. This is also helped due to Nacht’s tendency to lack common sense in the world.

When it comes to Nacht, she’s one of the more interesting aspects of the series. After Toru gives in and becomes Nacht in both body and soul, there’s a noticeable personality change. Whilst Nacht usually lacks common sense and spends most of her time doting on Aisha, she does make some interesting, perhaps even controversial choices in the face of tragedy. This includes allowing the new demon lord and her maid to go free even though it may spark a war and forcing someone to live to care for someone else.

Beyond the comedy and characters, there are some surprisingly good battle scenes. The final battle of the volume against the demon army is a specific highlight as not only does it have Nacht at full power but also takes its time to develop Aisha’s magical abilities. Mostly defenceless throughout the first volume, the final battle finally showcases the elf’s abilities – summoning powerful water spirits.

Unfortunately, there is one thing I’ve left out and specifically chosen to talk about last because I think it’s something that the reader needs to be aware of before reading. Your reaction to this will likely rely on your tolerance of the subject and its portrayal within the text. For me, I have little tolerance for it anyway and mixed with the way it’s handled left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

I’m talking about the heavy references to rape and sexual assault that make up a good third of the novel. This, on its own likely, wouldn’t be a point of contention, however, the fact that this series is primarily a comedy and the fact that there is a lot of joking around as both Nacht and Aisha are in an area filled with women who had been raped and tortured feels off and in bad taste.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve read a light novel that wanted to mix rape and comedy and it certainly isn’t the novel to have handled the subject the worst. I think it’s quite a low bar to pass.

Generally, Gag Character makes for a good start to the new series of pre-pub releases from J-Novel Club. It’s pretty fun and manages to handle both slice-of-life and action scenes well. Moreover, the main character stands out from the crowd given her character is unlike most in Light Novels. It does have one, glaring problem, however, which I’ve talked about but thankfully it doesn’t appear again throughout the volume and will hopefully not feature heavily in the second volume.