MC's Identification Skill is actually a good skill like appraisal, but because MC only uses it to find out the opponent's identity, this skill is not very useful for MC, it only becomes a tool for the author to describe the opponent. If we compare the use of skills with the light novel "reincarnated-as-an-aristocrat-with-appraisal-skill" then we will see that MC is very ineffective in using his skills. The author is more busy focusing on describing skills than developing scenes that strengthen the plot of the story.

But I can understand, maybe... more>> the author just wanted to write a story, the issue of whether this story is accepted or not by the readers doesn't seem to be the author's goal.

Until chapter 300 this story is not going anywhere, just MC's daily life and his bullshit.. <<less

Urgggg I can't stand this flood of negative reviews anymore. Seriously I know the story's slow-paced and there're info dumps here and there but it's not THAT bad. Honestly it just makes this story of a former JSDF 45-year-old salaryman that's got a second chance at life more realistic than any other reincarnation light novels full of annoying harem stuff out there. And the info dump things get better as the story progresses.

Get over it then BAMMM you've got this novel with well-developed character'S', clever thought processes, incredible world building,... more>> and lots of emotions!

Edit [29.01.2018]:

Ok I kinda notice that most of those who underrate and complain about this novel are those that haven't even gotten over the first arc in which the MC's still staying at his home, figuring the hell out of his life. There's a HUGE revelation during the dungeon arc, putting seemingly random stuff into the grand scheme of things. It's like drawing little connections over a table of dots. The layers of this story are just that rich!

Unnecessary info dumps? The world building is just massive and REALISTIC (in a fantasy setting). Look around you! Is there a purpose to every single thing happening to you? The MC changes his mind a lot, you say? Well, people change their mind! They don't come up with the best idea ever in one try and stick with it till the end. They come up with tons of them and see what will do. The pace is too slow? It's SLICE OF LIFE, what are you expecting? This novel is not a bowl of instant noodle. Brace yourself because it's gonna be a good long ride.

Seriously this is one of the most underrated stories on Novel Updates. Dark Silencer is a translating god (please be ok DS...). Please don't give this story 1 or 2 stars before getting to the main arc. <<less

Tons of unnecessary descriptions without anything interesting happening. No character development, no plot, no nothing, just dry descriptions of game-like systems that everyone already know in a generic fantasy world. Reads like a shitty version of Mushoku Tensei with JRPG mumbo jumbo slapped on top of it.

The whole chapter 13 is about a magical alarm clock...

A fair rating would be 3.5 - above average. I gave 4.0 because 3.0 is too low. I didn't read this for a long time because the title and the old summary gave the impression that the MC would be one of those OP a**holes. The R-15 and s*aves tags didn't help any. But after I got around to reading it, I found the story to be not bad. IMO, there is some slight resemblance to Mushoku Tensei. It's better in that the MC is more mature, more thoughtful, and... more>> doesn't have Rudeus' creepy borderline pe*ophiliac tendencies. On the downside, Otoko Nara is written in a somewhat dry first-person perspective. In the latest chapters, we even see increasing amounts of stream-of-consciousness text walls, though I don't know how much is due to the author and how much is due to the translator.

Some readers have criticized the MC for not doing more to bring 21st-century civilization and technological progress to his new world. I would counter that the average person does not have enough real knowledge or expertise to re-create even basic Steam Age technology, much less anything more advanced. As for agricultural improvements - how many of you can actually turn a bare plot of land productive even with the help of the internet, google and wikipedia? In Otoko Nara, the MC brought some progress to his village based on his limited background knowledge in a realistic manner.

Readers have also criticized the author for an unrealistic depiction of societies acceptance of the MC's genius. They claim that the MC should have had people accuse him of being demonspawn or some such. Honestly, their complains are nonsensical. This is a fantasy world with magic, beastkin, monsters, a Shinto-like religion with many gods but not much of a presence in the world, and NO demons. Life is hard, the literacy rate is low, the supernatural (magic and gods) is known and a part of common sense, and people face real threats from monsters - they have no need to imagine ghosts and demons, unlike the real world. Furthermore, when the MC forgets to hide his intelligence, he is only around children. The adults only hear of it 2nd-hand, from a bunch of little kids, while dealing with the aftermath of real danger. Even in our world, prodigies are accepted outside of medieval Christian societies. People used words like heaven-sent or touched by the gods to describe such geniuses. <<less

A dreary journal, it states events as matterly facts. To make it worse, there are nothing particularly interesting happened even when the author skipping dates which can ranged from days to years without prior notice. Imagine in the middle of a chapter where nothing happens, suddenly in the next paragraph the timeline jumped 2 years later yet still nothing happen. The author relied too much on exposition, he can go on and on and on endlessly while describing mundane matter that the readers already knows. For example he can spent... more>> half of the chapters explaining RPG status ailments, in the middle of a battle, as if the enemies are waiting for him explaining things and ruining the pace. It's as if the author took the readers as idiots that have to be spoonfeed with obvious explanations. Publisher decided to axe this series at the 4th volume since on later part of the story the pace become extremely slow with too much of characters and the point of view constantly changes. The publisher deemed it's not good enough to resume since it failed to rouse any reader's interest. As free web novel it might work but for published novel having the 3 volume of novel without anything happening will chase readers away. Though the author keep writing the continuation on the Web Novel. <<less

I gave it a 5 star. Because I like good MC build ups.

Some Pointers to keep in mind. If you can answer YES to the following, you MAY like this story.

1. MC is NOT op right off the bat. Development is like a dozen chapters or more before it starts off. If you like this, and can say YES. next one...
2. There is NO harem. If you're ok with this, and can say YES. next one...
3. If you're okay with some info dump regarding technologies that are applicable to early 10th to 11th century civilizations and how the MC can take advantage of his personal knowledge and can say YES. next one.
4. There will be dungeon crawling later. Like lots of it. If you're still able to say YES. continue on...
5. Still Dungeon crawling in the last 100 chapters... Yes? go on...
6. There will be side stories dealing with other characters that May NOT even impact the MC. You may read them or not. If you're ok with stuff like that, say YES.

So if you're ok with the issues above, you'll be like me and enjoy a pleasant story that slowly develops and a character that honestly, isn't a dense idiot. He does come off as smarter than average, wiser than ALOT of reincarnation characters and overall knows his limits and works with it. The translator... more>> is a MONSTER / bakemono with how MUCH he spouts out every week. Hopefully that pace slows down enough that they don't burn out... <<less

It's not too bad, but neither is good. Too much details, I find myself skipping most of the chapters after chapter 7.

13 chapters and still 1 year old, and all the MC does is spamming his "Identify" spell. So at the start he dies, and reincarnates. The MC is not familiar with RPGs and similar concepts, so you'll have to learn with him every little thing. Characters are one dimensional, they take for granted that he is a genius. I mean if I were in a world where most of... more>> the people aren't able to read and my son was able to fluently talk when so young I would suspect him to be a monster. Especially so when he can do mental math and problem solving that some children in their teen wouldn't be able to do even in this age.

Not much to add, the translation is good but the story doesn't go anywhere. Don't really recommend it. <<less

Really good, in a relaxed way.

The main character isn't a "fake" adult like many other reincarnation stories, as they usually behave like teenagers while supposed to be dead as adult. Actually he reminds me of a less powerful Satou from Death March.

You also feel family love, and side characters are properly developed, some of them being reasonably powerful.

... more>> BTW there is NO romance (for now as of c66) for the main character, though there is between side characters.

The only con I have are the somewhat long technical explanations he sometime does, that I usually pass on by reading diagonally. And that DUMB yen conversion too. <<less

The 'game system' of the world is developed poorly. Noone in the world realized that practicing magic from a young age can increase your mana pool significantly, but our MC did because he's such a special snowflake. People don't till their fields with animals, they do it by hand because of reasons. Apparently Rubber can be found, developed and mass produced by someone jsdf-turned-salaryman. Unecessary explanations about anything and everything litter the novel. Life itself is a grind, nothing profound or interesting about it (kind of defeats the purpose of... more>> having this world in a fantasy setting, don't you think?).

If you like rubber, poorly designed game worlds, lack of plot/progression and incompetent natives then go ahead and give this a go. To be fair though it is slightly better than death march. <<less

Plot:

39 people die in an accident and are reincarnated into a low fantasy medieval world called Orth where dungeons and magic exists. MC is reborn in a low noble house and aspires to make his own country.

- Translation: Readable and consistent. 200+ giant chapters so far, I'm impressed they can stick through translating all the tedium. Very rarely there's some confusing sentences but you're not missing anything with the author's writing style anyway. Many chapters in the middle were pasted with Word Wrap enabled, breaking sentence formatting. Updates are fast.

-... more>> Writing: Worst aspect of the story. 80% of the story seems to consist of the MC's unnecessary, tedious, repetitive internal monologues and infodumps. It kills the story pacing and is solely responsible for the slow story progression. Eg: multiple chapters used to explain the MC learning the Appraisal skill; a skill which exists in practically every isekai story and whose characters would understand the mechanics in a paragraph or two. Or when the MC starts doing pointless math, or explaining the obvious like complex explanations of simple game mechanics, or story recaps, or rambles through the entirety of the MC's paranoid thought processes.

Every so often there's cringey dialogue/narration which seems like a robot trying to write human interaction. Eg: MC's conversations with his family as a baby. Or MC's reaction to the attempted r*pe of Bel; reading his thought process that quickly flips from worldly-wise nonchalant ('sh*t happens, it's a stranger') to blinding righteous rage ('r*pe is the worst thing in the world') is cringe-worthy.

- MC: His character as a former JSDF officer and salary-man isn't believable. The author tries to write it off as his body's age affecting his mind, but it just comes across as an excuse for bad writing.

His defining MC cheat power is discovering that magic training as a child greatly increases mana capacity (ala Mushoku Tensei), so his magic power is comparatively off the charts. He has 2 unique skills, which in normal stories'd usually be the cheat, but here they're not really interesting.

- Characters: They're okay. Nothing memorable that'll make you want to draw fanart about though.

- World building: Generic low fantasy medieval world sparsely populated with monsters and the occasional dungeon. Animal people, elves and dwarves are randomly interspersed within human kingdoms for no apparent reason. Human feudal culture is dominant (caste system, poverty, s*avery, etc). As for tech level, MC introduces rubber as a revolutionary new technology for armor and miscellaneous goods. Magic items so far are limited to appliances (cooking, lighting, etc), or are weak/uninteresting. After leaving his village, MC heads to one of the generic dungeons to fund his future endeavours. World setting doesn't have anything that really stands out.

- Power system: The status system is superficial and unimaginative. Stats don't seem to matter. Skills are few and generic. The unique skills the reincarnees get are boring. The magic system is simple; it's based off the 4 elements (fire/water/earth/wind) and 1 do-all miscellaneous element (healing etc). Later on a D&D spell system is shoe-horned in. Levelling doesn't seem very enticive from a reader's perspective; if this was a game you wouldn't play it.

Recommendation:

Buried under all the useless information lies an okay isekai story. Deliberately identifying and skimming through the word count padding improved my reading experience. I rarely give 1s, but I hate filler/padding and this is full of it. I love RPGs and dungeons so I forced myself to make it up to the dungeon arc (+1 star for me personally), but fundamentally it doesn't change much. So far I haven't really felt the primary fantasy of 'becoming a king.' <<less

I find it kind of amusing that there are people who rate this novel at 1 star aka very bad after having read over 200 chapters (supposedly). Gotta be a real ret*rd to not realize that the novel's not for you after let's say 20 chapters or you have to lack a RL so that you read everything and anything day in and out (which would be even worse than being a ret*rd)...

Well, the story is great and consistent although the author is sometimes rather very descriptive and detailed in... more>> things that don't really matter to the general storyline, but I like such writing style. If you are looking for something that is quick-paced and fast-advancing, this story is definitely not for you.

The author takes his time to develop the character of the MC and those he meets and is prone to divulging in that so that the main story line at times doesn't really advance for 10-20 chapters. Of course there are also times where it advances rather quickly as well though.

I could tell various things which I like about this story but as most aspects are rather subjective anyways, I will just say that I enjoy this story very much and hope for the translator to continue his good work. After all it's one of the few works I follow regularly. :-)

Cheers,

Shasu <<less

The MC is the authors vision of what all smart people think, it even feels as if I'm watching the latest episode of Sherlock.

I can take the severe brain beating of the superior Nipon trope in most novels but when the author starts beating off his own MC about his ingenious mental age it reads like the author is just self inserting as a bitter man who views himself as superior to everyone else but still has to abide to the rules all lightnovels have of praising Japan.

And don't even... more>> get me started on those pure unadulterated edge side stories that are literally the best about this series

Anyway if you desire to exasperate yourself then you can literally skip the first 100 chapters and skim the rest at 1 chapter every 4-5 minutes any longer on a chapter and you'll suffer blackouts and bouts of intense rage <<less

Rubber... Rubber... And more rubber.... That's what I got so far. I wonder if his kingdom is going to be rubber kingdom or something?

Well, that aside, this is a good novel with a very slow pace, detail world, and tons of explanations. A good read when you have so much leisure time..

So unlike the other review I have high hope for this novel, if you always hoped for Rudeos Greyrat (Mushoku Tensei) to build his own Kingdome, this novel is for you, there are even many elements, that give you the same vibe at the start.

The MC is working hard and doing his best, with the body of an infant, acquiring knowledge over magic and the world in general, so spamming "identify" is not the only thing he does and even that identify helps him, in many ways to "manipulate" and... more>> getting important info.

Give this Novel a Try ;) <<less

For me this story is unique,

Personally I want to hate it, the story is slow, MC is strong, smart but never show it to others, and achievement what make him famous, it make bad rumors flowing everywhere.

He is very detailed and patient person, and the story always show that every f*cking time, it making me crazy (and maybe other reader). The craziest thing is the story is slow but it always have the same pace. I never think how the author can make such a boring slow detailed story.... more>> Yes, the story is detailed, you can very much feel what the MC feel, and I must say it very good at that. But the MC although smart and strong is not very fiery and passionate person, he is middle aged kind of thing and always do some mind asking stuff. So that the downside of this, I cant seem to like the MC very much, but I cant say he is wrong, its just the author is too detailed telling all this stuff, making people got bored.

The story itself is quite interesting and plain in a sense, there is no great danger or heroic thing, there is war but normal war, so you cant feel passionate kind of thing in battle. Yes there is many life threatening event but somehow you know the MC will survive, with great deal of plain tactic, no exagrated talent thing.

Maybe the most great about this novel is how the author keep this story going with the same pace and making the reader go crazy by boredom. But I must say he does a good job at this, the chara have dept, the story is unique and realistic, the plot is slow but sometimes interesting. And after you read it more and more you realize it actually a slow pace novel that is quite good, its not great but definitely not tr*sh, its have a good storytelling that most novel dont have, and its make you want to know what happen next to some extend.

I give it 4 cause its a good novel that have anything to become great but somehow the author want to keep the story his way, and it shows in the story, its not tr*sh or very meaningful story, but its a ride to read.

I recommend to read it if you want to follow the story which make many people die from boredom and leave the rest follow just to know the ending, but stop it if you want a great story or passionate story, cause there is not that kind of exiting development in here. The author can make that, but I think he just dont want to make such mainstream story, he just want to write his story. <<less

Well most of these reincarnation stories have a nice start and then things get boring along the way, Not in this novel tough, here things are boring from the very start! As others users already mentioned, the author keeps trying to explain in detail every system in the world, half the chapters is about him talking about menus, colors of the text, how this and that work etc... Apparently he does not have much experience on writing, so I decided to drop this one after struggling with it for a... more>> while. Also the first scene of fighting where usually ppl tend to put some effort to showcase the novel, on this one was quite a lame work, poor writing and a very low story progression make this a Not Recommended Novel. <<less

Some of the side stories are reality checks for this Fantasy world, real heart-breakers for people like me.

Grammar: 2.5/5

Writing: 3/5

... more>> Story: 2.5/5

First, the reason I give this a higher rating than my three systems would indicate is the sense of realism the author was able to give emotionally with his side stories and the feeling of tragedy given with a few of the side stories.

The grammar is about average, quite a few instances of awkward wording/phrasing. The writing is just a little above average, quite slow paced and a bit too redundant in some areas. The story is about average for a fantasy story, but it does lend itself quite well towards a bit of realism as far as fantasy reincarnation stories go.

All-in-all, not the best, but a good read to pass some time. <<less

I've tried, I really, really tried to read this novel. But it's unbearable. When it comes to word diarrhoea, this novel is even worse than the average crappy xianxia - and that should tell you something.

There are chapters you can skip entirely, heck even 5 chapters at a time and you wouldn't lose anything interesting. This author is explaining one thing in 10 different ways and then he makes the MC reminisce another half a chapter about how cool he was in JSDF in his past life and then he... more>> goes back to explaining same bullsh*t rubber production method for another 4 chapters.

Seriously, it's a complete waste of time. And then, there's the flawed combat too. Everyone in the world has a mana points value of a few dozen while the MC has 7000.... yet he still struggles and nearly dies fighting a f*cking bear.

Yea, this is big brain time.

---

I truly don't understand what are all those 4 and 5-star reviews for. This is just bad.., <<less

A very slow paced story. If you are unable to stand reading walls of text because the author goes into extreme details that are sometimes barely relevant, and having the story move at a snails pace, this WN is not for you.

It begins with your typical reborn Japanese MC but eventually slows down and becomes a story where you follow the struggles of a man trying to achieve his goal. The author takes a much more realistic approach to the whole reincarnation thing. While the MC does have an advantage... more>> due to his past knowledge and experiences and from being granted unique skills by God, he is not OP because it was something given to him, but rather, he had to work extremely hard to build his powers. The author makes it clear that a vague understanding of modern technology will not lead to success in the new world, Orth. <<less

One of the greatest under-reared novels on NU. I'll just mention a few things the other comments don't seem to cover or things other comments mention but have a differing opinion from my own.

This novel is written with tons of details. Most of the novels on NU are webnovels. They give very short descriptions like the following: Anna was a dark elf with black hair. That's everything that will ever be mentioned about her looks, well maybe her body figure will be described intensely. This novel doesn't give these types... more>> of condensed descriptions. Some may like these condensed descriptions but most novels you find in the library like to paint pictures using words. That's what this novel does. It describes the characters, world, and scenarios like it's trying to paint you a picture. If you like that sort of thing, then you may like this novel.

The author writing this way seems to annoy some readers. It seems like he is trying to write a web novel like he is writing a real book, but I find it enjoyable. It can seem to drag on if your used to fast passed webnovels were the MC becomes a super human by ch 120 and a god by 240 and then the final supreme god by Ch 360. This author spends a lot of time trying to create the fight scenes. He doesn't describe every fight, but when an intense situation arises you can imagine the scene. You see exactly how the hero is dodging a rampaging bear. It isn't described like: boom MC used the spell inferno 30x to kill the lizard army. So the pace is different but not necessarily a drag to read.

It still has flaws. Like most webnovels there are some weird flaws, the novels may have been appealing if the novels didn't have them. For instance, a reincarnated child overly praised as a genius. We all know he is a 40 year old man, stop praising him author. This is mitigated by how great his siblings are. They are vastly superior to the MC, if you would take away his powers that were given durning reincarnation. This overt worship of the MC comes back again when compared to other reincarnators. The author makes sure the MCs ideas are the best and greatest and that the MC has created the best plan possible for the situation.

Also, there are times when the author gives details to things that doesn't drive the plot. He spends to much time talking about how the MC would react to a sitation that never happens. I think I'll send characters A, B and C to search dirt valley. This is how I'll do it. 10 chapters later, he changes his mind. The descriptions about how guns function or how to wear a rubber suit also seem to be pointless details that have no plot attached to it. It's like the author wanted to paint you a picture but the picture is just wasting time. He doesn't do it often, but it happens occasionally. <<less

It started kind a slow but in the latest chapter its started to pick up its pace. It seems the author started to learn to write properly. It become more interesting because of the main character wisdom and tech knowledge start to described properly.