The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

By the Grace of the Gods

What's It About? 

One day, the life of middle-aged Japanese businessman Ryoma Takebayashi came to a rather sudden and disappointing end. Ryoma had never had a blessed life, but after his death, three great gods sought his cooperation and reincarnated him as a child in another world with swords and magic. Receiving a most cordial and divine welcome from the gods, Ryoma decides to live leisurely on his own in the forest for the time being. Working diligently at magic and hunting, Ryoma's greatest passion comes to be researching his tamed slimes. Training a variety of slimes (some newly discovered), the curtain rises on this easygoing life fantasy celebrating a second life with kind people in another world.

By the Grace of the Gods is based on the light novel written by Roy with original character designs by Ririna, and J-Novel Club is publishing the novels digitally in English. The manga, drawn by Ranran, is licensed by Square Enix Manga & Books, and its first volume will be released this November. An anime adaptation of the series is also currently airing and available for streaming through Funimation.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

The wheel doesn't necessarily need to be reinvented for every story, but there are definitely times when you wish the author had tried just a little harder to make their tale unique. That's the case with the first volume of the manga adaptation of Roy's light novel series By the Grace of the Gods. It's perfectly pleasant and unobjectionable, but…it really isn't a whole lot more than that, and the result is that if you've read more than your fair share of isekai, it can feel a little bland.

This volume, the first half of which is covered by the anime adaptation, is perhaps best summed up as “nice.” Ryoma's first life comes to an ignominious end when he hits his head sneezing in his sleep (I have to think that all the other blows to the head he recounts must have weakened something in there), but it really wasn't all that great to begin with – he was abused as a child by his father and led a remarkably stressful, unhealthy lifestyle as a corporate wage slave in his adulthood. Naturally this means that he's reincarnated as an eight-year-old in a fantasy world with ridiculously high stats in everything by a trio of kindly gods. Ryoma has no idea just how OP he is until he meets a group of wandering wounded nobles, at which point he figures it out and starts to get a little nervous. End book.

None of it is all that remarkable, but it does have a few things to recommend it. I suppose the sheer amount of thought that Roy put into developing the slimes in his story should count towards that, because even if you don't care about slimes at all, there was clearly a LOT of time spent figuring out how they function. Beyond that, however, there's an interesting few pages where the gods who reincarnated Ryoma ponder the cruelties of the gods of Earth, who, they feel, “test” their followers unduly, seemingly more invested in watching them suffer than in rewarding them. (I definitely chuckled a bit when the imagery accompanying this section was a scene from the Passover story.) While it feels a little out of place, as if it's the author talking rather than the characters, it's still a little something different that explains just why Ryoma was chosen for this reincarnation plan. It's also an interesting bit of philosophy, albeit not a particularly deep one, and it works with the idea of the overworked Japanese adult who often shows up in isekai stories being rewarded for their torment at the hands of the head office.

Mostly, though, the manga is just nice: the people are nice, the art is cute and nice, and the intentions of virtually everyone are kind and good and nice. So what's wrong with that? Honestly, so much niceness just gets boring, and this is a very slow story. The plot moves, but it doesn't feel like anything is happening. There are definitely days when that's the kind of story you want to read, but if you're looking for something more out of your manga, you'll probably want to pick up something else.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

About a month ago, I, along with the rest of the preview guide team, panned the first episode of By the Grace of the Gods. I found it unbearably, even oppressively dull in its bland pleasance and compared it to the experience of waiting to be called for your flight in an airport. So, when I opened the first volume of the manga, I wasn't expecting much. To my surprise what I got was, well, still not much, but something infinitely more tolerable.

The biggest difference, which makes it work much better, is the order the events in the story are presented. Instead of starting in media res and then flashing back to Ryoma's terrible life, the manga goes with a more linear approach. The sense of oppression early on, with Ryoma's history of abuse and terrible job, gives way to much greater relief and the feeling that he really does deserve this simple, easy life of caring for slimes in the woods. Being able to read at my own pace, instead of the pace determined by the anime's director and writer, also improved the experience.

Although, “better” still doesn't mean I liked it. It's still quite generic in design and execution, with the kind of zero-conflict, low-tension storytelling that puts me to sleep. Ryoma was a nice man who deserves the world and I'm happy for him that he's getting a second try where things are better. I actually really liked how, unlike many other isekai protagonists, he spared a thought for the people he left behind. No doubt this is an appealing fantasy for people who similarly have had hard lives and work at overly-demanding jobs. It's something to relax to at the end of the day when you actively want to avoid stimulation. That's just not for me.