Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the Strongest Fortified City Vol. 1 - God-awful writing. Here's an example from the prologue: “Esparda and Till, the butler and your maid, have been coming to me to gush about your progress for some time now.” That's one brother saying this to the other. Why exactly would Brother A need to point out who Esparda and Till are to Brother B when talking about B's own butler and maid? It's amateurish exposition writing. Once the exposition is out of the way it gets entertaining enough, so it’s not all bad. There are some more nitpicks I have, like some plot threads being set up but seemingly just forgotten half a chapter later, but I reserve my opinion on those until the next volume. Maybe it’s just setup for later, even though the rest of the writing doesn’t seem to have much forethought. Every hurdle that gets introduced gets resolved in the same chapter. - 4/10
Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me the Strongest Volume 3 - The strange fluctuating power dynamics are continuing from the last volume. The whole magic-stone-eating schtick seems to be mostly forgotten as well. Guess the author didn't really think further ahead than the first two volumes when naming the series. The plot structure is also terribly predictable. Imagine a mystery movie where a murdered person is found by the detective and their sidekick. The very next moment there is a haughty noble introduced to the scene by having the noble gabbing sidekick's boobs and spitting on the detective for being a commoner. Then add one hour of pointless filler just to have the detective get some deus-ex-machina epiphany about how it was the haughty noble all along at the end. It's that type of plot. - 4/10
Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for my Retirement 3 - More FUNA. Everything by FUNA is really the same but I find it entertaining enough when going at it with the right mindset. - 6/10