@Zerio

Yeah, that particular bit about Old World connectors is new information.

As for Katsuya behaving weirdly at the final fight, I think it's him being lost in the network. The others would've been willing to give their lives and I think this impulse overrode Katsuya's own thoughts for a moment after Yumina died.

If a man calling himself the "red light archbishop" invites your child inside his carriage you say NO.

Honestly Eve and especially Zarish being around are making me lose the will to follow this series. Author should focus more on the main couple.

200 Year Curse: MC is a bland OP doofus but the POV of his "pets" is amusing, and his creations taking pity on his incompetence are even more so.

Worthless at Home: I'm expecting his sisters to ruin this for me even more than the ones in Peddler did, but the author is holding off on doing that for now.

Every time I see a new volume is out, I always end up procrastinating until the last minute to read it before it expires. I still enjoy the story. I even like the character introductions, it brings me up to speed so I don't have to keep the characters in my memory. I guess I just like this author's narrative style. It matches what I like about slice of life very much.

@HarmlessDave

Definitely later :)

So I just finished my re-read with the novel now fully released and having given myself a bit of time away from it. Here are some bullet pointed highlights compared to my original thoughts for any interested.

On my initial read I was really critical of the pacing and order of events. With the weekly release schedule it felt like everything took a long time to actually get to the plot and resolve, especially with the MC's habit of going on narrative tangents. On re-read though it isn't nearly as bad as it seemed. The author actually did a really good job of using things like the camping trip to work in character details. The MC struggles to take anything seriously because she just legitimately doesn't feel any of the danger that everyone else feels. As she tells the wannabe knight, in the forest she is at the peak of the food chain.

The author would have helped themselves so much by topping off the Sienna plotline. She is the evil sneaky stepsister but the story totally forgot about her beyond waving a flag occasionally to say "See! She's still here!" I don't think anyone would have wanted a total resolution but simply mentioning in the final chapter if anything at all happened to her or if she was up to anything, even just implying that the brother is now actively suspicious of her. It would have helped a lot!

I could say a lot more but I wanted to point out one amusing thing that I totally missed on the initial readthrough. The books synopsis makes this incident seem like a major deal to the world at large, but if you read the first chapter prolog carefully you'll notice that it only actually says that this is a major deal to the academy with repercussions for the nation.

Oh and unfortunately I'm giving up my pet theory that the first prince is a reincarnated version of her second life's husband. On re-read it's clearly stated that she didn't actually "love" her husband in the traditional sense and instead treated it like her own political marriage. She appreciated the safety and comfort he gave her but with that so clearly stated it wouldn't make sense to have him show back up in this life. Instead I'm guessing that it is just the cliche that she interacted with the prince when they were very young and she showed off magic/intelligence beyond her years making him fall in love with her.

@Sebastien-Lelievre-pbm2m4m

Hello,

Yes, it is already up for pre-order and releases in September

https://j-novel.club/series/the-magic-in-this-other-world-is-too-far-behind?buy=volume-10

@shiratori-keira said in JNC OLN Contest 2025 Finalists! - Discussion:

I'm just a bit curious about how the judging works. Like, are the judges American or Japanese? From JNC or Kadokawa? Do Kadokawa's editors only read the works that pass to the final round?

We got a bit more information on the judges last year. The initial judges were mostly JNC staff, with Sam himself doing a large amount of reading. But the final judges were Sam, Frog-Kun (aka Kim Morrissy, a long time reviewer and translator for Japanese material and also an author themself), Akiko Fujita (Chief Editor at Kadokawa/Enterbrain) and Carlo Zen (Japanese author whose most known work is Saga of Tanya the Evil). Bookwalker also likely had multiple people from their management committee discussing who got their prize.

Unsure how this has changed this year (probably no Carlo Zen, definitely no Frog-kun) as we didn't have someone taking photos of every slide this year. Maybe once Sam has unwound after the con he'll give us the full presentation with reviewer comments.

Only about halfway through this volume so far, but I find Makina to be the least likable character in this story by far. She knows Yotsuba is dating two other girls but rather than just trying to join as one of her lovers, she wants to kick the other girls down. She's just a homewrecker, and she doesn't belong in the harem.

Finished reading the volume, so far the series is in a kind of limbo where I'm not really looking forward to read it but it's not a chore like Isekai tensei was. We'll see what direction it takes in the next volumes, Allen's promotion and discovery of wind magic seem a good start to make things more interesting. I just wish there was a 3-4 years timeskip because it feels weird every time the story mentions the characters being 12...I wonder if it's meant to be a series aimed at a younger audience.
People mentioned the clever foreshadowing in the title but I want to file a complain for false advertising, I was told swords are up and I got a protagonist who wants to become a mage and fights with a bow.

@Burgerlava Yes, she still remains innocent and outside of fightning strategy, she still remains clueless about human interactions.

Damn I cried for Raielfam Sudra. I know he had it rough but reading it spelled out like this is different. I hope his fortune continues to trend upwards.

Really? The after birth illustration does not include the baby dragon?

Nice job Lay, Misa and the other for being able to minimize the damage done by the solar eclipse. Misa also got a powerup like Eleanor earlier.
Now it's time for Anos to deal with Equis and make him pay for making Sasha and Misha suffer in the next volume.

About the prince's name, i believe the whole pea brained prince thing might have shown up in japanese as robert -> robaato (in romanji) -> rokudemonashi ouji (useless prince) or something to that effect.

Just a guess, since i havent read the source material. Maybe robert is spelled out differently. Fun to speculate about it tho.

I just got around to reading thos volume 's ebook. It is amazing to read some of the stories (like Oswald's) without a week's break in between.
I absolutely loved the translator 's notes which was a nice bonus and also gave a nice comparison to how it is on the original. Thanks a lot to the team for that!

@xdbx Neat idea!

@Hylebos

Woops! I've made that mistake a couple times when I read multiple volumes in the same window.