Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality
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@HarmlessDave thanks for the advice. I deleted the first "spoiler" to be safe, though I think it might have been covered in the second season of the anime. But the iron chef competition really bugged me and it might have also been covered by the synopsis.
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@Folker46 said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
I think the biggest problem is OP MCs who get boring pretty fast because they have no challenges to overcome. I hate Overlord because he's OP, cruel, and generally boring. Give me How not to Summon a Demon Lord or Tanya the Evil any time over Overlord.
The annoying part there is that Ainz's initial arc - stuck in command of an evil force he doesn't really agree with but which is powerful enough to destroy him and whose loyalty he isn't sure of if he doesn't live up/down to their expectations - was fairly interesting. But looking back, the fight with Shalltear in book 3 / season 1 was the high-water mark for Ainz as a character. I don't recall him being challenged by anything after that point, and the dog-kicking just ramps up once he turns on the Re-Estize Kingdom.
Its not immediately obvious how much that hurts the character until a few volumes later (because it spends the next couple of books giving spotlights to some of the guardians), but once the focus goes back to Ainz... yeah, the guy who went out of his way to save an innocent village back in the first book wasn't there anymore.
The funny part is that I recall one of the afterwords (for the novel with the not-adventurers raiding the tomb) talking about how web novel Ainz had actually been more merciful than published Ainz. But the author had asked fans for feedback about how he should handle that arc in the print copy, and apparently, they wanted him to be more vicious...
@Kurzaa said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Average Abilities - My issue starting around volume 10-11 wasn't necessarily with the quality of the work but rather the quantity. The prices of the digital books seemed to jump a dollar or two while the page counts dropped. Plus the stories felt like filler to pocket some more cash.
You got further than me before feeling the story devolved into mostly filler! Though, honestly, I think the filler's higher quality than the main story by this point. Its hard to make a serious plot work with Mile involved... and, honestly, the girls messing around is more entertaining than the diminishing returns from our semi-regular run-ins with the elder dragons...
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/6701/omnibus-builder
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/5745/ascendance-of-a-bookworm-omnibus-editionsThe Primal Desires: Food, Sleep, Sex, StroZero, Hypnotism, and Awayuki Kokorone.
Item Diaria Apothecaria legi debent.
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@kuali It never even occurred to me that the elder dragon thing was even supposed to be the main plot; I thought it was just a recurring thing among Mile's many and varied adventures.
My talking sword has a point. And is also right.
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@Gamen As far as we know, the 'main' plot is about the 'issues' that lead the Gods to abandon the world the series is set on.
It seems to include the strange monsters that were invading through the portal, the ruins left behind by the previous civilization (including the Golems), and the Elder Dragons who appear to be investigating the same issue with their archaeology projects.
Although even including all of those, it comes up so little its more of a framing device than a main plot...
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Arifureta. From great to ridiculous. I loved book 1, but after a couple of books it's like the whole plot fell into the abyss after Hajime. Largest drop in quality.
If it's for my daughter... basically the whole series is great, but the last book deeply disappointed me and ruined the whole thing for me. Because it's only the last book, it's not first place. It's a good second, though. In a nutshell: he saves this adorable girl, who becomes his daughter. Then she grows up, turns into a young adult, becomes demon lord. He becomes her demon minion. Saves her with his/her borrowed powers. In the last book, they marry.
The world's strongest rearguard. Promising book 1, then the story turns more and more about the girls in his (all-girl) party coming to love him or something. It's slowly turning into yet another harem story. The writing quality also drops. The last book went into so much details about 1 fight that it was like reading in slow-motion.
Pressing the 100 million year button. In book 1 it took the protagonist 1 billion years to learn a skill because he has no talent. In book 2 it takes him 100 years to learn a whole bunch of skills. That's not really a drop in quality, but consistency has a quality of it's own, so that's why I mention it here. Because the consistency is off by 7 orders of magnitude.
Private tutor to the duke's daughter. Book one was nice. Helping a distressed girl overcome her problems. And then in book 2 it somehow turns into a menagerie of girls fawning over him. Ugh. That was such a disappointment.
Mapping: the trash-tier skill. The story itself was nice, but... every volume got shorter and shorter, to the extent that I felt that the author cut a novel into 2 and sold them as separate pieces. That's very off-putting, and quantity has a quality of its own so it gets an honorable mention here in the list of quality drop (or rather quantity drop).
A wild last boss arrived. Book 1 was interesting. Then both the enemies and allies became ever more ridiculous. It became unreadable to me. Maybe it was intended for small children or something. It's definitely not for an adult like me. A good writer would make a book interesting for both, though.
Seriei Gensouki. Started nice - the little man becoming strong and saving a girl. Somehow, the story then turned into one about a boy with a huge harem.
I've been killing slimes for 300 years. Started out nice. Then became too full of silly characters and events. Maybe good for children, but not for me, I got lost.
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Actually, I've got a couple to add to this thread.
Walking my Second Path in Life - A nice light comedy starring an utter goofball of a princess cross-dressing as a male squire. Then book 3 comes around, and suddenly its a whirlwind tour of plot points from the much longer web novel that near-completely crowds out the comedic antics that drew the audience in.
Forget being the Villainess, I want to be an Adventurer! Two books that are about 90% fun adventures with an OP main cast. But which don't develop most of the characters from the Otome book the setting was based on. No matter, it was basically just a setting conceit, right? Wrong. Come book 3, suddenly this is the main plot. And most of the side plot we get is the romance between the heroine and the guy who imprinted on her long before she hit puberty. And a significant portion of the climax seems to come right out of the author's....
I'd actually rate Forget being the Villainess as the worse of the two, though. Why? The afterword. Where we find out this was actually the intended length of the series right from the start. Absolutely floored me - before that final part came out, I would have bet the author had been handed one final book and told to wrap everything up :(
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@kuali said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Forget being the Villainess, I want to be an Adventurer! Two books that are about 90% fun adventures with an OP main cast.
Yes, it was a fun story at first, then characters never got their proper development, and the plot went off the rails a bit with sudden shifts into semi-plausible drama from people acting not very bright. Finally an odd, rushed, inconclusive ending,
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@kuali said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
I'd actually rate Forget being the Villainess as the worse of the two, though. Why? The afterword. Where we find out this was actually the intended length of the series right from the start. Absolutely floored me - before that final part came out, I would have bet the author had been handed one final book and told to wrap everything up :(
The series always seemed like an isekai Any% to me. Like, in what other LN does the reincarnated protagonist make it to the
magicknight's academy in the first volume? And then out of it early in the second, and (if I remember correctly) married by the end of the same volume? Each little arc went by extremely quickly too, like the island with a whole quest line full of tasks to do, at which MC arrived, checked a bunch of boxes, and left within a single pre-pub part. Most of these would be relevant somehow later, but didn't last long enough to give enough of an impression that I'd remember them (like all of the friends from the academy).And I didn't really dislike the first two volumes while reading, moment to moment. It was only after each part that I'd go "what exactly is going on here anyway?" and start to lose interest. I did finish it out, being only three volumes, but the "ending" definitely wasn't one to make me appreciate the friends made along the way.
A couple extra gripes:
I don't care if protagonist and her husband were in love in the first timeline or whatever. Him proposing to a, like, six-year-old girl ruins any investment I could possibly have in him or in their relationship, even beyond your standard reincarnation age questionability. Reincarnated Princess also goes 100 percent in on the Reincarnated Younger Girl/Older Guy, but has the decency to not make him romantically into her when she's a child, with her being the initiator in the relationship.
This one's extra minor, but if you're going to bother to ask the question "why does this isekai so perfectly resemble a story from Earth?" at least try to actually answer it. If your answer is "who knows, pretty weird ain't it?" then just don't bring it up in the first place, like 90% of other isekais! Contrast with I Refuse to Be Your Enemy!, which only brings it up with subtle references implying an answer, or Endo and Kobayashi, which gives a great explanation for its game-isekai connection. You can even just skip the isekai entirely like Tearmoon Empire.
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@Lisast said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
This one's extra minor, but if you're going to bother to ask the question "why does this isekai so perfectly resemble a story from Earth?" at least try to actually answer it. If your answer is "who knows, pretty weird ain't it?" then just don't bring it up in the first place, like 90% of other isekais! Contrast with I Refuse to Be Your Enemy!, which only brings it up with subtle references implying an answer, or Endo and Kobayashi, which gives a great explanation for its game-isekai connection. You can even just skip the isekai entirely like Tearmoon Empire.
Nozomu Mochitsuki-sensei: *after being thrown out of the theme park* Well fine! I'll build my own villainess isekai! With time travel! And nobles! In fact, forget the isekai!
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@Lisast I certainly found the route to the knights' academy to be surprisingly fast (though this isn't the only non-school series where the time-to-school is under a novel), but thought it was more that they needed her to break her from the 'plot' quickly to get her into place. Fast-forwarding through the extended prologue? Sure. Plus the bits we're covering were fun enough, even if brief.
Then she's back out of the school at the end of the volume, and... okay, that's also a little fast. But she's going off to be an adventurer, so this is just gonna be an Average Abilities thing where she's out on the road for the rest of the series. That's okay. I'm down for that.
Book 2 continues her life as an adventurer, and the pace is fast, but still, its entertaining enough.
Then she gets married, and Book 3 starts back in on the Villainess plot we'd left behind in the first book, and... yeah, everything fell apart. We hadn't spent long enough with most of the characters for their actions to carry any emotional weight (and honestly, I didn't remember who half the returning characters were), the heroes keep getting hit by cutscene incompetence to make the villains look like a credible threat, and the MC's totally happy married to the creepily possessive guy who'd basically stalked her for a decade while he waited for her to become legal because he's hot and important and has coffee-flavored magic. (Its not quite my least favorite LN relationship, but that's only because Sere has some agency, which means it doesn't sit quite as badly with me as Chelsea and Glenn from I'll Never Set Foot In That House Again did.)
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@kuali said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
the MC's totally happy married to the creepily possessive guy
That was part of my problem with the later volumes of White Cat, along with a spirit disliking the MC for no reason (seriously, never explained at all -- "because author thinks it adds comedy" maybe?), forgiving another obsessive character for causing mass murder....
OK White Cat's Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King's Lap, you're on The List too!
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My initial thought is to list the series that I've dropped, but I realized that some of them were dropped just because I didn't have time to read all of them. That being said, here are some of my choices for "Biggest Nosedive".
- Infinite Dendrogram Sorry, but this story has a quality level that puts a roller coaster to shame. It started with promise, but quickly dropped below Paying to Win in a VRMMO.
- Walking My Second Path in Life Two good volumes, then a collection of drivel culled from the web novel. The author wrote himself into a corner, then wrote a "Contractually Obligated Final Volume". I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bluesteel Blasphemer did the abrupt ending much better.
Pretty much any unfinished story has an implicit drop in quality. (Infinite Stratos and Clockwork Planet immediately come to mind.)
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@Paul-Nebeling said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Infinite Dendrogram Sorry, but this story has a quality level that puts a roller coaster to shame. It started with promise, but quickly dropped below Paying to Win in a VRMMO.
For me it gets much less interesting in the volumes that are devoted entirely to side characters. With one exception, the defending the castle story was classic Dendro.
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@kuali said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
@Lisast I certainly found the route to the knights' academy to be surprisingly fast (though this isn't the only non-school series where the time-to-school is under a novel),
After thinking about it some more, you're totally right that it's not alone in getting to the academy quickly. I was primarily comparing it to more of your classic isekai type, Mushoku Tensei and those in its style like Hell Mode or TRPG, rather than the villainess/otome style which does go to school much faster, like Piggy Duke, Bakarina (in spirit since the first volume's pretty short), Endo and Kobayashi, or Tearmoon Empire. Half of which I even mentioned...
Still was extremely fast into and out of the academy, but that's what I get for not reading over my post one more time.
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@RobD said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Seriei Gensouki. Started nice - the little man becoming strong and saving a girl. Somehow, the story then turned into one about a boy with a huge harem.
This series is good to read in one shot. You get pulled into the story because you want to know what happens next. Then you have to wait for the next book to come out and you realise that you don't want to continue reading the adventures of a hero saving his distressed harem. Which is why I have the latest book on hold until a lot of story builds up. Then I might continue reading it.
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@HarmlessDave Yeah, that was good. It was the eight(?) volumes without ever logging out that hurt it the most in my eyes.
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@saidahgilbert said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
@RobD said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Seriei Gensouki. Started nice - the little man becoming strong and saving a girl. Somehow, the story then turned into one about a boy with a huge harem.
This series is good to read in one shot. You get pulled into the story because you want to know what happens next. Then you have to wait for the next book to come out and you realise that you don't want to continue reading the adventures of a hero saving his distressed harem.
Funny that you mention this, because it's exactly what happened to me.
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@RobD said in Series with the steepest/largest drop in quality:
Pressing the 100 million year button. In book 1 it took the protagonist 1 billion years to learn a skill because he has no talent. In book 2 it takes him 100 years to learn a whole bunch of skills. That's not really a drop in quality, but consistency has a quality of it's own, so that's why I mention it here. Because the consistency is off by 7 orders of magnitude.
I think that's meant to actually be a plot point that'll pay off in the future, (the seal is weakening, bla bla bla) but you're certainly right that it's jarring.
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Semi random, but another thread made me think of
The Npcs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, which is a good candidate for a "Fake dropoff". Vol 2 is in many ways a tough read, and has some really dark stuff, to the point the Author comes in in the afterward and basically says "I know what it looks like, but trust me I have a plan for all this!"Dunno how many readers they lost after 2, but as I said, the quality drop was a fakeout and it ended strong.
Logic is out, Unreasonableness is in!
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@Windsagio Ugghhh, yeah. I’m one of the readers the author lost with that. I read the afterword, too, as well as the opening to volume 3, and still was very much “nope, not doing this to myself”.
Which is extra frustrating just because volume one was one of the best new light novels I had read at the time I read it, no question, but I suspect that’s also why I was so invested in the plot and had such high expectations that I couldn’t move forward with the story when it came to it.
Not a title I was originally associating with the premise of this list, but in the right light, I could see it that way. Either way, your tangent makes total sense to me.
