RE:WRITE

There are two stories here. The first one is as the premise suggests: a subversion of the standard tale about an overpowered protagonist and his crazy antics. The twist is that the protagonist, Kai, is actually driven to despair by his abilities, as he realizes the full implications of unlimited power. The second one is a somewhat typical but charming story following a party of misfits: Kai, the Hero, a goddess and the Demon Lord himself. As they travel around the world with their own completely different objectives, they develop unexpected bonds and grow as people.

These stories could work on their own, but they end up ruining each other when stitched together like they have been here. It's hard to get much satisfaction or closure because, as soon as you get invested into a storyline, the plot changes gears and prevents any further development. I’d like to say that it's analogous to sandwiching multiple different works of philosophy and fantasy together and hoping for the best, but that's not an analogy. It's exactly how the plot works.

Let's talk about the first storyline. It's what we came here for in the first place, right? We want to sit in Kai's shoes and understand how everything ends up so tragically. Sadly, only the first and the last few chapters are dedicated to it. We spend the rest of the story mostly unaware of Kai's perspective. The guy becomes a side character, with no development whatsoever. We're also clueless about the full extent of his powers and motivations, making him increasingly hard to understand and sympathize with.

Only at the very end do we get a full explanation of Kai's abilities and actions, but it feels like a massive info-dump that we should have actually experienced rather than being told about. It leaves so many questions unanswered, so many ramifications unexplored... Alas, rather than focusing on this storyline and the philosophical aspects of it, the bulk of the plot consists of all sorts of arcs with unrelated themes and characters.

The sad thing is that, as I said before, the second storyline is actually quite charming and would work on its own. It would, if it weren't for Kai; or rather, our incomplete knowledge about Kai. See, he would serve his role in the party as a guide/mentor/trickster even better if we as readers were also completely clueless about him. Complete transparency would work as well, since we would know where he stands from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the story picks the middle ground, leaving a lot of mysteries about Kai unanswered until the end. Rather than making the reader feel intrigued, this becomes a source of frustration. We have no idea why he does or doesn’t do certain things, nor can we judge whether he’s right or not; there’s not enough information. As a result, the pain, struggles and doubts of the other characters feel like a joke when we know that Kai is around to fix everything, but for some reason doesn’t. Plus, Kai’s advice can sound hypocritical and shallow coming from him, so any character development seems to be built on top of lies.

I would love to talk about the specifics of characters, arcs and philosophical discussions, but the story renders everything ultimately pointless by not developing its storylines to their fullest. That’s a shame, as the author is obviously competent with words and knows how to write interesting characters. Sadly, he wasn’t able to bring it all together to tell a coherent story this time, but I hope to see more from this author in the future.

This was/is the first story I've read on RoyalRoad. I only discovered it through chance when I was reading through Isekai novel reccomendations. I'm extremely glad I did find it, though. I'm by no means an amazing writer, or reader, but I do highly reccomend this book to others. 

I understand that the plot points may have been messy to some, but the book just had such charm, that I read it in 2 days, and couldn't take my eyes off the page the whole time. As for the characters. They were written really well. Kai, Amy, all of them. I felt Kai's words also. It was a tear jerker. I actually cried.

Thank you for the work of art, WhoCares! I look forward to reading more of your content in future!

I can't believe I haven't found this before. It's so damn good! But there's one thing I'm happy about: I can binge read the whole thing! Don't have to wait for crap. 

Anyhow, this is a GREAT story! I really, REALLY love it! A lot of people complain about all the different POV's at first, but afterwards, you guys will understand why it's there. Anyhow, all I need to say is that you must read it. 

(Review as of chapter 28)

Style: The author is very good at expressing himself and only rarely makes awkward phrases, causing the story to flow well. It expresses most situations fittingly and the wide range of vocabulary doesn't leave anything to complain about.

The many PoVs tend to leave questions open, but they are mostly asnwered in the next few chapters after that. Aside from that, I think that the story would be worse without it since they complement each other quite well.

Story: As of chapter 28, the story can be considered to have only started. The author's love for leaving hints so subtle that no one will notize tends to irk me, but all in all it looks very promising.

There are many hints that point towards a somewhat tragic story, but right now there is still quite a slice-of-lifeish feeling, which fits the incredible abilities of the MC quite well.

Grammar: The grammar is impeccable and doesn't hinder the reading experience at all. I've yet to notice any grave grammatical errors and expect none to come in the future.

Characters: The four main characters who tell the story all  have their own distincite personality that enables one to ascertain whose perspective it is even without reading the chapter title.

They are well fleshed out and their actions quite consistent, changing a little with every interaction they have with each other.

The side characters are surprisingly well made with many having their own background stories; even villains. The amount of detail the author puts into this is stunning and I look forward to the next one that is going to be introduced.

This review was done for a swap. After reading 33 chapters, I believe I have a good enough feel for this story to write about it. There will be some spoilers in the “Story” and “Characters” sections of the review, so consider yourself warned.

Style:

This fiction makes use of both third person and multiple first person narration. The first 6 chapters establish “I” as the character Kai, so it’s a little jarring to suddenly read “I” in relation to other characters. I assume this is done to bring the reader closer to the other POV characters, but I can’t help but feel like your style would be much stronger if you stuck to third person, or at least limited your use of “I” to only Kai.

As a multi-perspective story, there is bound to be overlap with the characters. However, it’s important to remember to avoid retreading the same ground too much. For example, chapters 15, 16, and 17 all contain the same scene. These chapters may be from different perspectives, but not enough is different between them to really justify reading the same events three times.

The author has a bad habit of using the same words over and over in close proximity. The second paragraph of the prologue uses the word “red” 6 times, for example. This is occasionally used for emphasis like in chapter 9, but I got the feeling that this was unintentional in most other cases. The description of locations is sometimes lacking, leaving me at a loss for where the characters actually are. It is also sometimes hard to tell who is speaking in later chapters.

(Sort of a side note, but I really think you should remove the “hehe” at the end of chapter 3. It ruins the mood of an otherwise emotional chapter.)

Story:

The premise is really interesting, and the author skillfully dodges a problem a lot of these kinds of stories have. Namely, when the character that is transported adjusts and accepts things too quickly. In Kai’s case, this is totally sidestepped. Kai summons himself to Erath (a video game world), and he adjusts quickly because it’s a world he created himself. I was very impressed with this as it allowed the story to move quickly early on while still keeping my suspension of disbelief in check. However, while this pitfall is dodged with Kai, the author unfortunately falls into it with Lily and Runir. (But I’ll get into that in the characters section)

From here, there’s a lot of promise. Erath isn’t static. On the contrary, the world has taken on a life of its own, with the NPCs creating their own culture, expanding cities, and waging war. I loved little details like the people of Erath thinking it’s rude to look at other people’s status without asking. The individual abilities for each of the NPCs are a stroke of genius, with everything from hilarious ones like Divine Ironing to tragic ones like Ripen that affect people their entire lives.

Kai has infinite power in this world and is able to remove people and enemies from existence as well as bring them back from the dead. Initially, he seems excited about the prospect of having all of these powers, but reality quickly sets in when he realizes what being able to do this means. However, after chapter 6, this plotline is put on hold until around chapter 18. When Kai returns, he’s undergone development offscreen that I really wanted to see. Kai created this world, but does he have the right to kill people in it? To bring them back? To be its god? These questions are still being explored later in the story, but I feel like I missed important steps on his journey. In some ways, I wonder if the author was worried that Kai wouldn’t be an interesting character long term, since he has no reason to actually fight anyone. I hope this isn’t the case. There are many interesting question left for what Kai’s power means for him. For example, what does it mean to have absolute power and choose not to use it?

The author sets a tone of tragedy pretty early on, but these sad moments sometimes come off as a little forced. More build up to each of them would probably solve this issue.

After the other POVs are introduced, the story begins to start losing focus. A hero and a demon lord are summoned from our world, and the tone is all over the place. Chapter 12 honestly felt like a run-of-the-mill OP story, which is really at odds with what was established before it. It’s not long before any potential hero/demon lord conflict is rendered meaningless. Neither Lily or Runir seem particularly interested in going back to their world, either. When I stopped after chapter 33, I felt like I didn’t know what any of the characters wanted to accomplish.

Grammar:

Overall, the grammar is quite good other than the occasional missing comma. Nothing that pulled me out of the story.

Characters:

I’ve decided to talk about each POV character individually:

Kai:

As I discussed before, there are a lot of interesting implications for the powers he gives himself, and he is mostly likable as a protagonist. Early on in the story, you have access to all of his thoughts. However, our access to his thought processes are limited later in the story, even in his own POV. I understand that you’re using him as a way to set up conflict, and therefore you want to keep some of this thoughts from us for dramatic effect, but I wasn’t really a fan of this.

Ignis:

She’s a goddess, but has issues with her anger. After losing her surrogate brother and sister, she spends around 900 years grieving. I personally don’t have any problem with this, but I was a little confused by how someone that should be so jaded became almost childishly attached to Lily. Not to mention that the beginning of her relation with Lily all happened offscreen, so we have no way of knowing what went through her mind during that time.

Runir:

Runir’s difficult to figure out. He’s established as a smug loner that doesn’t talk to anyone. He thinks very highly of himself, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume he thinks of himself as superior to others. He adjusts and accepts the fact that he’s in a game world almost immediately, and quickly decides that he will carry out his duties as the demon lord. All of this points to him being sociopathic with him even being willing to kill the hero, another person from his world, who he has never met. He’s thinking of this like a game, despite it being much more than that. But then he does a total 180 and starts to care about Lily out of nowhere. If this was built up over a long period of time, I might be able to get behind it. However, as it is now, it seems totally out of character and makes me unsure of what his personality is supposed to be. What is his goal?

I also don’t understand how he doesn’t know who Kai is. After all, he is a big fan of all of his games, and he even thinks about Kai before he’s sent to Erath. Kai doesn’t use a fake name, so why wouldn’t he recognize him right away? It’s not every day that you meet someone named “Kai” in a world modeled after a video game created by someone also named “Kai”.

Lily:

Like Runir, Lily accepts Erath too quickly. This acceptance might have come during her training from the Light Kingdom, but it all happens offscreen. Fortunately, she is generally likable. She’s had a rough childhood and understandably, she seems to be focused on her own well being above the well being of others when she’s first introduced. She steals, but also has a limit to the injustice she allows to go on around her.

What she lacks is any real motivations in the story. Initially, I thought that her story might be one of self realization. Early on, she fights with an ogre. When she manages to do some damage to it with a powerful attack, her first thought is to get away as quickly as possible. This is something she can do because she has no one she has to protect. I was hoping that as she started being pulled into more and more situations in which she had to think of other people besides herself, she would come to the realization of what a hero is (and I don’t mean accepting that she has been given the title of “hero” in the game). However, her development has been stalled out. I have no idea what she wants to accomplish.

Conclusion:

All in all, there are a lot of good things going for RE:WRITE, as well as some issues holding it back and keeping it from really exploring its themes. If you’re a fan of stories in which characters are transported into video game worlds, I would recommend that you give this one a chance to see if it’s for you!

First of all I have to disclose that this review is part of a swap. That said I’ll give as honest an opinion as I can. Note the word ‘opinion’, because a review is by nature subjective.

The story is mostly written from multiple first person point of views. I personally abhor this. It’s the main factor behind my being stingy with the style grading. This still didn’t prevent me from reading the 30 chunks published by the time of this review in one go.

As the title of this review states — the story is beautiful. It doesn’t always make sense, and there are a few language errors, and the characters curse like a fishmonger’s wife, but straight through the story a red thread of beauty runs unbroken.

We follow a couple of young people from what seems like our world some undefined twenty to forty years in the future, because the third person we follow is a man with a succesful career behind him. For different reasons they’re moved, possibly reincarnated, into a game world. All of them in youthful bodies. So far the story is pretty standard.

Enter the most overblown case of OP I’ve encountered this far. Why be stronger than anyone in the world when you can rewrite it? And from there on at least one character walks away from anything standard. As far as OP goes both the other characters would normally have fallen into the slot where you put away absurdly powerful characters, but in this story they’re pretty much treated like unruly kids.

Maybe because there is this fourth character who is part of the game. You know, your average goddess, with your average divine powers. She’s obviously no match for mister rewrite, but being a goddess she still runs circles around the other two superpowered characters.

As far as storytelling goes this is primarily a story about a journey. One physical and one of the soul, or in this case souls. The characters grow, all of them, including the main powerhouse.

On any other site I would have graded the grammar as 4.5 but I’ve read too many atrocities on RRL with a reviewed grade five grammar showing that the reviewer only took a cursory glance at the literature used during English lessons. Hence I give it a five here.

I can’t but give a five for the story. Not because the story as such is so fantastic, but because the story about the people in it is absolutely marvelous.

The characters suffer from being given flesh and blood in first person. With a third person approach using the very same words as the story does now I would probably have given a five point character score.

The style is where I dump my lowest score. Hadn’t it been written this well I’d dragged it down to a two or two point five score. I just dislike multiple first person narratives that much. Now it’s so well written that I push it to three point five. Still, if you need to name a chunk in order for me to understand who the POV belongs to, then there is a problem.

So overall a four point five. Apart from you know what, it was a pleasure to read.

Like most fantasy stories it suffers from The Capital Letter Disease, but I’m used to it by now.

By the way, did I mention that I really, really, really dislike multiple first person narratives?

 I just finished rereading this story, over 2 years after it was completed. And if anything, my love for it has only grown.

RE:WRITE is an, interesting story about a world bound by Fate, and a group of people who try to escape his grasp.

But in honesty, to me this seems more of a sub-plot, despite taking up almost 70 chapters of this masterpiece. It's 70 chapters of adventure, learning, and hardship, but you only learn the real story in the end.

RE:WRITE tells to sad tale of a man, who made the greatest mistake of his life.

A man who became God.

Just want to get this out of the way, would have done 5 across the board for grammar if only for the one spelling mistake per chapter, nothing big or anything just i keep spotting one that said.. I'm rambling and ignore this.

Now for the non rambling part. The story..

Well. I can tell you this is origanal as heck, never seen a story like this. It's a very thought provoking story. I won't spoil it or anything but the stories Within The story are really good, and the songs the writer has wrote are also pretty good.

The characters are great, all original and themselves, no carbon copy clones with each perfect grammar and the same way of speaking.

The style of the story is also briliant and i would explain more into this but i'm terrible at that.


Last part. Not a rating or anything, just for people who are looking at the story like "To read or not to read, That is the question". Whelp.. You should read. Is good. Also despite one of the characters appearing OP in a sense he is more limited then a farmer, you will get what i mean as you read.

My first review on RRL. Will add more later when I feel less sleepy.

My style of Reviewing is mostly aiming at the readers, attracting the readers who like this novel while discouraging others from giving it half-a-star.

Style: Although I don't feel anything notable, you can say it's a good thing. I tend to avoid novels whose author plainly write down their work without planning; so this novel is amongst those which were well & thoughtfully planned.

Story: As I put in the Title and repeating the synopsis, OP isn't as nice as you think. Although the MC is ridiculously Overpowered, if you are looking for RRL's average OP MC novel, this is actually Not-For-You.

About the Plot itself, I hasn't see how it would go yet. It's too early to say, and the current chapter is miles (or kilometers) behind the Prologue, so I suggest you shouldn't read the prologue.

Grammar: As a non native English speaker, I dare not say anything about the Grammar. But I can tell you, while reading this novel, I haven't had to read a single sentence twice to understand it.

Character: MC is, as I call it, a Reality Warper, at least in that World. You might think it's awesome to get whatever you wanted, but this novel address the sadistic truth about it.

MC's team is a nice mix of characters with different personalities, background, problems, etc... and the most obvious: they have their own Goals. They aren't bland cannon fodders for the MC's awesomeness but a group of actual living beings.

Overall Score: It's an unique story (as far as I read), and I think this is where I should put the encouragement.

I'm really bad at things like a review but I have to say that this is one of the first books (or fiction, however you'd like to call it) that made me frown over some events of the book for a half day after I've read it.

I can only tell you that this book is very much worth the time and I would even donate some money if I had an acctual PayPal account.

The first 3/4 parts of the whole "fiction" I can only tell are nice, interesting and are really well writen, at the last part (The acctual thing that made me frown upon it for half a day) was for me the best part of a book I've ever read becasue of the emotions I've had. It was the first time that something like this had ever happened to me, not even in movies or some of the series I've had watched made me feel like this.

The characters and the whole story are for me acctually a masterpiece, because I would never be able to write something like that with my stupid mind that can't even imagine something like that (Well it can think something up but it would really be only for me then.) .