Wortenia Senki
Record of Wortenia War

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Review Wortenia Senki

Have you ever wondered that the protagonists of LNs tend to be too good for their own? If yes, try Wortenia Senki, to see what I would call a ruthless MC.

That’s not to say that the LN is edgy. In fact, it goes way afar from it. But I will develop it further.
Hey guys, nice to meet you all again. This will be the ... review of Wortenia Senki, a light novel written by Ryouta Hori, and illustrated by bob.

Explaining a bit of the premise, Ryoma Mikoshiba, a 16-year high school student, is suddenly summoned to another world. But, in the real world, his grandfather taught him martial arts and things related to politics and military, so he had a good grasp of this things when he was summoned. And then, he simply shook off his summoners, by killing them.

Yes, a 16 years student killed 4 adults. While you may think it was forced, it was not. In fact, it was really reasonable, considering the context. But yes, this the premise. A guy that is not afraid of killing is summoned to another world, and then the story continues.

“But the story will become edgy? The purpose of it is just to give us readers some gore and that’s it?” NO. Absolutely not. It may fool you, but Wortenia Senki is one of the best LNs that has militarism and politics as it main focus. Comparing to the others kingdom building series or war series, the only one I can think of that rivals it is Youjo Senki, but they go to different directions, which is not the interest here.

Wortenia Senki has one hell of a plot. It is heavily focused on militarism, politics and strategies affairs. If I do say myself, it is very detailed and well thought. Ryouta Hori delves on militarism themes, mingling it with politics, and explaining things in a way that show to us readers the consequences or benefits, and not just tell. He just tells sometimes, I’ll be honest, but, in the end, it’s not a big deal.

We get a lot of politics machinations, with what some nobles and commoners want, to a strategic view of a large-scale war, or some skirmish on a forest. We get an ambush on a mountain, and on the other hand a monster attack. Wortenia Senki has all of these things. So, if you want a LN that goes on militatism and politics affairs, you don’t have to read this review, just go read the LN.

However, there are some flaws with the narrator. There were passages, for example, that we entered in the mind of a noble, to understand why he wasn’t obeying the Queen. We comprehend his motives, and the circumstances that he was put in. It wasn’t told to us. It was shown. And it keeps going throughout the volumes. Each time we jump to a different character, to give us insights on different views.

However, it has some flaws, and, depending on the person, it can affect your experience. The narrator is in third person, but it is not the kind of narrator that is a POV. No, he is an omniscient one, in other words, he knows ALL of the feeling of all the characters in view. Which means that the author makes jumps of POVs, which really, really affects your experience. He kind of improved in the later volumes, but in the beginning was really a hassle.

Like, the scene has 3 different characters, with the 3 of them being enemies to each other. And, while they were negotiating, the narrator, first, shows us the inner thoughts of a character, named X. And then, it jumps to the character Y, and, finally, to the character Z. In the end, you lost the grasp of these characters and you don’t know what each one of them was feeling, and that’s bad! Really bad.

As I said, it improves, but never fades, unfortunately.

Strangely enough, the writing is good. Albeit the prose sometimes becomes iffy in the POV’s jump, the technical level of the writing is high. Above average of the LN’s I’ve read, which is not many, but whatever.

About the pacing, we have another problem. The volumes are too small. They have like 50k words per volume, which, for me, is small. For comparison, a Re:Zero volume has 80k words, and 86 has 70k~80k words. So, yes, Wortenia Senki has small volumes. And the problem lies in the pacing. When the narrative starts to gets good, it is abruptly interrupted by the volume. Many times, there was stops like that, which broke the pacing. If the volumes were larger, like, 2 volumes in 1, it would be sooooo much good.

That’s down to preferences, for sure, but it was a bad thing imo.

Ah, let’s talk about characters. Ah, the characters.

Here we have two problems. A lack of characterization. And a lot of unnecessary POVs.
I felt that, while reading, that the characters didn’t differ that much. We have a lot of characters that are nobles, which means having the same interest. We have the warrior’s faithful types. It’s more that the author used the tropes and didn’t develop them.

The Malfist sisters. Damn. If you asked me to differ those two, I wouldn’t be able to. They are twins, yes, but they don’t have a unique trait. They are the same. And they don’t have motivations, just the passion for Ryoma. Nothing else. The background of these two exists, but is nearly irrelevant. They don’t talk about it. They just exist, nothing else. And that truly annoys me, because they had potential!

Well, on the other hand, we have Ryoma, which has a strong characterization and one of the main reasons why I enjoyed Wortenia. He is a bit of a Gary Stu, but he is such an enjoyable character. And his thoughts are really well defined, so all of his decision are reasonable. He is ruthless when the time calls. Not evil, not good. Anti-hero. Ryoma is really enjoyable haha, and he is not averse to sex and these things too!

So, the characters are not a strong point in Wortenia. So, if you want good characters, Wortenia maybe is not for you, but you could check it regardless.

The worldbuilding is good enough to sustain the plot. Since we have a lot of politics, it is necessary a good worldbuilding to give base to it, and Wortenia has it. So, no problems here.

There’s in fact a good thing about it. Wortenia Senki uses well the isekai genre. It is not a singular world. It is not detached from reality. It has meaning. Anything beyond that is spoiler, so I’ll refrain myself, but keep in mind that the world of Wortenia Senki is not a detached world.

I think I already talked a bit about Wortenia Senki. So here are my final thoughts, if you are still wavering.

If you want a LN that focuses on military and political affairs, rather than the inner conflicts of characters, or an awesome worldbuilding, Wortenia Senki is a good fit for you.

If you want a LN that focuses on inner conflicts of the characters, or an awesome worldbuilding, Wortenia Senki is not a good fit for you.

However, even if you want a LN with good characterizations, I think Wortenia Senki is worth a try. Mostly because of the politics and militarism in it, since it is a rare theme on LNs and mangas.

If I were to describe Record of Wortenia War in one word, it would be ‘Pretentious’. The first few chapters were relatively interesting, which had raised my hopes, but about two volumes in, I was ready to give up. This LN has a whole host of problems, which I’ll try to go into below.

Story (3/10):
What started as a traditional isekai ended up being an utter mess, caused primarily by the incoherent storytelling and cardboard-cutout characters. The storytelling was all over the place, with the perspective and narration jumping here and there with no real rhyme or reason. Progression of time was also quite iffy, with ... seemingly random time-skips, which were only referenced in hindsight, making you wonder when that even happened.
Another factor that starts turning up around volume 2 is politics, which is just hilarious. It appears as if the author just read a few novels which involved political intrigue and attempted to recreate that without any real understanding of the subject. The manoeuvring was completely two-dimensional, and all the seasoned politicians/nobles had the mindset of playground bullies or their targets.
Most of the story is just about making Ryouma look larger than life, and to have everyone fear and respect him. Each arc simply focuses on furthering this aspect, without actually advancing the plot in any way.

Art (5/10):
Eh, the artwork is decent, but the character art is rather wonky, especially the facial expressions and shapes. Not much else to say about it.

Characters (1/10):
Record of Wortenia War only has one character as such – the protagonist, Mikoshiba Ryouma. All the other characters exist simply to validate his existence in one way or the other, usually by being afraid of him or being in awe of him. The character relations are either rushed or completely skipped – one moment, a pair of characters may be suspicious of each other, and they suddenly have full trust in each other just a few paragraphs later, with no explanation to speak of.
As for Ryouma himself, he is essentially the definition of a ‘perfect’ character. Amazingly fit and powerful, smarter than an aged tactician, compassionate when required, ruthless when necessary… All at the ripe old age of sixteen. Seriously, what? The character is just so outright broken that you can clearly see the author struggling to throw in some weaknesses, so that he’d be more ‘believable’. Well, I can say for a fact that he failed miserably. Ryouma is always the smartest person in whatever room he’s in, and usually the strongest as well (even if not directly). He comes up with all kinds of strategies and plans that are amazing and novel to the other characters, but mostly common sense to your average reader. There’s also the fact that everyone else involved is an absolute fool, even the ones that are introduced as shrewd or cunning.

Enjoyment (3/10):
Not particularly enjoyable. It was mildly interesting to begin with, but it quickly became predictable and dull. I gave up midway through volume 3 due to the reasons I’ve explained.

Overall (3/10):
Record of Wortenia War is essentially at the same level as your average Chinese novel, and really isn’t worth your time. I’d pass on reading it if I were you.