Book Report - Loner Life in Another World - Book 6 by Shoji Goji

Originally Published: Oct. 27, 2023, 7:43 p.m. Last updated: Oct. 27, 2023, 7:43 p.m.

Tags: books

It's kind of wild that with all the nonsense sitting on the shelf, this is my first isekai I'm writing about. Loner Life is a Japanese-origin fantasy isekai light novel. For reference, "isekai" is Japanese for "other world" and generally refers to the genre of stories where the characters are originally from a world other than the one the story takes place in. There are practically infinite variations on how this happens and what this entails and implies, but I won't be going into this too deeply. Isekai stories have absolutely blown up, especially in the East, within roughly the last 20 years or so, but the general concept isn't new by any means. Even in Western fiction, stories like Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver's Travels have made use of this basic premise for centuries.

One of the common setups in Japanese isekai especially is thus: the main character, along with some others, is summoned to another world by some ritual or deity, and all those summoned are given some kind of special skill that will let them perform great feats. Unfortunately our main character's special skill isn't very good and they have to find a way to survive this new harsh world despite this setback. Shoji Goji's Loner Life takes this setup one step further. Our main character, Haruka, is summoned along with his entire high school class. All of them are given a chance to choose from a huge list of skills, items, and other special abilities, but it's first-come first-serve and Haruka gets last pick because he was hiding so well that even the god that summoned them didn't see him at first. After some debate and argument, that god just saddles Haruka with all of the leftover skills at once. Most of these are either difficult to make use of or have heavy drawbacks to just having them, so good luck with that, Haruka! One of the skills is "Loner", which prevents Haruka from being able to join a party, and lends itself to the title of the story.

Loner Life is an action-comedy, which a heavy focus on comedy. It's filled chock-full with inuendo, raunchy situations, silly wordplay, and slapstick-esque absurdity. Haruka is portrayed as having many screws loose and almost always takes action in a way that confuses and shocks the rest of the cast. By book 6, most of the main cast just accept that that's how he is always going to be and don't let the absurdity faze them. Essentially, it's almost always hijinks happening, with Haruka using his own mental absurdity to out-manuever enemies and obstacles to his happiness and the happiness of the classmates summoned with him, along with the people of the new world that he's grown close to.

Japanese isekai often falls deep into wish-fulfillment territory. Wishes to be the strongest, wishes to be wealthy, wishes to save people, make a harem, be the smartest, take revenge, and so on are all commonly sought for and fulfilled. Furthermore, Japanese isekai often makes the main character as bland and generic as possible to allow the target audience, young Japanese boys and men, to self-insert easily and live out these wishes. Loner Life tries to narrow in on the kind of boy that always thought of themselves as different from others, not like those other guys, but it hits the wish fulfillment events hard. Haruka is quickly super fast and super strong, beats people with cleverness, snags himself a lover, etc etc. It's a little too much, honestly, but it's an enjoyable ride to be on. Goji tries to justify these highs by repeating how weak Haruka is in other aspects, due to the skills we mentioned before, or how much responsibility he's taking on, or the risks involved in what he's doing, or etc etc, but Haruka ends every conficts with even more that he started with so I roll my eyes a little when the characters are sobbing about how much danger he's about to be in and so on. It's a fun, silly, light-hearted story, I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously. Also, it hasn't felt like Haruka was in danger since Book 1.

I fly through these books and absolutely love the experience, but I have one major criticism that actually affects my enjoyment. Goji is incredibly repetitive. Sometimes there are multiple chapters covering the same events from overlapping points of view, so we hear about the same thing hapenning again and again and again. Furthermore, and much worse, there's often repetition within chapters, as characters reiterate opinions they hold about a subject, but in slightly different ways. They'll take about a thing, and about the implications of the thing. They'll then talk about those implications and how they relate back to that thing. They'll talk about how that thing makes others feel! And the feelings relate back to the implications! They'll repeat what they just said, but with more oomph! Again and again, they'll discuss the thing and the implications. I think you get it.

Ok, I've given the setup for the story over all, so let me talk about book 6. Preface: I enjoyed this book enough that I'll continue buying from the series. I've also read far beyond this point in the storyline via the manga so there wasn't much surprise in store for me. That said, I think this was the weakest book so far. Nightly events with the girls got very repetetive, stealing and selling got very repetitive, hearing about how greedy and worthless the nobles were got very repetitive. Seemingly half the book was about Haruka opening a shop that he ran in a way to bankrupt a conglomorate of nobles and merchants, and the details of it weren't nearly exciting enough to justify the number of pages involved. Meeting a new cute girl is always appreciated, but she got like 1 chapter of screen time. I liked the aside about what the nerds and jocks were up to, but it could have been explored much further and done better. The girls did basically nothing individual all book long and were just 20 generic faces. Even Class Rep didn't get to shine in this volume. I think the focus on economic warfare just wasn't interesting. The story loop of the series (like a gameplay loop for a game) is that we set up some bowling pins and then are entertained as Haruka knocks them all down in wacky ways. When we have an entire enemy army, or high-level monsters, or a powerful rival and we fight, it's fun and interesting even if the writing is a bit shallow. When the enemies are incompetent greedy bastards, and all we do is scam them into spending their money, there's simultaneously no danger and not much of a payoff.

Going forward, I'd love Goji to go back to exploring how Haruka can improve his skills, work around his drawbacks, and progress his relationships with those around him. Book 6 felt like a progression pause button all around, and I think we went the whole book without seeing a single stat screen. I'm leaving the book a little disappointed, but still hungry for more.