It was actually the slightly-triggered reviews about the LGBT stuff that pushed me off the fence to spend a credit. Needless to say I was disappointed: it was entirely limited to him simply noticing the attractiveness of people of all genders. Not sure what the fuss was about there but I guess, to some, a man thinking of another man as stunning is immersion-shattering 😂
Anyway, the protagonist is this incredible, cutting edge scientist who specialises in microbiology, but also knows enough about guns to invent them from scratch in this new world, who’s also done martial arts, plays DND, etc. It’s actually harder to suspend my disbelief here than with the all the magic.
Speaking of, the “insight” system is hyper-literal. It just means knowledge or perhaps awareness; you could describe a school as a place that teaches insights. The super secret ‘notice’ insight he received was him literally being told to try noticing the things he wouldn’t otherwise notice. And while I am being a little reductive here because obviously there’s training and some instruction too, but still, you learn the ‘notice’ insight by trying to be perceptive. I have no idea how this is meant to be a secret.
And the story just kind of follows this theme where it game-ifies this magical world in a hyper-literal way. He ends up teaching one of his teammates how to better use lightning magic by teaching them the maths of electromagnetism. Clearly a lot of people find this interesting, and I wish the author all the best, but I’m going to leave the series here.