아카데미에서 살아남기(The Extra's Academy Survival Guide)

Description / Comments

Protagonist dies and gets reincarnated into one of his favorite games, but as a minor villain that is destined to get expelled (from the dorms) and cast out of the story before it even really starts. In fact the protagonist gets expelled before he even enters the body so he has to now make amends and better his reputation in order to somehow survive all of the trials and tribulations before him, and hopefully steer the game to reach its “true end” in order to save the world. But first he’ll have to make sure he can survive even living out in the wilderness since he no longer is allowed into the dorms, and has no support from his (evil) family so he has to fend for himself by hunting wild game/etc.

This work has a ton of focus on romance and relationships that continue to advance over time yet also still basically get nowhere, since the protagonist is a jaded adult in the body of a teenager and is more interested in trying to survive than holding hands or whatever the girls want to do. As a result of him being the most epic chad koreaman he woos like the entire female cast and functionally has all of the super overpowered (female) characters able to swoop in and solve all issues with their final boss powers if he ever finds himself in a pickle due to their love and devotion towards him while vying to be the one who “wins” the relationship bowl. This work is like 70% teenage girls being attracted to the protag and falling head over heels for him, and the other 30% is the protag trying to fix the story from going off the rails from him simply trying to survive and shoving himself into the story.

This wouldn’t be a problem except the “main” heroine Yennekar is the most dreadfully boring “yandere”-like character to exist, Lortel is pretty good but constantly gets shafted since she’s not the “main”, and Lucy is functionally an overpowered mascot doubling as a macguffin. The work tends to sprinkle small emotional moments with each of the girls individually like they’re each taking their turns to make you get invested in them and root for them to win, where the other that aren’t getting focused kind of dip out of the story or are somewhere else for various reasons. I wish even more of the work was focused on just more casual relationships instead of Bell being exasperated once again as another maiden falls in love with Ed’s magnanimous personality.

As far as the plot goes it’s a fairly nice redemption story of the protag simply being a Nice Person (adult) to the other people around him, being there as a mentor person as well as mental support for all of these genuises’ life troubles. Most of the work is him simply grinding out his skills, thinking about how he can steer the plot in the correct direction, then giving basic quips to the Actual Characters to help them out emotionally to set them on the correct path that he ruined by existing. The protagonist’s goal from start to finish is to abandon everybody else and simply Survive, just like he always has, and just like he always will, although if it’s possible to save other people without affecting the main story he will do so. He starts to change his ways later on in the story but only slightly.

I appreciate that the “Saint Arc” near the end of Season 1 finally shifted the perspective away from the protagonist; it was a nice and almost necessary change of pace to get away from the constant romance baiting and dooming about the storyline. It doesn’t stop him from eventually becoming the protagonist again to save the day as Epic Koreaman who is super cool and can solve all problems, but for at least a short while we got to experience the world without the protagonist knowing everything that will happen in the future and being able to plan for it ahead of time.

There are definitely good parts in this work and I feel like it is worth reading, but I also think the teenage drama romance plotlines are a little too much and actively detract from the work.