I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World Review: The Missing Scenes Weren't Worth Having

The trope combo somebody had to try

I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World (and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too, the title keeps going) earns points for being the first story I've found to weld two beloved tropes together: the isekai power fantasy and the glow-up revenge arc. The protagonist finds a portal in his late grandfather's house, gets absurdly overpowered in the other world within the first fifteen percent of the story, and, the twist, keeps commuting. Monster hunting after school, then back through the portal, time dilation covering his absences, to live his normal life with his new stats. The bullied, overweight shut-in comes back with a maxed charisma stat: tall, fit, magnetic, good at everything. You have seen the transformed-over-summer trope a hundred times; you haven't seen it powered by literal game stats, and as pure escapism the combination is fun.

Let me be precise about how unearned the power is, because it's almost impressive: he walks through the portal into the vacant home of a departed sage, is informed he's the new master of the house, and inherits mythic weapons, mythic spellbooks, the works, in the opening chapters, for the price of walking through a door. This is Mary Sue as a design philosophy. If you read my reviews you know I love a fast origin, and this is the fastest possible origin; the trade-off is that nothing was earned and the story never pretends otherwise. The princess pursued by assassins through the deadly forest that only he can survive arrives right on schedule.

The anime-versus-book trap, part two

Same story as my Eminence in Shadow review, so I'll be brief: the anime is fun, and it leaves gaps, characters recognizing the lead without established context, good jokes cut off before the punchline lands. I assumed the books held the missing material, because with Solo Leveling and Overlord that's exactly how it works. They don't. The gaps exist because the source scenes are so slight there was nothing worth animating; the mall trip where a modeling scout first spots him is a page of nothing that only matters when the scout resurfaces, so the anime just cut it and ate the confusion. This was apparently the author's first writing project, self-published as a hobby, and good for him that it took off, sincerely, but the prose is poor and the anime's editing is doing all the heavy lifting.

Verdict

Not worth the credit. D, and a skip on the audiobooks. Watch the anime if the trope combo sounds like your kind of junk food; it's cleanly told and amusing. Don't follow it to the books expecting more, because there is no more. For the going-home-with-powers fantasy done by an author in full command of his craft, He Who Fights with Monsters has a whole multi-book arc of it. For anime-to-book pipelines that reward the trip, Solo Leveling and Overlord remain the ones to take.