I've been killing slimes for 300 years...

 

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga# 

Synopsis 

You know, of the all the isekai anime/manga I've had the displeasure of watching, two of my favorites have slime in the title.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level! starts pretty typical. An overworked office lady in Japan, Azusa Aizawa, DIES and is reincarnated as an immortal witch. Hmmm... where have we heard this plot before? But all she wants to do is relax and live a cozy peaceful life without working. She has no problems doing this, facing no hardships in her life. Azusa kills 20 slimes everyday for 300 years until she discovers shes the max level, super overpowered, and one shots dragons. All the sudden, people start showing up to her doorstep after hearing how powerful she is. One is a dragon, another an elf, and then two children that claim they are her daughters who were born as slime spirits from all the slimes Azusa killed over the years. Her family keeps on growing.

Despite being a generic isekai, it's instantly is on my good side for being a yuri-bait and having the main character be a girl. It's the purest form of yuri-bait. The best blueprint for yuri bait. What do I mean by yuri bait? Well Azusa keeps growing her family, taking new girls under her wing like a mother. It's heavily implied that Laika, one of the first characters that shows up and joins Azusa's family is very in love with her. We don't get to see any developments in any romantic relationships very often, the author kind of just implies to us that "These girls live together and are practically married and everyone else in the house they live in are their children"

Likes and Dislikes

As I've already said, I love the comfyness of this. Everyone likes comfy, cozy stuff because of how unproblematic it is. It's a simple blueprint. Azusa goes on adventures after sticking to herself for 300 years. She's super overpowered, so typical isekai challenges like strong monsters and boss battles are not a problem. There's very little conflict in this world, the demons and humans are best friends to the point some of the strongest demons are best friends with Azusa and also part of her yuri family. The story focuses way more on the characters and their quirks and world-building. If I have to hand something to every isekai author out there, its that despite literally using the same blueprint of (You die in japan and get born in medieval magic RPG world) it's cool to see the kinds of twists they put on the worlds they create. The characters are somehow really memorable, because they all have their own stories and reasons for staying with Azusa. The fact that the main character is a women literally makes this series 10x better than if the main character was a guy. If the main character was a guy, it would be a standard harem and be really, really, really fucking boring. But since we get Azusa instead, we get to see how she treats everyone in her adoptive family well, whether it be making snacks for her daughters or solving her (wife) Laika's red dragon and blue dragon conflict. 

Like how it's hard to be problematic with cozy anime, it's also really hard to.. do anything. You can't create conflict without ruining the vibe. Most conflicts and plot points in the story only exist for new characters to be created, and then basically be taken under Azusa's adoptive wing. And only so many characters can be created without it getting boring. As of following the manga for 4 years, and watching both seasons of the anime. I haven't gotten bored, but I'm not exactly remembering every character by heart either. Usually, I only remember characters when they show back up in a chapter and I think to myself, "ohhh, I slightly remember that girl's existence!" Yet to most of the target audience, none of this is THAT much of a problem. But you want to know what's a problem?

Isekai mangaka have an obsession with food. It's honestly annoying. So many times, these mangaka spend entire chapters just letting their characters chase ingredients and cook food that subtlety resembles Japanese dishes, just so they can feed the isekai world people the food and then they have a food wars "ouhhh, ahhh, I've never tasted something this good before!" moment. If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, I'll lay out how this always plays out. 

    Main character: "This world's food is good, but I really want to eat rice!!!"

    Conveniently shaped rice paddy suddenly appears

    Main character: "Great, but now I want curry!"

    Conveniently created character that just so happens to be from a nation that closely resembles Japan provides MC with curry

    Main character: "Perfect, now I need katsu, but this world has no pigs!"

    Convenient pig replacement exists

    Main character: "Great! Who wants to try this katsu curry that doesn't exist in this world"

    Everyone: "ohmygodthistastesogoodyouresotalentedatcooking"

 I don't even hate these food scenes that much, but they just appear so often it's kind of annoying. The author has the opportunity to showcase some food that could only exist in a magical world like rainbow meat or something like that, but they always default to Japanese food that everyone around them glazes to no avail. 

Final rating: 8/10. It's hard to give a bad rating to something so cute.