[CW: This rant contains some references to some extremely shitty things said/thought/done by a character that I don't agree with but are nonetheless shitty.]
One of my indulgences is isekai/death-game-world manga and manhwa. I'm not gonna claim they're works of literary high art or anything, but I have a certain fascination with them.
I normally track between 10-20 at a time, cycling in new ones as I drop or complete individual works. I just found myself dropping a newer one out of sheer disgust (which unfortunately isn't uncommon).
Regressor Instruction Manual is a story about a guy who gets dragged into another world as a "player character" along with lots of other people. Not an unusual premise; there are plenty like it, varying widely in quality. But this one always struck me as a little... off? [NOTE: Spoilers ahead.]
The protagonist has this sort of ultra-opportunist mindset and surrounds himself with people he thinks are useful to him, but initially I thought this was the result of a traumatic childhood–there were a few hints dropped here and there that led me to that belief, so I thought it would be one of those stories where he slowly learned to trust and open up to those around him and stop viewing people as mere resources. I'm always open to character development!
Only... those signs got less and less frequent and the protagonist's viewpoints stopped getting countered. He became more and more "obviously correct" through how the story chose to present him and his actions and circumstances. His internal dialogue is consistently uncharitable and often abusive (e.g. he repeatedly refers to his tall, extremely muscular and fit companion as "piggy" and "f*tty"). He swiftly labels people as trash or condemns them to die because they pose even a minor threat to his goals. On the rare occasions that I agree with his mindset it's more due to Broken Clock Syndrome ("right twice a day") than anything else.
The final nail in the coffin for me is the most recent translated arc, where he wishes to recruit a talented priestess but is frustrated by how occupied she is with charity work. She spends nearly all of her time helping homeless folk in a poor district of the city, distributing food and offering healthcare and other aid. Good, right? I thought so too!
The protagonist disagreed, and not just so he could fulfill his own goals. Over the last few chapters that I've been able to stomach, he has set out to systematically "prove" that anyone in the situation of homelessness is simply lazy/abusive/exploitative/etc. and that if they weren't that way, they wouldn't be homeless. And guess what? At every turn the development of the story is supporting him!
On top of all that, the last few pages I read before I dropped it were the protagonist confronting the priestess, forcing her to admit that the only reason she helps people is because she feels guilty about something, that it makes her feel better, because obviously nobody would ever do something like this out of altruism, right?
It's vile.
Look, maybe some day I'll be proven wrong and it'll turn out that the author wanted to simply portray things through the eyes of a cynical misanthrope before flipping the script and dumping on him for his shittiness. I hope that's the case. If you read the web novel and can confirm this, great!
But until then, I won't be touching this shit with a ten-foot pole.
