Madougushi Dahlia wa Utsumukanai 1
Release Date: 25 October 2018
Genre: Isekai, Adventure, Fantasy, M/F Romance
Premise: Dahlia was reincarnated in a fantasy world as the daugther of a magical toolsmith. The story begins when her fiancee breaks off their engagement with the excuse that he has found true love. Realising that she didn’t really care about her fiancee, Dahlia takes advantage of this to begin living life the way that she wants to and develops her own magical toolsmithing business.
This volume is fairly low on plot and, unfortunately, it doesn’t have any amusing narration or interesting characters to make up for that and I ended up being pretty bored by it. Dahlia is nice enough that it’s easy to root for her but she’s also really plain and the characters that she surrounds herself with don’t stand out enough to make up for that. Some of them are pretty likeable - like this couple she’s friends with who get mad about her situation in her stead but they don’t show up enough because the story decides to focus on Dahlia’s magical toolsmithing and budding romance with the knight Wolfred instead. Wolfred himself is also really plain so, even though he seems to be a good match for Dahlia, it’s hard to bring myself to be interested in them spending time together. I also thought that the isekai element was pointless. Dahlia’s behaviour isn’t changed by her having memories of her past life and it doesn’t affect the plot much. She does use her past life to invent objects that she remembers but I feel like we could have gotten her to do that without the isekai plot element being present.
I didn’t hate the volume though and it was an easy read. I liked seeing Dahlia move past her relationship with Tobias and I enjoyed seeing her blossom and grow confidence. I just wish there could have been a little more to that growth than interacting with Wolfred and making things.
I rated the volume 2 stars because I was bored by it but I definitely don’t think it’s iredeemable and I can see why some people liked it.
People who love isekai with female protagonists and who don’t mind a lack of plot.
There are two manga adaptations for this series and they started at the same time and I’m not sure why that happened but they are slightly different. The first one has the subtitle of “Dahlia wilts no more” and is ongoing at 2 volumes and features art by Megumi Sumikawa. This one actually starts before the light novel does as we get glimpses of Dahlia’s childhood and teenage years. A couple of scenes were rearranged but it’s largely left intact. The second adaptation is complete at 2 volumes and features art by Kamada. This one is a more straight forward adaptation but it does move some scenes around. For example, in the light novel, Tobias tells Dahlia that he’s breaking off their engagement and it isn’t until after she’s moved out and has told others about the situation that he comes to her and asks for their engagement ring back but the manga merges it into the same scene. There are a lot of little changes like that in both in adaptations and they affect the pacing slightly but not enough to change the tone of the series. Both adaptations are good but I recommend “Dahlia wilts no more” due to the prologue chapters being pretty interesting and the fact that it’s ongoing so it’ll likely get to cover more.
I don’t think I’ll be reading any more volume in the future.