The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

A Late-Start Tamer's Laid-Back Life

What's It About? 

LJO–aka Law of Justice Online–is the newest full-dive VRMMORPG to hit the market, and office worker Yuta—or Yuto, as he goes by in the game—is ready to spend his whole vacation immersing himself in the experience. He dreams of becoming the strongest Tamer, commanding the most powerful monsters, and he's even willing to shell out the cash to do so! But when he arrives in the world of LJO for the first time, Yuto is shocked to find that the special monster he planned to leave all the fighting to is...a monster dedicated to farming—without a shred of combat ability? Despite it all, Yuto quickly decides that his adventures in this world will involve way less fighting epic battles and way more harvesting plants, as he prepares to take the game at his own pace and with his adorable, trusty companion by his side!

A Late-Start Tamer's Laid-Back Life is a manga by Tachibana, adapted from a light novel series with a story by Yuu Tanaka and character designs by Nardack. A. M. Cola translated the manga into English. This volume was retouched and lettered by Tran Nguyen. Published by J-Novel Club; PublishDrive edition (March 20, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

It's in the title—this is a laid-back series and acts as the perfect palate cleanser to some of the more…interesting volumes I've had to read for the manga guide this season. Similar to Shangri-La Frontier, A Late-Start Tamer's Laid-Back Life isn't an isekai and doesn't seem to have any significant or excruciating stakes based on its first volume. It's just about a guy who starts playing a new game and, unfortunately, draws the short straw regarding character abilities. But he makes the most of what he's got and tries to find the silver lining. I appreciate that this is a fairly optimistic story. Our main character summons a cute little gnome who can barely speak and opens up a farm with him when he realizes that's pretty much all they can do together. But he does what he originally set out to do through that simple life: just enjoy the game.

I'm not a big farm simulator person, as I generally find those games to be a bit tedious. But this manga does a good job of making that profession in video games seem so appealing. The wholesomeness between our main character and his little gnome friend reminds me of young brothers starting their own business together. Looking back on it, it's nothing super complicated, and the humor isn't even that funny. It's cozy, though. It's like drinking a warm cup of milk; there's just something charming about the art style and the strong emphasis on the simple life that makes you smile. With all the crazy stuff going on right now, sometimes you want to read something about someone doing their best to grow crops in their little makeshift farm.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

This is one of those titles I feel unnecessarily mean rating it so low. It isn't particularly innovative, but it's so well-meaning and trying so hard that I want to be nice to it. Regretfully, that's not what my job entails, so I'm forced to admit that A Late-Start Tamer's Laid-Back Life isn't very interesting or good. It's one in a long line of stories set in a VRMMORPG where gameplay doesn't entirely live up to the protagonist's expectations. Unlike an SAO story, Yuto isn't trapped in the world of Law of Justice Online, and unlike Infinite Dendrogram, he isn't struggling against a strange system or working towards solving a puzzle. Instead, Yuto's biggest issue is that he's trying to play as a tamer but somehow ends up with a farming-skill monster, so he begins playing as a farmer instead.

As far as gaming goes, that feels relatively realistic; certainly, I've started a game with one goal or idea in mind and ended up going off in a different direction. And while playing a farming game is very relaxing, it's not all that exciting to read about. The story attempts to make up for that with humor, which is only mildly successful. The best joke is how Yuto quickly proves himself to be the most killable player in the game on the first day – his combination of skills and monster don't lend themselves to successful combat, much to the amusement of his fellow players. And that's even after he's decided to throw in the taming towel; Yuto meets death by rat butt when he's just trying to forage for plants to have Olto, his gnome, transform into seeds. He's inadvertently made LJO much more difficult than intended, and I think a lot of us can relate to that.

Aside from that, this is very slow in the plot department. Watching Yuto stumble his way through the starter town and basic game controls isn't interesting. While he begins interacting with a few other players and NPCs, they don't do anything beyond increasing the boob count because the law of this kind of series demands that three of the four be cute ladies, while number four is a grizzled old man. The art is a plus, though, with the characters all looking distinct and Olto being almost dangerously cute, even when he can only speak in variations of the syllable "mm," which is intensely annoying. This is a little dull even if you enjoy the subgenre, and honestly, if you're looking for game-style slice-of-life fantasy, I think you'd be better served by picking up the Management of a Novice Alchemist light novels instead.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.