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Would Be Better If The Voice Actors Didn't Switch

Revisado: 04-23-25

Story-wise, this volume is good and continues the pattern of Bell being in a tight spot and then pulling a miracle and becoming even stronger at the end.

My complaint as with every other volume in this series is that I really wish they'd assign the voice actors to specific characters instead of having them switch between chapters. (like In Another World With My Smartphone; the male reader voices the male characters and the female reader voices the female characters). It messes with the flow of the story in my opinion since both readers voice the same characters differently.

Also, it seems like in every volume Shelley Calene-Black reads more than Bryson Baugus (about 2/3 of each volume), and she doesn't do as good of a job as Baugus when it comes to character voices. While Baugus is great at making each character sound unique and distinct, Calene-Black voices every female character almost the same, which makes it hard to keep track of who's actually speaking. Her voicing also comes off as sounding like an old lady a lot of the time. What's even more annoying when she's reading however, are the action scenes. She does a very bad job at voicing male characters when they're angry, making them sound like they're hoarse, out of breath, and are trying to talk and growl all at the same time (think Christian Bale's Batman but much worse). Her monster sounds are also very jarring and sound more like she's dry-heaving/puking. It instantly takes me out of the story whenever she tries to roar/growl and I find myself wincing every time.

I know I'm probably coming off as harsh, but there are other light novels which use both male and female narrators together and the story flows very well between the two (Sword Art Online for example - Bryce Papenbrook and Cherami Leigh are absolutely amazing voicing the same characters; it never gets confusing and the story flows smoothly even though they alternate. Cherami Leigh also does a great job voicing growls/yells etc... in action scenes).

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Good Story, Somewhat Confusing Narration

Revisado: 11-27-24

If you're a fan of Danmachi (or even if you're new to the series), the story is great especially as the light novels go into greater detail than the anime does. It's an even bigger plus having the narrators be the voices of Bell and Ais from the anime. The negative to this is that instead of Bryson Baugus (voice of Bell in the anime) strictly handling the male voices and Shelly Calene-Black (voice of Ais in the anime) doing the female voices, they both take turns voicing all the characters which takes some getting used to and can really throw the listener off sometimes.

While Bryson Baugus does an amazing job with the different voices (his range is excellent as he makes each character sound unique and distinct), Shelly Calene-Black doesn't have much range and uses pretty much the same tone and voice for most of the characters. Her voice becomes really jarring whenever she tries to do a monster roar or character grunt/yell.

Though this review is for volume 1 of the series, at the time of me writing this, I have listened up through volume 5 and can say that she doesn't improve at all and actually becomes worse. Another reviewer of this volume mentioned "The male isn't bad and actually uses multiple voices to add variety and make characters distinct. Not sure if I can suffer through the next book." I powered through volumes 2-5 and can say that it was a great listen whenever Baugus was narrating, but whenever it became Calene-Black's turn, I couldn't wait for her part to be over.

Story-wise, this volume has good pacing and is a good start to the series, introducing the listener/reader to the world and it's characters. The story picks up in the following volumes and introduces a great deal of more characters, but as of volume 5 the main criticism that most reviewers have of both narrators taking turns instead of voicing particular characters has not been resolved, and it looks like it probably won't be. The story is definitely worth continuing though.

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Story is Good, But Say It With Me, KA-TA-NA

Revisado: 11-13-24

So I stand by my opinion that Kurt Kanazawa was the absolute worst narrator when this series first started and that Matthew Bridges was a slight improvement when he took over, but still had his shortcomings. Shea Taylor is once again a slight improvement over both of them, but like the others before him, has his own quirks that pull you out of the story whenever they pop up. It makes me wonder, doesn't One Peace Books have an editor who listens to the recordings before giving the final approval to publish to the public?

For the first hour or so of this book, Shea Taylor talks like William Shatner's Captain Kirk from Star Trek, emphasizing and stressing words at weird moments while also having a kind of over-confident sounding bravado that's cringey and does not match up with Naofumi's character at all. But like I said, this only lasts for the first hour or so of the book and then he starts to talk normally. Beyond this, my major complaint is that he pronounces certain names and words weirdly (mainly Japanese words), which can take you out of the story when he does. The word he pronounces the worst to me is katana (he pronounces it kut-oh-nuh/kut-uh-nuh) and it's super grating and immediately pulls me out of the story whenever he says it. Another example is him pronouncing Sadina's name as Saw-dih-nuh instead of Sa-dee-na. This issue could have been resolved if whomever reviews/edits the recordings brought it up to the narrator and had him re-record the certain lines/paragraphs, calling attention to his weird pronunciations, having him correct them and thus resolving the issue.

BUT, other than his pronunciation issues, Shea Taylor does a surprisingly great job out of all the previous narrators when it comes to voicing other characters. He actually puts in the effort to make the characters sound distinct and like they should (unlike Kurt Kanazawa's absolutely HORRENDOUS attempt at voicing female characters and Matthew Bridges getting the tones of many of the characters flat out wrong; like making the weapons shop owner sound like a feeble and decrepit old man when he's only in his 40's etc...). He does a particularly awesome job at voicing Sadina/Nadia, Murder Pierrot and Filo (though he could tone it down a bit with Filo as it does become obnoxious sometimes).

Story-wise, it progresses along very well in this volume with the premise being Naofumi is awarded land for defeating the Spirit Turtle. Naofumi requests the be lord over the site of Raphtalia's former home village Lurolona. He wants to rebuild her village, but realizes he will need residents to make that happen. He decides he will buy all of the slaves who were former inhabitants of the village, but soon finds out that because of the rumor that the slaves from Lurolona are able to become super powerful (like the one who belongs to the Shield Hero aka Raphtalia), the price for Lurolona slaves has risen exponentially. Now, Naofumi has to figure out a way to earn enough money to buy them all. He travels to Zeltoble, where he learns of an underground fighting tournament where he can possibly earn the money he needs. We get introduced to the country of Zeltoble, the coliseum and a few new characters.

Overall this volume has good pacing with enough action to keep the story moving along nicely. The intro/recap isn't extremely long for once (honestly, the 30+ minute recaps at the beginning of each volume are really unnecessary. If you've reached up to volume 10, I'm pretty sure you don't need an intro to who Naofumi, Raphtalia or Filo are). Overall, I give this volume a 7.5/10, only deducting a point because of Shea Taylor's narration quirks.

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Great Story, Not So Good Narration

Revisado: 02-13-24

Great story and definitely a must-read series if you're a fan of the anime as you get more details out of the story than you would from the show obviously, but the narrator really pulls you out of the story every time he attempts to do a female voice (which is quite often seeing as half of the dialogue in the series is from female characters). His performance of female characters is pretty awful.

I winced and cringed everytime he attempted to voice Raphtalia or Myne (Malty). He sounds like Miss Piggy crossed with that squeaky-voiced teen character (Jeremy Freedman) from the Simpsons who is stuck in perpetual puberty and works at the Krusty Burger. It's not until volume 2 where his voicing gets only slightly better since Raphtalia has grown a little, therefore he uses a deeper and smoother voice, but it's still pretty bad. This is definitely a case where they should have casted a woman to voice the female characters (like In Another World With My Smartphone which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND btw).

Aside from his off-putting female character voices, the narrator doesn't convey much emotion so the overall performance is kinda flat (which is not as big of a deal for me). Overall though, it's a great story so if you're a fan of the anime or the isekai genre in general, volume 1 and this light novel series overall is definitely worth the read/listen, just be prepared for the narrator's awful female character voicing. If you can ignore that, the story is interesting. Going through Naofumi's struggle as he starts off as weaker and majorly disadvantaged (compared to the other heroes) and then starts to slowly get an understanding of his abilities and the world he's in is engrossing enough that you'll want to continue reading into the next volumes. 8/10 Story, 2/10 Narration

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