British by MANAT

I hate isekai. I really, really do. It's probably my least favorite genre in contemporary Japanese fiction: from the absurdly overhyped  Sword Art Online, to the slew of 'guy dies then ends up in a fantasy world' shlock published nowadays by Ascii and friends, there isn't a single work - be it anime, manga or novels, that managed to convince me. It's wish fulfillment fantasies made bare, usually carried by a vehicle of horrid, second-rate fantasy that makes Ryo Mizuno look like avantgarde.

You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that British, a dōjinshi I bought solely on its lolita-toting cover, was actually an isekai. Actually a single, slim episode of an isekai. And not a very good one either. Yeah. The cheap price was pretty much the only upside - I think I paid 200 yen or something like that.

So no gothic lolita babes in this brochure by MANAT (actually the circle name of illustrator Tomozo Kaoru), but the premises the genre has gotten us so used to. Some guy is in love with a girl on the swimming team, but then he dies (surprise surprise) and his spirit ends up in some kind of parallel dimension, where a bimbo dressed like Alice in Wonderland has to fight chibi monsters and... attend school.

Aaand that's it. British is slim even by dōjin standards: twelve black and white pages, plus a three-lines postscript. Apparently it's part of a series, which doesn't really address the main issue: why endlessly fraction already weak stories in bite-sized slices that can't stand on their own?
Things are a bit better on the visual side. Tomozo Kaoru is a competent draftsman, so proportions are usually spot-on and the paneling clear and readable. Nothing stellar, as contemporary manga has set pretty high standards for visuals and graphic design, but it' serviceable.

Aside for a handful of  dōjinshi, Tomozo Kaoru has illustrated one of Eiji Otsuka's weakest works, as well as their own 'group fo people hunts down monster borne out of humans' series which I'm never going to read, as that's probably my second least favorite genre after isekai. All in all an unfortunate purchase from a circle I'm unlikely to keep following.