Review of The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

Shingo is a Gary Stu? Are you kidding me? Nope. As someone who writes fanfiction, I understand the appeal of the Isekai genre having seen said genre quite a bit in fanfiction long before it became a major thing within the Anime community. The genre allows for the reader or viewer to self-insert themselves as the main hero or heroine in the series, but in the case of the Isakai genre it always involves falling into another world. Note that I say the reader or viewer because there is a misconception that self-inserting is all about the writer inserting themselves, yet in reality there is nothing wrongwith self-insertion, at least until the narrative starts bending to the whims or should we say personal wish fulfillment of the one who is being self inserted.

That is in reality what sets a good Anime or Manga of the Isekai genre apart from the not so good ones like "The 8th Son? Are you kidding me?", but Isekai is one of the few original fiction genre I know of that isn't a sequel which ends up being judged by the same standards as fanfiction, or it should be because of its derivative nature and the fact that the character is being inserted into an existing world, albeit in this case one where the worlds wouldn't exist. Perhaps it is the only genre where this is the case, but there is no getting around the fact said character enters another world and the world starts bending to them in ways never seen before.

And that, my friends, is why Shingo is a Gary Stu.

Of course, he's got his woeful backstory of being a poor noble because his father and eldest brother are so inept that they are incapable of reading, yet I find myself struggling to understand how that's even remotely possible given the fact you'd think that would at least be a given due to their noble status as the previous generation should have at least had that skill and passed it down to all of their sons and so-on and so-on, but no - his older brother being an incompetent fool is super important because he's got to be jealous of all his younger siblings for being more talented than him despite the fact - you know, it's established that there is a lack of animosity between the brothers and they care about each other. There isn't good reason for him coming down on Shingo for wanting more soup, say such as it being established at the beginning there isn't more to go around.

Which, in of itself doesn't make sense. Nope. In reality the family's misfortune is there to prop of how amazing Shingo is compared to his older siblings and how incompetent everyone else who is unable to use magic happens to be. It's also there to give Shingo a woeful background and also set up someone to hate him, because what Gary Stu isn't complete without someone to hate him, right? After all, everybody has to love the Gary Stu and any one who doesn't will have one of two routes - have their minds changed about him, or end up getting their just deserts at the end. Which also brings me to the so called corrupt nobility narrative and how we're pushed this narrative that nobles are self serving - well, to a point. In reality, not any more than anybody else, but positioning oneself and building alliances where one can makes sense, yet it's treated as "corruption" and a negative thing.

Because Shingo's got to be better than those in the world he's in, to the point he's - like some other rather obnoxious Isekai series out there, culturing the backwards peoples to his personal food tastes, which isn't a bad thing, but seriously - I don't for one minute believe that someone who was a mere salary man would know how to make the stuff he does. Sure, he could put a bug into someone's ears and gotten help from them, but egads - no, doing it on his own doesn't make sense.

Oh, and of course all the girls fall for him and having multiple wives is seen as okay because women are treated as objects in this universe despite the fact the narrative wants us to believe they're not objects because marriage will give them power, but only because - gasp - our main protagonist is so special. We're also told that magic isn't supposed to be hereditary, only for it to be proven as such with three people from the same family, father, daughter and uncle, all being magical despite this supposedly not being hereditary.

Let's not forget either how nothing actually bad happens to him excluding the finding out his family is poor which I've gone into. Sure, the titles of the episodes try to make a big deal out of all his so called woes, but he's actually quite blessed and his woes aren't really woes which becomes more and more evident as the show progresses. There are absolutely no struggles period, though the narrative does at times try to make it seem that way. Everything is handed to him.

I'll end this by saying that there's nothing wrong with the Isekai genre, but part of the fun is the journey and when the character is just handed everything and the plot is forced into going in the directions it does just to make things easy for the protagonist - that takes out the fun for those who want to self-insert, but don't want a self-insert whose problems are all solved with a wave of a wand so to speak and ends up not having any real woes.