Review of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

After reading reviews for this, I've put this show off for a while. When I was finally in the mood for some Isekai trash, I gave it a watch and I'm genuinely surprised that this show gets so much hate. On the surface, it has several things I typically dislike in Isekai. A bland, dark-haired teenager and a harem of girls that want his D. But I found that those aspects are really not that bad in this. MC is fairly average amongst the nice guy protag's we usually get in these, but we fortunately get an internal monologue and a slow but steady increase intheir skills and abilities as they go around the world. He is OP, but he's still learning how to do things and what skills he can use and the various problems he comes across use a variety of actions and abilities to solve. He doesn't just instantly save the day every time, even though we all know he will. As far as the harem goes, really only 1 of them is sex-crazed, most are just cute and dedicated to MC. The slavery aspect is a little problematic on paper, but overall it really doesn't matter much. MC doesn't really take advantage of it and only orders them around early on to make sure they do things that will help them.

Overall, what I particularly like about the show is how it does the skills and and video game aspects. It's not an afterthought and it makes some sense for how MC uses their skills. The show is also very slice of life focused with some villains and combat spread around here and there, which I like as it gives the show a chill pace.