Idle Fish Goes Ashore
This is quite a good and enjoyable book. however I cannot recommend it for reading. That is because about chapter 840 it just stops, not finished, just stops. My understanding is that the author was blocked by China 2 years ago it so, because there was a potentially Huxian bad guy type character, in this largely Japan style setting . After trying work arounds to be published for a bit, the author gave up and moved onto other stories. As such I can't recommend this good, but incomplete, novel.
(As of writing this review I'm at and stopping at Chapter 310) TLDR: Classic "dude gets a system" story. Story is fun, but gets repetitive. Characters are okay, if you're into lolis then you'll probably like what happens, but if not you'll probably want to stay away. Let me first start of by saying that the translation quality is top notch -- honestly probably at least top 3 if not the best I've seen. 95%+ sounds like a native English speaker wrote it, even if it's a tad overdramatic. The story: I'm a huge sucker for realistic fantasy. Two of my favorite translations on this site are I'm Really a Superstar and A Valiant Life, so this setting was right up my alley. NEET Dating Sim follows a similar recipe, but with different ingredients. It's about a 30 y/o dude who gets reincarnated and suddenly has access to a system that gives him OP powers yadda yadda. Nothing too special, but I like this kind of thing. It can get a little repetitive like most shounens where the MC keeps finding coincidental villains to fight. Overall the story focuses a lot more on slice of life stuff than I'd thought it would, but most of it is pretty okay. As a side note, when it comes to the supernatural, he doesn't become too OP too quickly, which is a nice change from the norm. The background: There are some small issues I've found with it, but it's mostly fine, if a bit bland. The MC is reincarnated into an anime world and talks about how mad scientists and giant mechs are all real things here; this is never brought up again (though it might past CH 310, not sure) and it seems like there could be more done with a new anime world besides changing the hair and eye colors of the characters. Characters: This was my biggest gripe and why I ended up leaving the story. First of all the MC is mentally a 30 year old man. Even if he was a NEET in his past life, he acts like a complete idiot 99% of the time. His antics get very stale, very quickly. The pattern of find a new girl with a stereotypical anime personality (which doesn't even end up being consistent), new girl instantly falls for him, he rejects them or is so dense that he doesn't notice obvious signs that everyone is obsessed with him. I could even deal with all of this -- it's pretty standard for a (pseudo) harem story. The biggest problem to me that I don't see any top reviews mention is that the MC is literally a pedophile. This guy, a 30 year old, makes multiple remarks about how sexy a middle schooler is while living with her. I ended up dealing with it because I was mostly enjoying the rest of the story, but later on he adds ANOTHER female child to his household, but this time an elementary schooler -- he is no better in this case. This was the point I dropped, as my uncomfortability levels got a little high.
Great novel but the harem is sorta overkill and the dating sim system was quickly forgotten and replaced with a cultivation system. He got some choices early on but later in the story you rarely see this function and it doesn't enforce him into different situations either. Lastly the rate of updates is as inconsistent as Hearthstone's game mechanics.