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スコップ無双 「スコップ波動砲!」 ( `・ω・´)♂〓〓〓〓★(゜Д ゜ ;;;).:∴ ドゴォォ (Comic) #1
The Invincible Shovel (Manga) Vol. 1
A legendary miner teams up with a runaway princess to combat demons and track down cursed jewels in this hilarious fantasy manga series (known in Japan as Scoop Musou )! And don't miss the original light novels, also from Seven Seas.
Alan is no ordinary miner. He’s the greatest miner in the world, thanks to a shovel that can shoot lasers and level mountains! After scooping up a princess in distress, Alan finds himself drawn into a quest to save her kingdom. Dig out your common sense and delve into a land of shovels and sorcery, where a spade is not a spade, but an invincible shovel like no other!
Alan is no ordinary miner. He’s the greatest miner in the world, thanks to a shovel that can shoot lasers and level mountains! After scooping up a princess in distress, Alan finds himself drawn into a quest to save her kingdom. Dig out your common sense and delve into a land of shovels and sorcery, where a spade is not a spade, but an invincible shovel like no other!
160 pages, Paperback
First published April 9, 2020
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11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 14, 2021
Alan has been mining underground for roughly a thousand years and he emerges just in time to save Princess Lithisia from bandits. She’s off on a quest to save her kingdom and could really use an OP hero like Alan to help out. Miner meets minor and practically nothing of consequence happens, but it does so as loudly as possible.
I should just start a subcategory of shelves for books I read that are patently insane. If you thought your basic isekai had power creep, welcome to that idea taken to its absolute absurdist extreme, as Alan and his shovel basically tear apart the fabric of reality.
Outside of the plot, wherein Lithisia is trying to save the kingdom (although a little time with Alan means she might end up dooming it, just on a different schedule), nothing here makes a lick of sense. Alan has lived forever (this is currently not an isekai, but I have my suspicions) and learned many secret techniques with his shovel and all of them are Dragon Ball-esque in terms of overpower.
So, obviously, there are zero stakes in this book. Like none. There can’t be. By the time Alan has turned his shovel into a sniper rifle and then buried somebody halfway into a mud bath, we’re really and truly done pretending anything can stand up to him.
Which leaves the book with the task of being funny instead and I don’t think it’s a gut buster, but its commitment to escalating the bit is worth giving a little praise to. There’s a point where you kind of just throw up your hands and wait to see what’s next.
Alan’s mostly mining focused and giving crazy explanations for how he can do what he does. Lithisia turns out to be a lot more fun, first falling in love with Alan’s power and then escalating this to wholesale kingdom reform. By the time the book ends, in Lithisia’s mind the kingdom’s been renamed, has a new anthem, and its army has been completely converted to shovel knights (they ought to make a video game about it).
At first it feels like they’re trying to use shovel as a pun, but eventually it’s just showing up in place of other words nonstop. This is especially funny when Catria, Lithisia’s guard who has the unenviable role of straight woman, shows up. She is standing for none of this, but shovel-based words start slipping into her vocabulary anyway.
Even the fan service is so ludicrously done that it’s almost as bad as the shovel and hard to not laugh at. Lithisia is constantly trying to wrangle Alan into having relations because of a miscommunication (using ‘shovel’ as a euphemism for sex when it’s standing in for half the words in the book proves a bad call), culminating in an outdoor shovelling lesson that must be seen to be believed in how innuendo laced it is.
It’s hard to tell if the book is hitting its apex or nadir during these scenes, but Lithisia is clearly making a move by wearing the skimpiest schoolgirl outfit ever (Catria hilariously calls her out during all this) and it’s only equaled by an earlier scene where she’s naked (but covered up by the scenery, of course) and her breasts are literally oozing around an object in defiance of all physics.
Then Fio the elf shows up and the book lets you know it was only getting started in terms of both absurd shovel power and fan service. Fio’s “outfit” barely qualifies. It’s the sort of thing that I would normally roll my eyes at, and I still kind of do, but the book has clearly set itself a goal of being so over-the-top that it somehow laps itself to the point where I just shrugged and realized this is precisely what a story like this would come up with.
This is a dumb book. It’s sort of smart about being dumb, but it’s honestly down to you if you can stand how ridiculous it’s being. As I said, this is no laugh out loud sort of deal for me, but I was entertained even as I was facepalming extensively. There is a way to play something this idiotic to make it work and I think this author’s got the knack for it.
3 stars. I don’t even know if I liked this stupid book, but I’m likely going to read another volume anyway. It takes the standard power fantasy and runs with it so far past any common sense that it becomes kind of enjoyable. I wouldn’t say I totally dug it, but I’m not ready to bury it just yet.
And this is Mark Reviewer, reminding you to help control the princess population - give them a spade and have them tutored.
I should just start a subcategory of shelves for books I read that are patently insane. If you thought your basic isekai had power creep, welcome to that idea taken to its absolute absurdist extreme, as Alan and his shovel basically tear apart the fabric of reality.
Outside of the plot, wherein Lithisia is trying to save the kingdom (although a little time with Alan means she might end up dooming it, just on a different schedule), nothing here makes a lick of sense. Alan has lived forever (this is currently not an isekai, but I have my suspicions) and learned many secret techniques with his shovel and all of them are Dragon Ball-esque in terms of overpower.
So, obviously, there are zero stakes in this book. Like none. There can’t be. By the time Alan has turned his shovel into a sniper rifle and then buried somebody halfway into a mud bath, we’re really and truly done pretending anything can stand up to him.
Which leaves the book with the task of being funny instead and I don’t think it’s a gut buster, but its commitment to escalating the bit is worth giving a little praise to. There’s a point where you kind of just throw up your hands and wait to see what’s next.
Alan’s mostly mining focused and giving crazy explanations for how he can do what he does. Lithisia turns out to be a lot more fun, first falling in love with Alan’s power and then escalating this to wholesale kingdom reform. By the time the book ends, in Lithisia’s mind the kingdom’s been renamed, has a new anthem, and its army has been completely converted to shovel knights (they ought to make a video game about it).
At first it feels like they’re trying to use shovel as a pun, but eventually it’s just showing up in place of other words nonstop. This is especially funny when Catria, Lithisia’s guard who has the unenviable role of straight woman, shows up. She is standing for none of this, but shovel-based words start slipping into her vocabulary anyway.
Even the fan service is so ludicrously done that it’s almost as bad as the shovel and hard to not laugh at. Lithisia is constantly trying to wrangle Alan into having relations because of a miscommunication (using ‘shovel’ as a euphemism for sex when it’s standing in for half the words in the book proves a bad call), culminating in an outdoor shovelling lesson that must be seen to be believed in how innuendo laced it is.
It’s hard to tell if the book is hitting its apex or nadir during these scenes, but Lithisia is clearly making a move by wearing the skimpiest schoolgirl outfit ever (Catria hilariously calls her out during all this) and it’s only equaled by an earlier scene where she’s naked (but covered up by the scenery, of course) and her breasts are literally oozing around an object in defiance of all physics.
Then Fio the elf shows up and the book lets you know it was only getting started in terms of both absurd shovel power and fan service. Fio’s “outfit” barely qualifies. It’s the sort of thing that I would normally roll my eyes at, and I still kind of do, but the book has clearly set itself a goal of being so over-the-top that it somehow laps itself to the point where I just shrugged and realized this is precisely what a story like this would come up with.
This is a dumb book. It’s sort of smart about being dumb, but it’s honestly down to you if you can stand how ridiculous it’s being. As I said, this is no laugh out loud sort of deal for me, but I was entertained even as I was facepalming extensively. There is a way to play something this idiotic to make it work and I think this author’s got the knack for it.
3 stars. I don’t even know if I liked this stupid book, but I’m likely going to read another volume anyway. It takes the standard power fantasy and runs with it so far past any common sense that it becomes kind of enjoyable. I wouldn’t say I totally dug it, but I’m not ready to bury it just yet.
And this is Mark Reviewer, reminding you to help control the princess population - give them a spade and have them tutored.
July 23, 2022
I have a high bar when it comes to crazy manga plots and characters, but wow how can a manga be this crazy and yet so bland. I didn't find it funny or engaging on any level. The princess quickly becomes insane and just is pure cringe. The miner Alan is so unbelievably overpowered that it goes past wish fulfillment, past funny all the way to boring.
None of the jokes land for me, I don't care about any of the characters, or the plot at all. The only reason it's not a one star is it isn't offensive, and the art is decent.
None of the jokes land for me, I don't care about any of the characters, or the plot at all. The only reason it's not a one star is it isn't offensive, and the art is decent.
January 29, 2025
The vibes are the same in the light novel. I would say the light novel gives more insight on the character mindset. Especially once they keep using the word shovel to replace other words. Still was nice to see the characters in an art form. This is definitely over the top skills with one weapon trope. The characters have some over exaggerated body proportions, but besides that it can be quite humorous. The Light novel is better if you have to choose between the 2.
November 13, 2021
Omg this manga was a bit funny. Basically it's dragon ball z but with a shovel and the main character Alan is Goku. Super op,dense, protective and all around nice guy. It's not a bad story give it a chance.
May 1, 2022
2.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews