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The Weakest Contestant of All Space and Time #1
The Weakest Contestant of All Space and Time Vol. 1
A depressed salaryman must fight for his life in an intergalactic battle royal–but instead he teams up with his fellow weaklings to turn the tables!
Hitomu is a young salaryman with a monotonous life until he is transported to another world. Now he’s forced to fight to the death in an interdimensional gladiator tournament!
After losing repeatedly, Hitomu is set against four weakling opponents. But instead of fighting them, he escapes, breaking out his fellow “losers” with a ghost boy, a slime girl, a useless robot, and a bug monster. Now fugitives on a hostile planet, the motley crew must rely on each other to survive!
Hitomu is a young salaryman with a monotonous life until he is transported to another world. Now he’s forced to fight to the death in an interdimensional gladiator tournament!
After losing repeatedly, Hitomu is set against four weakling opponents. But instead of fighting them, he escapes, breaking out his fellow “losers” with a ghost boy, a slime girl, a useless robot, and a bug monster. Now fugitives on a hostile planet, the motley crew must rely on each other to survive!
194 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2022
7 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 18, 2022
Hitomu is a useless salaryman, apparently the most useless thing in our entire universe, even, which is why he’s selected by god to compete in a multi-versal contest to determine who the most useless being in all time and space (right there on the tin). But during the final match, he and his fellow losers decide to make a run for it, prompting a wild chase that just might bring out the best in everybody…
But probably won’t. If there’s a single word description for this story, it’s annoying. Basically, this is about to turn into the lament of the wasted premise, so you can skip to the end if you’ve heard this one before.
The concept here is solid. There are tons of useless things that don’t offer very much to the world, seagulls come to mind, so having them all flail about in concert and luck into their victories isn’t the worst idea and the multiple dimensions allow for lots of wild creativity too.
And you can make a good story about a hopeless wastrel who gets by solely by dumb luck; Terry Pratchett made several very successful Discworld novels from this very concept. But you need to want to spend time with the characters, and that’s where this starts to fall apart.
These characters are, minus Hitomu, fairly interesting. The ghostly Tofu Brat, a Dragon Quest slime (at least until she mutates into the series’ fan service), a Pokémon whose only power is to vomit in the face of danger, and a housekeeping robot programmed for war. They’re derivative, but amusingly so.
And their personalities all suck. Interesting is one thing, but these self-serving assholes, again, minus the slime, who absorbs Hitomu’s blood and turns into a girl modelled on one who rejected him years ago, do nothing worthwhile except grate on the nerves.
That’s the entire point, but you can’t have this many characters be this irredeemable for this long. It’s seriously pure hell. And that’s not even counting the unnecessary gore tossed in here.
Yes, gods can be capricious and fickle, no kidding, read some mythology, but that being said, I don’t need to see the brain of a cartoon pig after his head is bisected by one of these gods throwing a hissy fit. This mix of edgelord content with such a silly premise really sucks the oxygen out of the room.
Hitomu is so pathetic and wishy-washy, he has an agonizing series of panels trying to justify the truck that’s about to kill him getting him time off work, that he’s positively detestable. He’s such a loser and we see him dying in some fairly grisly panels that don’t manage to drum up the measliest bit of sympathy for him.
By the time the book ends and the five of them stumble into a win, partially fuelled by Hitomu being so tacky that he wants to go out staring at a pair of breasts and this leads to him being set on fire (shame that didn’t take), the thought of spending more time with him is excruciating.
1.5 stars - I couldn’t bear the thought of another one of these, but I’ll round up because somebody might like it. The idea of a bunch of misfits coming together to eke out a win isn’t a bad one, but they already nailed that idea in Guardians of the Galaxy and this manga doesn’t even have a talking raccoon.
But probably won’t. If there’s a single word description for this story, it’s annoying. Basically, this is about to turn into the lament of the wasted premise, so you can skip to the end if you’ve heard this one before.
The concept here is solid. There are tons of useless things that don’t offer very much to the world, seagulls come to mind, so having them all flail about in concert and luck into their victories isn’t the worst idea and the multiple dimensions allow for lots of wild creativity too.
And you can make a good story about a hopeless wastrel who gets by solely by dumb luck; Terry Pratchett made several very successful Discworld novels from this very concept. But you need to want to spend time with the characters, and that’s where this starts to fall apart.
These characters are, minus Hitomu, fairly interesting. The ghostly Tofu Brat, a Dragon Quest slime (at least until she mutates into the series’ fan service), a Pokémon whose only power is to vomit in the face of danger, and a housekeeping robot programmed for war. They’re derivative, but amusingly so.
And their personalities all suck. Interesting is one thing, but these self-serving assholes, again, minus the slime, who absorbs Hitomu’s blood and turns into a girl modelled on one who rejected him years ago, do nothing worthwhile except grate on the nerves.
That’s the entire point, but you can’t have this many characters be this irredeemable for this long. It’s seriously pure hell. And that’s not even counting the unnecessary gore tossed in here.
Yes, gods can be capricious and fickle, no kidding, read some mythology, but that being said, I don’t need to see the brain of a cartoon pig after his head is bisected by one of these gods throwing a hissy fit. This mix of edgelord content with such a silly premise really sucks the oxygen out of the room.
Hitomu is so pathetic and wishy-washy, he has an agonizing series of panels trying to justify the truck that’s about to kill him getting him time off work, that he’s positively detestable. He’s such a loser and we see him dying in some fairly grisly panels that don’t manage to drum up the measliest bit of sympathy for him.
By the time the book ends and the five of them stumble into a win, partially fuelled by Hitomu being so tacky that he wants to go out staring at a pair of breasts and this leads to him being set on fire (shame that didn’t take), the thought of spending more time with him is excruciating.
1.5 stars - I couldn’t bear the thought of another one of these, but I’ll round up because somebody might like it. The idea of a bunch of misfits coming together to eke out a win isn’t a bad one, but they already nailed that idea in Guardians of the Galaxy and this manga doesn’t even have a talking raccoon.
October 3, 2023
Tired of OP isekai MCs? Wanna have a protagonist that DOESN'T get a waifu harem immediately upon popping up in another world? Wish there was a bit more... dread in your portal fantasy manga? Well, then maybe this is the book for you...
December 9, 2022
Sorta boring their just running away the whole time
October 26, 2023
Interesting premise, decent execution. Let's see how the next volume continues it on
July 6, 2024
Fun and silly
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews