It’s a supervillain story at the academy. It’s got all the tropes and bs you can imagine. The characters are caricatures and your typical 200 iq boss villain little girl, etc. Bland main character, future knowledge of events etc. Etc.

I’m not going to judge you if you like this story- people should have fun reading- but there’s no humor or action or drama that you can’t find somewhere else. It’s painfully tr*shy, and there’s no suspense of disbelief. Even the explanations are just info dumps that really don’t make any... more>> sense.

In my opinion it’s crazy that people can make a living writing like this, but hey. Talent wouldn’t be talent if everyone had it. <<less

I'll start off by saying that this is a phenomenal story. I have to correct my rating to 4 stars later when my brain isn't mush cause it's 2 am. Certain novels just really rope me in and this world makes sure you know exactly why everything is happening backed up by fictional world history. And it does this with good pace in my mind. Everything about this world is explained, even down to social attitudes. And I love that our MC takes on the role of not even a... more>> student but some bum ass librarian instead.

However.

I can understand being prideful in your country, but this? I don't even have words for. The nationalism in this novel is a malignant cancer the author can't manage to shut the f*ck up about for longer than three lines. They may as well have had only the nation of Korea exist in this world, considering it is the only powerful country, and which all others cream their pants at, and all would like very much to be stepped on by mommy Korea.

The author plays off his korea fetish as a joke that the og author was like that and a hefty helping would be understandable with that setting but I'm pretty sure this man had his Johnson out and was stroking it while he wrote most of this from how often characters must clarify just how great Korea is.

Even after saying all of this I still have not conveyed how intense the nationalism is. The English language does not have the words to describe this... or at least I don't when I'm this tired.

TL;DR: the author spends the whole book pissing and shitting at the thought of his home nation and somewhere in there is a fantastic story <<less

I really like this story for one reason: worldbuilding worldbuilding worldbuilding.

*note: this is technically a "transmigrated into a book" novel, except the character transferred into (the goblin) is basically completely unknown, and the theoretical main character of the book cannot be found.

To be honest, writing good superhero/villain universes is really hard. The general strategy is to give every individual some random special ability, usually with basically zero limits. This results in a weird power creep vs. Suspension of disbelief dichotomy: at some point, the new power that's unveiled makes zero... more>> sense and has no real explanations, nobody knows why any of it is happening, and every in-universe scientist has taken a shotgun to their own face. This does not do that. Incredibly mild spoilers, but basically all superheroes have the ability to realize their imagination, and there's nothing stopping any individual from having any power set they want, as long as they properly understand what it is that they are doing. The thing that decides hero rank is skill and amount of mana, both of which can be increased. As the story goes on, it starts unfurling this massive web of corruption, propaganda, population manipulation, and hypocrisy that throws the entire concept of hero vs. Villain for several loops. In many ways, it's a much more realistic or down to earth version of what a surveillance state would do with sudden superhero children.

This is what makes MC so strong (He's not quite OP, he's more or less specialized in single-target beatdowns and infiltration/escape). He is really good at realizing whatever he wants to, and specializes his fighting style for his opponents. This (and some book knowledge) makes him very good at coaching others on their powersets, by taking what he knows of their future powers and explaining how to realize them.

The general background story is that MC is a gentleman villain who works for <insert "evil" but for the good of the world bad guy group here> and his main job is killing other evildoers. For a bit of other background, South Korea is now the center of the world because it has the highest concentration of mana for some reason (and as such by living there you get stronger much faster). So he's ordered to go to the main hero academy and snoop around & convert heroes to his organization's side.

The story has this weird style of being obnoxiously pro-korean to a ludicrous degree (because the "original book" was written by a fanatic nationalist) and the MC being so fed up with it (but still very korean. The authorial voice is still a little too jazzed about Korea I'd say). You can mostly ignore it, but there's a lot of interesting info about how world cultures have changed in this alternate reality.

There is harem/romance! For those afraid, don't worry it's not your standard "5 walking bundles of tropes and b**bs throwing themselves at a random guy for no reason" harem, as there's a lot of actually detailed conversations and interactions that feel at least plausibly real. There are deep conversations, and dates, and very little fan service type interactions. It's also worth noting that romance undercurrent is not the focus of the story, but also doesn't disrupt the main story, as his goal of "converting heroes to villains" can be pretty easily achieved through, well, you know. Generally, MC is aiming for friendship and gets a little confused when this overshoots his goals, but he's not a moron and also not morally pure so he'll use what he can. MC also kinda has a wife (the leader of the evil organization) and their interactions are fun. He won't make advances without her permission which is funnier. <<less

TLDR this is an exceptional 8 out of 10 novel, bordering on 9. Focused entirely on the characters and the world setting, with heavy philosophical/ moral aspects to it. Like someone wishes to change a corrupt system from the inside whereas another wants to abolish it entirely and start anew. It goes in depth about the 'phenomenon' that led to 'mana' coming to earth and the societal and economic impact it has had. It also has quite decent action elements in it. (the academy part is almost nonexistent)

It is... more>> much, much more than the tr*shy synopsis/ description makes you think. Not that these recent korean novel synopses are any good. That aside let me quickly get these 2 misconceptions out of the way-

• • 1- "this novel is obnoxiously pro-korean nationalistic" This novel is SATIRE. It constantly criticizes this 'nationalism' as propaganda and brainwashing meant to control the public. In fact, this propaganda is one of the core story points in the novel that the government uses. Its like- "Oh? You're Approaching Me?"
    "I can't beat the sh*t out of you without getting closer."
    of course the story talks about the over-the-top shallow nationalism, how else can it criticize that? Also no the (irl) author is not secretly jerking himself off while writing all this because he's 'secretly' nationalistic. He actually called the government and its mindless supporters as "CulturalTaliban", you cannot possibly convince me he secretly meant this as a compliment. That they truly carry out domestic terrorism and human experiments, blaming it on the 'villains' if found. Also other countries too are brought up from time to time and no they are not perfect either.

• • 2- "the MC transmigrated into some noname goblin villain". This is 100% not true. the goblin in the 'original novel' was the MAIN villain throughout. The goblin was the first and the last boss. Its the kind of villain that grew along with the original protagonist culminating with the goblin actually *succeeding* to 'win' over the protagonist, and the protagonist then destroys the world in annoyance. So no, it wasnt some random guy. He became the primary antagonist.

So aside from these baseless concerns what is left? Its a romance/ harem novel. Basically almost entirely about the overarching world plot + romance with ideological discussions sprinkled in. A large part of the romance even based on the philosophical discussions they have. It builds the world from ground up. That these super powered individuals appeared after the year 2000 thus the governments do everything in their power to control them. That if their ego 'breaks' they turn to the darkness. The 'darkness' here is not some metaphysical satan but the 'inner demons' that are often brought up in martial arts novels. The surface form of imitating satan is only their imagination at work. That these children are seen as 'tools'. That non-superpower babies are abandoned and more and more.

It does have its flaws however. The over insistence on the MC's 'body' and that he's just so damn handsome only serves to dilute the truly good points about him. The MC also sometimes blatantly tries to mislead the reader, he says at the start that he's only a villain because of capitalism except that is 100% not the case as is stated later on, its purely due to ideals. The pacing also has issues, the author builds a beautiful picture of a bridge and shoes on the side and a basket nearby and the MC panicking after seeing the basket and taking it and running... Then right after that it destroys all the nuance by simply telling you the 'what happened'.

Overall like I said it still is an extremely good novel that I would definitely recommend you read if you like these genres (that I mentioned, most of the tags here on NU are technically true but also misleading.) <<less