DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

MANGA AdventureKumo desu ga, Nani ka?
ANIME ActionKumo desu ga, Nani ka?
MANGA ComedyKumo desu ga, Nani ka?: Kumoko Sisters no Nichijou
NOVEL AdventureKumo desu ga, Nani ka? Ex

REVIEWS

• 

  enricoc01

  95/100
  Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? is a perfect example for the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover!"

  __Kumo Desu Ga, Nani Ka ( So I’m a Spider, So What? ) “Don’t judge a book by its cover!”__

  Well, I think everyone once looked to a book and said “What a lame cover/premisse, there is no way this book is good.” And I confirm it, I already did it once, but regreted when I actually read the book ( it was a manga actually, Oyasumi Punpun for the curious ). So, after learning the lesson, I never judged a book by its cover, and then, when I came across Kumo Desu Ga, Nani Ka, I thought “Hm, an isekai when the girl reincarnates as a spider? Unusual, I’ll give a try.” At the time, I would never thought that this novel would completely obliterate my expectations and become one of my favourites.

  Kumo Desu Ga is a light novel written by Okina Baba and illustrated by Tsukasa Kiryuu. The synopsis is: “When a explosion occurs on a Japanase classroom, one of the high schoolers reincarnates as a spider on the most dangerous and bigger dungeon on the alternative world, the Great Elroe Labyrinth. Thus begins a little spider's journey of clawing, biting, and plotting her way to the top. Forced to confront the powerful beings that reign over the Great Elroe Labyrinth and beyond, she will gradually uncover the truth behind the mysterious fantasy world and the explosion that sent her there.

  So yeah, this is the synopsis and, albeit it does not look that compelling, since the MC is a spider and all, but I can say for sure that it is a lot better than you think.

  I’ll split my review and sections, and then I’ll talk about each of them. I will maybe break and talk about a section in another section, but I’ll try to focus on the respective section. I read 10 volumes of the LN, just to everybody know. This review is spoiler-free, so rest assured to read. I just comment some things indirectly, so don't worry that it won't ruin your experience.

  • Plot , storytelling and narration

  First things first, I think everybody, when wondering if it is worth to read a book, thinks of the plot, especially when the book in question is fantasy. And, man, Kumo Desu Ga has a huge and wonderful plot, enhanced by the storytelling. What I mean by this? Plot is what happens, while storytelling is the way the plot is told to us, readers. That’s the reason that most novels are better than others. Some can have better plots, but the storytelling plays a huge role on the quality of it. Ok, I’m not here to talk about this, so let’s focus on Kumo Desu Ga.

  The plot of Kumo Desu is wide, huge, unpredictable and much deeper that I though. I mean, when I saw that the novel is an isekai with a spider, I didn’t expect to have a huge plot. I was expecting something akin to a surviving history and maybe somethins else, but it sure blew my expectations. I am not gonna spoil anyone, so rest assured, but I can say that it is the closest to be a desconstruction of the isekai genre. I mean, Re:Zero and Torture Princess are more different from most isekais, but they focus more on the fantasy world than the classic isekai tropes. Kumo Desu does not only that, but includes the fantasy genre to make something else. For the curious ones that don’t mind spoilers, you can check vol 7 and vol 9 to know what I’m talking about, albeit I recommend you to read all of the series before searching for spoilers. Especially in vol 9, when I gave 10 to the series. Maaaaaaaaaan, this is not what apparently is! That’s all I can tell for you without spoiling.

  Well, I think for the plot this is what I can tell, but, for me, the storytelling plays a major role in the novel. The first phase of the novel consists in Kumoko trying to survive in the dungeon and leveling up, getting strong to fight tougher enemies. And this is really compelling! The system of skills, which is the basis of this world,, is one of the things that keep me hooked. Wanting to know what will happen when certains skill level up is really nice and addictive! And the evolutions is another thing. When certains creature reaches a level, they can evolve, and this got me hooked too.

  The change of POVs is reallt good and enhances your understanding of the world. On one hand, you have Kumoko and her jouney of surviving in the dungeon. On the other hand, you have Schun living in the royal surroundings. These two POVs complements each other and enhances the novel, for me. And it is not limited to these two. The POVs reaches almost all of the main and secondary characters. I’ll talk more about it in the Characters section.

  And, lastly, the narration. Kumo Desu has a 1 person narration and, albeit I usually don’t like it too much, here is it perfectly done! What I mean? Well, for starters, it didn’t focus on one characters. 1 person narration is usually done to close the space between the reader and the characters, so you usually focus the book almost entirely on the main characters. But here in Kumo Desu there is no such a thing. The POVs changes every chapter and focus on different characters, and this didn’t affect Kumoko, our protagonist. On the contrary, we have different positions about her ant her actions. And we get to know the other characters a bit more. I’ll save this for the Characters sections too.

  Kumoko’s narration is great!! “Naaaai waaaaa.” This is the classic phrase of her, and we know because she talks this a lot of times! Being close to her, hearing her thoughts, reading her actions, make us, readers, survive with her, fight with her, cry with her, be happy with her! Man, I can’t convey my thoughts very well, but you know when you get so close to a character that you start to fell what they fell? Yes, Kumoko is one of this characters!

  • Characters

  Let’s talk about characters. Characters are the most important part of a book. Albeit there are some plot-drive books, even they have to have good characters, because they are what make us want to read the book. And Kumo Desu has a wide arsenal of awesome characters! The majority of them has a great development and growth, and when I say majority, I really mean this! And the others that don’t have any of this, are lovely on their own way. Seriously, all of the characters are good and nice!

  Kumoko is a really good character and protagonist! We are so entranced by her that we start to feel what she feels. There is a certain scene in vol 1, that she felt so lonely, so sad, so lost that I started to cheer for her. “She made something bad? I don’t care. Go, Kumoko! Go get what you deserve!” I thought things like this a lot of times in a single volume, and I generally don’t cheer characters like this. Like, I feel sad for them, be happy with them, but actively cheer them is unusual. Her personality is one of the things that I like about her. Really cheerful, passionate, lovely, cute, determined, focused, twisted ( hehe ) and human. Yes, she is a spider, but she is actually a human, and we can feel her sorrow, her determination in survive the dungeon, and I relly felt that.

  Also, in vol 9, we get a revelation about her, and maaaaaaaaaaaaan, that was when I gave 10 to the series and fuck the world! Truly amazing and well-done!

  I focused on Kumoko, but there are a lot of good characters. Sophia, Ariel, Potimas, Dustin, Ronandt, 4 little spiders, Merazophis, Wrath, Guli-Guli, Ms. Oka, Fei, Katia. All of them are good characters on their own way. If I can say which one is the better, aside from Kumoko, I would say Ariel. She is AMAZING! Truly lovely and the best character, for me! You start hating her, but then, with the volumes going by, you don’t even know but you are loving her!

  • Worldbuilding

  Worldbuilding. I think this is a fairly topic when talking about high fantasy. Another world, another creatures, another social ethics, another world. Kumo Desu Ga creates a wonderful world, which has his own rules, history, culture, geography and politics.

  The system, which reigns the world, is the best feature for me, since it provides a leeway to the writer works on it. And the story behind it is one of the mysteries of the world.

  The history of the world is one of the biggest mysteries for me. I mean, we got glimpses of it, but it is not what is supposed to be. Vol 7, I think, gave us hints on what the world is, but we don’t know yet. And it is promising to be amazing!

  The secrets of the world are something that is gonna take a while to be reveled, since it is such a bigger mysterie of the novel, but I can say for sure that is going to be amazing. Vol 10 gave us hints about it too.

  • Language

  The language os this light novel is easy. As a brazilian, I can say for sure that this novel has a fairly easy language. The only things that I had to look on the dictionary was a few skill’s names and titles. Aside from that, even the scenery description was easy, albeit good.

  • Style

  The author does not have a distinctive style of writing. But this is not something bad. On the contrary, it is normal. Few author have a distinctive style that you came upon one paragraph and can tells “oh, this is x author.” Just saying for the sake of the review.

  • Overall: 10/10

  After saying all of this, I came to give the verdict. Should I read Kumo Desu Ga? YES. Totally. 100% YES. This novel is a fucking masterpiece, a subversion of the isekai fantasy medieval genre, or at least the closes to do this. The novel keeps you hooked on the story, makes you want to read more and more and more and never stops, and when you read the last thing you can, you enter in a depression state because you can’t read more!

  My tip would be: read without expectations. I think it is for the best, but yes, read it, it is totally amazing!

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• 

  Pelouch

  90/100
  I'm a Spider, So What? The Complete Series Review

  Yup all 16 volumes. Spoilers are behind spoiler tags

  This is a story about a socially inept spider, a really cool Demon Lord, a generic Isekai Hero, his harem(ofc) and his awesome older brother, an extremely dedicated teacher and a self proclaimed evil God. And that's just the tip of the Iceberg.

  It has 4 main threads which I call Main Spider thread, Isekai Hero thread, Demon Lord thread and Teacher or elves thread with 3 main arcs The Beginning arc volumes 1-5, The Apotheosis arc volumes 6-10, and the Sariel Arc volumes 12-16, Volume 11 is a completely different thing which I call catching up with Julius.

  Characters
  I have to start with the characters otherwise explaining the story would be impossible, the thing is this LN has a wealth of characters so I'm just gonna include the super big shots

  Spider: The titular character with a ton of personality, I'm going to call her S for spoiler reasons and also for short, she is what gets the series moving, reading her inner monologue is a treat she's the kind of character that only a God can disturb.

  Shun(Schlain): the annoying generic Isekai Hero, he's unfortunately integral to the story, he's sheltered from both lives and is the righteous hero archetype played straight, his one saving grace is that every character around him is at least somewhat interesting while most of them are really interesting, he's brothers with Julius.

  Julius: Shun's elder brother and the true Hero in his own right.(His artwork is the one on the banner)

  Ariel: The Demon Lord with a turbulent past. I can't say much cause spoilers but she's awesome, she shows up at the end of arc 1.

  Sophia: Reincarnated as a Vampire she "sides with the Administrators", she plays important roles in all the arcs.

  Admin D: The mysterious self proclaimed evil God.

  Potimas and Oka: The leader of the elves and his Daughter, Oka is a reincarnated teacher who wants to save her students.

  Kuro or Güile: An admin subordinate to D, he plays a role towards the end so can't say much about him

  Anyway those are the major players most characters are treated well and have satisfactory arcs even the minor ones, except for maybe Oka who kinda fizzles out in the end in favor of everyone least favorite hero Shun who loves to hog the spotlight even a tricky character like D is well developed

  Story
  A freak accident happened in a classroom in Japan and as a result everyone got Isekai'd + Tensei'd, unfortunately for our MC she drew the short end of the stick and got reincarnated as a really weak baby monster spider in the bottom level of the most dangerous labyrinth in the world, fortunately this world is fairly gamelike and she's gonna use that to survive.

  So like I mentioned before this series has 3 arcs The Beginning or the Elroe Labyrinth arc which is half S figuring out the Isekai world game like system to survive and escape and half setup for Shun and Oka and some other reincarnations, plus a bunch of foreshadowing it's honestly kinda painful because Shun is the pov most of the time, the timeline is a bit messy and the setup can get annoying but it definitely 100% pays off.

  In the second arc Apotheosis we ditch Shun (good riddance) and we drop all pretenses of gamelike elements and focus on S, the Demon Lord Ariel and their allies in a trip to demon lands as we learn a bunch of truths about the world, this arc is mostly through S perspective. I said it ends on volume 10 but the actual cutoff point is:

  Shiro's(spider MC) chat face to face with D and Shiro telling Ariel that her plan to save the world is pointless.

  Lastly the third arc Sariel, well explaining this arc is all spoilers.

  Shiro explains to Ariel the truth of the world so they shift focus to wipe out the elves to save Oka and thus the reincarnations on her behalf and Saving Sariel from the system.

  In this arc S takes a much more background role than ever before as the author delivers payoff after payoff for all the setup and we focus on basically everyone else.

  So the story is great but the way of writing is pretty weird, the author is often self deprecating because the main character is a spider but my favorite LN has the MC as a bear and there's another good one with the MC as a sword so there's nothing to be ashamed of, imo the human MC Shun is the problem the payoff to his story is great but the character himself is not that good, to rub salt in the wound there was a perfectly good substitute available in the form of Julius but alas.

  Volume 11 is also a big irregularity since it's kinda pointless:

  I'm all for catching up with Julius but he's been essentially dead since volume 4 so it's hard to get invested basically volume 11 is about 90% side stories, this series has a tendency to re-tell the same events from multiple povs so that makes volume 11 somewhat redundant too, the whole Sariel business was also a bit of a dud for me, I was in the same boat as Shiro when I say that I only cared about Sariel because Ariel did.

  I also have a few gripes about the ending:

  The fact that D set everything up to mess up with Shiro big time only to ditch everything by telling Oka and Company how to win by facing her as the final boss was tbh underwhelming, now is my personal theory that D got fed up with everything and just wanted to end the series to go play with Shiro but it remains that the last volume has a distinct Shiro deficit she even cries cause she was forced to forfeit her battle against Kuro because of D even though she was totally gonna win.

  Art
  It's great, the character designs are always on point, is not that big of a deal for a LN but it contributes a lot to the atmosphere and world.

  Closing thoughts
  I find impressive that despite going without main girl S for volumes at a time, having an irregular writing format and having a garbage main(ish) character like Shun the story is still great and totally worth reading, the humor is great too, mostly thanks to S, in fact there's a joke that's set up in volume 5 only to be paid off in volume 13, that's some real dedication, there's also some mysteries here and there and it's all really well written like the transition from gamelike rpg Isekai to a more conventional type of story in the second arc is way smoother than it has any right to be. If you like spiders, rpg elements and/or multiple story threads or really because Kumoko(our favorite spider MC) is awesome give this a shot it's real good.

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• 

  ThyMrMan

  75/100
  A very enjoyable series I loved, but not flawless.

  Well after starting to read the web novel 5+ years ago in high school but never finishing, I have finally read and finished the final light novel series that resulted from that web novel. And in the end I think it was worth the very long wait, that is for sure. I ended up binge reading all 16 volumes over the course of 4 days, and don’t really regret doing so. This was an immensely enjoyable story, and I didn’t really hate all that about the series at all. In the end, I could fully recommend this book series to somebody.

  So what exactly is this novel series about, and how does it work over the course of 16 books and probably somewhere close 4000 pages. Well at it’s heart it is a unique isekai novel series, in which a classroom of people end up reincarnated to another world. And therefore get involved closely with everything that happens in that world going forward, along with directly influencing the future of that world. With the slightly unique twists being the involvement of gods, and how they have influenced the world everyone just reincarnated in.

  Along the way we get a large cast of unique and special characters. Many different power-ups and form changes and all those things you would expect from a long series such as this. And I can say by the end I enjoyed all the characters you meet along the way. I didn’t hate any of the characters, or get annoyed at the choices the characters made. The characters all felt real and individual, and proceeded in their own ways that made sense to each character.

  In the end, things don’t get exactly as you would expect. And many of the novels do things that will surprise you and make you question what you knew previously. Changing the viewpoints and knowledge of the world in massive ways. In the end, you start to piece things together and it starts to make some sense. But to say anymore I will need to entire spoiler territory I feel, so read with your own caution below in the spoilers. But I can recommend the series I do believe.

  Full Series Spoilers Below

  While I do enjoy the series, I think it has some flaws. Which in general relates to the structure of the novels, along with the general flow and pacing.

  To start, I feel incredibly bad for anybody who was waiting patently for each novel to release, and reading along as they released. I honestly think that would be the worst way to read this series, and I probably would have just dropped it.

  See, the novel’s don’t actually start off in a linear fashion. You have two separate timelines running in parallel throughout about the first 5 books. And you don’t realize this is happening at all outside of some pretty minor references you could easily miss. And right when you are getting this big stand off, and just waiting to see how this proceeds. You have all these characters meeting for the first time, a ton of tension. There is no payoff, at least no payoff for essentially 10 more books. Yea…

  At some point the author Okina Baba decided to change the structure of the series, don’t remember if this happened in the original web novel or not. But essentially you have a record scratch/freeze frame moment and get rid of the whole parallel story’s for the rest of the series. And we go back to just following the main character in the spider. And that becomes the focal point as we see her continuing to gain power and allies and changing the world. With the knowledge that eventually we will reach the point that book 5 was at, eventually.

  Than interspersed between those chapters we get to follow the various side characters. Learn about their struggles and backstories. Mainly filling out the cast, and helping us understand all the other characters in this massive cast list. Sometimes these stories run in parallel or sometimes going back to where it all started for that character. And for the most part that stuff works great.

  Until you have book 11, which is entirely focused on the original hero character from those first couple books. Whom we already know will die along with the rest of his party. Honestly it is kinda worse than that, because we already know the fates of all these characters. Since we saw a majority of who lived in book 5, you kinda lose some tension in fights after this. It is honestly the issue with most stories which attempt to do this, unless they decide to play with reader expectation and have that moment being some parallel universe of something. Which this isn’t.

  But if I had one other issue with this series, is I kinda feel like something was lost with the transition in the main character after the first 5 books. I can’t really explain it, and I still enjoyed them. But for the first 5 books, just from the main characters point of view it was a very unique and fun story. You felt like you were along with them for their challenges and growth and rooting for the character the whole way. And yet after that 5th book, it almost felt more like watching a character mark off a list of requirements. Almost want to compare it to a RPG quest log, and that kinda goes for all the characters. You have the feeling you know what they need to do, and you kinda know where they end up. So your just watching them make slow progress down the list as they get closer to that point. Honestly can’t really say the issue, but just something felt lost.

  Final thought to wrap up this massive review/final thoughts. The final couple books really started to feel a bit rushed. You start getting the feeling that things are being pushed along in a very haphazardly way, and just not as well crafted as the first 5 books. Things also start getting a bit predicable. You can guess something surprising will happen and vaguely what it will be so it isn’t really a surprise at all. And along the way it makes it a bit more dull than it really should.

  Side note I just thought about. This series really could be a pretty decent JRPG, honestly has all the general points already there. A hero party that is full of tragic backstory and a good reason to grow and expand. Characters you thought were enemies the whole time were actually allies, and also have very tragic stories. Multiple moments you could loose all hope and regain it at. A very large map hard goal that needs to be reached in the end. Yea, a JRPG following the main hero's journey could probably work rather well.

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