By Tamamaru and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Kajiya de Hajimeru Isekai Slow Life” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Linda Liu.

Apologies for being a broken record in the reviews of this series, but My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World has a “boring” problem. Yes, I know, “Quiet Life”, it’s that sort of series. I get it. And I’m used to a great deal of the book being detailed descriptions of Eizo making swords or spears or what have you. But usually the second half of the book has things pick up and gives us actual plot. That technically happens here, but… look, let me sum up what happens: they go on a rescue mission. They find the person. They escape. No one ever confronts them, and there are no fights. There’s Quiet Life and then there’s Dreary Life, y’know? What’s more, Eizo once again points out that he has no plans to have sex with anyone or get romantically involved with anyone, as he doesn’t want his line to carry on, so even though we get another addition to the household this time around, harem fans are also annoyed.

The first half of the book is essentially the Quiet Blacksmith Life part. Eizo and his family meet a beastman friend of Samya’s, fight another huge bear (this time far more successfully), and make lots of swords. They even discover a new restaurant in town… though it doesn’t seem to be doing too well. Then there’s a more troublesome problem: there’s an Empire next door, and they’re about to have a revolution of the common people. The actual problem is that they somehow got Helen captured, and Eizo has been asked to help go and save her. Can they infiltrate the Empire, find Helen, rescue her, and escape without anything horrible happening? Yes. See above paragraph.

There are other things that annoyed me here as well. The author straight up states that Helen was captured so easily and acted like a stereotypical helpless kidnapping victim so that she could “show off a more feminine side”, which made my eyes roll so far back in my head I think I broke them. Given that she’s one of the strongest women in the series, and was deliberately shown to be a badass over and over again, that’s annoying, especially as the book ends with her moving in and becoming one of Eizo’s wives… OK, they’re not romantically involved, but they want to be. I’d say this is a plot point, but it’s also not going anywhere, as he has no desires and they’re not rocking any boats. The author also introduced Jolanda and Athena as “novel only” characters, separate from the webnovel, and insists they’re there to add women to Eizo’s life that aren’t living with him. I give it 2-3 books.

Basically, I think I’ve decided to step off the bus here. This is a pleasant, nice series with a number of cute young women and a male lead who is “nice”. It’s basically the standard isekai harem fantasy, only written for 40 year olds rather than 20 year olds. If you want that, great. I’ll read something else.