Comment on AI-generated isekai novel that won a literary contest Grand Prize and Reader’s Choice award has its book publication and manga adaptation cancelled

VivianRixia@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  How much worse and generic could isekai slop possibly be than all the other isekai trash?

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  • Susaga@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Isekai may be “by the numbers”, but at least those numbers aren’t just ones and zeros.

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• CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I don’t know anything about this contest, but if it won the reader’s choice then doesn’t that mean the actual audience liked it? The isekai crowd is used to human made slop already to why not ai slop.

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  • Susaga@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Nah, it means it got the most votes. One vote doesn’t always translate to one person, and I’m fully willing to believe Reader’s Choice needs a better captcha system on its votes.

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• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Modest Skill “Tidying Up” is the Strongest! ~ Corporate Slave Office Lady Started An Accidental Isekai Revolution, and is Now Adored by the Head Knight and His Majesty the Emperor

  Wow. Let me try to fix this:

  The Revolution of the Office Janitor ~ She Got the Weakest Skills and Now She’s Adored by Everyone in Another World

  I didn’t read the slop (nor I will), but lemme build some simple setup:

  Saitou Kiyomi is a 44yo office janitor of a black company in Tokyo. She likes her job, but hates everything around it: the lack of proper working conditions, the ungratefulness of other workers there, the messy working hours, the boss dumping into her odd jobs she was not supposed to (like paperwork, bringing him coffee, taking care of children)…

  Then one day, going back from work 2AM, she finds a kitty. Craving for some company, she brings it home. Then she drinks a few too many cans of beer, and tells it her sorry story, without knowing the cat is actually a spirit in disguise. The spirit feels sorry for her and offers to reincarnate her into the magic world of Gahaski, where your experiences are crystallised into skills. And since she worked as a janitor for her whole life, she gets two skills:

  1. Clean - magically removes dirt
  2. Tidy - magically places something into its proper place.

  Those skills rely on what she considers as “dirt” or the “proper place” of something, so they’re extremely overpowered. One of the first things she does in the new world is to look herself at the mirror, and notice how old she was… when she said “damn, I wish I could clean some years off my face”, the cleaning magic activated and she became a 18yo. “Tidy” could be used to disarm opponents, by sending their weapons to the “proper place”; or even to jail criminals automatically.

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  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    “I cried in the part where she used tidy on the demon lord and he was banished back into the demon realm.”

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    • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It’s so easy, and it’s like passable, but step back and it’s just shit. Reminds me of Twilight tbf

      Tap for spoiler

      Final Chapter — The Last Thing That Belonged Somewhere The last demon waited where the sky was closest to breaking. Not in a throne of bone, nor in a sea of fire—but in the ruins of the old seal, sitting calmly atop a fallen monolith as if it had always been there. Its shape was almost human now, refined by centuries of war and adaptation. “You look tired,” it said kindly. Saitou Kiyomi felt tired. Her hands shook as she leaned on what remained of her broom—more handle than tool now, bound with wire and memory. The mountain wind cut through her coat. Her reflection in the demon’s eyes startled her: gray at the temples, lines around her mouth she had not seen in decades. Her power was nearly gone. Clean no longer answered unless she bled for it.
      Tidy flickered like a dying lamp. Behind her stood the children. No—her family. They had grown. The quiet girl held a blade inscribed with prayer-script, her stance perfect. The twins stood back to back, one wielding holy flame, the other binding seals with threads of light. The boy—the first—wore armor etched with vows instead of sigils. They lived because Kiyomi had hated dirt. Because she had believed that filth should not cling to children. Their resurrection had cost her everything. When the spirit had told her it was possible—only because their souls had risen clean to Heaven—she had not hesitated. Years vanished. Skills unraveled. Concepts she had rewritten returned to their original state. She paid willingly. Because a world without them was not a proper place. “Do you regret it?” the demon asked. “You could have been eternal.” Kiyomi stepped forward, pain flaring through joints that remembered being young. “I cleaned offices for thirty years,” she said. “Eternity sounds exhausting.” The demon smiled. “So be it.” It rose, and the sky screamed. The battle did not feel grand. It felt like work. The children moved as one—not perfect, but practiced. They fought with power earned through faith, discipline, and grief. Kiyomi supported where she could, sealing wounds manually, redirecting strikes, placing fallen weapons back into trembling hands. She did not command. She trusted. When the demon finally struck her down, she felt ribs crack and breath leave her body. The broom slipped from her fingers. Her family screamed. Kiyomi looked up at the sky—at the last tear still bleeding fire. “One more,” she whispered. Tidy answered. Not as a miracle. As a favor. She placed the demon. Not destroyed. Not erased. Returned. Back to the hell it had clawed its way from, sealed by the combined will of mortals who refused to be disposable. The sky closed. Silence fell. Kiyomi did not stand again. Her age returned all at once, like dust settling after a long day. Her hair went white. Her hands grew thin. The last warmth of magic drained from her chest. The children knelt beside her. “Is this… okay?” one asked, voice breaking. Kiyomi smiled. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Everything’s where it belongs.” She closed her eyes, not as a goddess, not as a hero— But as a woman who had finally finished her shift. Epilogue — A Place That Stays Clean Years later, the monastery stood again. Not as it was—but better. Stone laid by monks and masons. Beams raised by priests, shrine maidens, and travelers who believed differently but worked the same. Bells rang for no single god. The cottage halfway down the mountain was rebuilt too. Children’s laughter echoed there—new ones this time. The orphans—now adults—taught them how to sweep. Not magically. Properly. Slowly. On a wooden plaque near the entrance were carved simple words: This place is kept clean
      not because it must be
      but because someone cared. No one prayed to Saitou Kiyomi. But every morning, someone picked up a broom. And the world, for once, stayed just clean enough to live in.

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  • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    you gave me a good chuckle, consider my belly laughed

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  • astro_ray@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Sounds like a decent plot for a comedy if they can write it well.

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  • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Sorry couldn’t resist

    Tap for spoiler

    The bells of Asteria rang at dawn, bright and wrong. Saitou Kiyomi stopped sweeping the plaza halfway through a stroke. The sound scraped against her nerves like chalk on a board. Bells were for festivals, weddings, victories. This wasn’t any of those. People didn’t cheer. They whispered. “An Edict?” someone muttered. “From the Cathedral,” said another. “No—from the Palace.” Kiyomi sighed, resting both hands on the broom handle. Of course. When you tidy a world too well, eventually the people who enjoyed the mess come knocking. She had known this day would come. She’d just hoped it would be later. Preferably never. Since arriving in Gahaski, things had fallen into place—literally. Bandit gangs vanished overnight, their knives and clubs snapping neatly into evidence lockers they’d never seen before. Slums became livable when refuse simply… stopped existing. Corrupt officials found themselves waking up in cells, their ill-gotten gold “returned to its proper owner,” whatever that meant according to the magic. They called her many things now.
    Saint of Cleanliness.
    The Living Broom.
    The Witch Who Erases. Kiyomi hated all of them. She resumed sweeping. Habit was stronger than unease. The plaza stones gleamed, polished to a soft morning shine. She remembered another plaza—no, a station platform—back in Tokyo, where she’d scrubbed gum off tiles while pretending not to hear a manager shout her name like it was an insult. I just wanted things to be a little less dirty, she thought. Is that so wrong? The bells stopped. A ripple of silence spread, followed by the arrival of white-robed clerics and steel-armored knights. At their center walked a man whose clothes were immaculate in a way that made Kiyomi’s skin crawl. Not a speck of dust dared touch him. Not because of magic—because dozens of others were paid to ensure it. High Chancellor Verdan bowed, just enough to be polite, not enough to be humble. “Saitou Kiyomi,” he said, pronouncing her name carefully, like a document he’d read twice. “By decree of His Radiance the King, you are summoned.” Kiyomi leaned on her broom. “I’m on shift.” A murmur rippled through the knights. The Chancellor’s smile tightened. “The kingdom is in crisis,” he continued. “Order is collapsing. Institutions are… relocating themselves without authorization. Prisons are full beyond capacity. Treasuries are emptying into private homes. This ‘Tidy’ of yours—” “It puts things where they belong,” Kiyomi said simply. “And who,” Verdan asked, eyes sharpening, “decides where that is?” Kiyomi opened her mouth—and stopped. For the first time since coming to Gahaski, the answer didn’t come easily. She thought of the noble she’d sent to jail without a trial because everyone knew he was rotten. Of the temple vault whose gold had marched itself into the hands of starving villages. Of the mirror, weeks ago, when she’d casually wiped away twenty-six years like dust on glass. Where is the proper place… for power? “I do,” she said at last. The words felt heavier than they should have. Verdan nodded, as if that were the only answer he’d expected. “Then you must also accept responsibility for the consequences.” At his signal, a knight stepped forward and unrolled a parchment. Names spilled down it like a stain that wouldn’t wash out. Cities destabilized. Borders violated. Alliances broken overnight because a crown had decided it belonged “somewhere else.” “You are cleaning the world,” Verdan said softly. “But a world without dirt has no friction. Nothing to hold it together.” Kiyomi laughed, short and tired. “Funny. Back home, they told me the opposite. That if I worked harder, stayed later, cleaned more… things would hold together just fine.” She straightened, feeling the familiar hum beneath her skin—the magic responding to her mood. The plaza’s dust quivered, eager. Verdan took a cautious step back. “I won’t stop,” Kiyomi said. “But I will listen.” That surprised him. It surprised her too. Above them, unseen by all but her, a small cat-shaped spirit sat atop a roof beam, tail flicking. So, it thought, eyes gleaming. She’s reached the messy part. And for the first time since her reincarnation, Saitou Kiyomi wondered whether some things, once cleaned, could ever be put back where they belonged.

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    • lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Both this and the “Final Chapter” you shared in another comment are genuinely interesting. I love how you actually gave her some personality, since my prompt had nothing in this direction. She sounds stubborn, serious, meticulous. And no, they don’t sound like Twilight at all.

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  • baines@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    you’ll laugh but you would never need a condom again

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• baines@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  sounds like it belongs at the top of jp light novel lists

  everyone of them has the whole plot in the title

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