Fushi no Kami – Rebuilding Civilization Starts With a Village

Another isekai series that stats off good but ends with whimper.

Well, we have plethora of isekai series by 2023. There are so many but very few actually stand out. I’ve read dozens, probably not over a hundred but have certainly read tens of isekai series. Fushi no Kami is one of them.

The story starts with Ash being born in a small and remote farming village, Noscula. He has vague memories of his past and is clearly aware of how poor the village is. Now, calling this an isekai series is a bit of a stretch because Ash is born into far future. He is reincarnated into a future of the same world, about 2,000 years into future. The world he remembers is very similar to our current level of technology. The way the world is in his current time is similar to a medieval period with some of basic items missing due to natural resources being depleted.

For an example, any form of fossil fuels are gone because they were completely depleted by previous civilization. Some of basic commodities such as soap do exist but are monopolized by high nobles. Basically, majority of population don’t have access to basic hygiene.
Metal veins don’t appear to exist, either. But metal seems to be provided by monster parts. Basically, we are looking at a very unbalanced world. Books from previous civilizations exist and there are plenty of them except that no one can decipher the lost language.

This is where Ash comes in. He is also unable to read but is able to decipher due to his knowledge from the past. This allows him to reinvent lost technologies. Thus, he begins to rebuild the society from a humble village of Noscula.

Terrible chapter titles

Chapter titles make very little sense and are cynical. Properly named chapter titles help readers like me to skip some parts of stories. Alas, the way chapters are titled in this novel, they serve absolutely no purpose. Additionally, there are very few chapter titles to boot, making navigating the story by chapters virtually impossible and meaningless.

Sharp downfall

This is a subjective opinion, but the charm of this story faces a sharp, a cliff-like, downfall by end of volume 3. That is because, by end of volume 3, Ash the protagonist has achieved so much that he no longer has any obstacle in his path. Heavy feeling of stagnation dominates volume 4 and 5. It does pick up a little in final two volumes (6 and 7) due to having a story antagonist to appear. Alas, the villains are defeated so easily that it’s almost anticlimactic.

However, the story does have an ending which we can no longer take for granted nowadays. So many novels end up either being pulled by its publishers or are outright simply dropped by its authors. Having a proper ending, how anticlimactic it may be, is still far better than having none.

At least, it’s not a harem.

It’s not a harem. That has got to count for a positive point nowadays. However, you will be able to guess who he will end up with very quickly as in within 100 pages of volume 1. I guess the front covers don’t help, either.
There are A LOT of girls in the story and most of them end up with other guys although most of them appear to have hots for Ash… Hey, it’s not a harem at least. The girls seem to know that he’s taken.

At the end of the day….

I am going to say it’s a decent read simply because it has an ending and that it ends on volume 7. Basically, it ends before it gets so bad that I’d drop it. While there is no anime, there is manga which I’ve given a shot but wasn’t quite satisfied. There isn’t much content for manga to make a full judgement however.

I can see this series being animated fully with just 24 episodes if it’s ever animated. An anime series with an actual ending would be good because that’s really rare nowadays. Sadly, the ending we’ve got from the novel isn’t quite up to satisfactory because the author fails to close a lot of plot holes.

I’d give this 5 out of 10 which I consider average.