Did I Seriously Just Get Reincarnated as My Gag Character?! is not a manga that has a lot of surprises, but it is surprisingly sweet and comfy to read.

Look, I've made no secret of my general disdain for wish-fulfillment isekai stories. At best, such stories evoke the experience of eating an entire bag of Halloween candy, wherein whatever short-lived rush from each initial bite is eventually subsumed beneath a sickening feeling of excess. But the worst of them tend to be deeply mean-spirited and take a perverse joy in giving absolute power to the audience surrogate character without any regard for storytelling conventions or decency. Did I Seriously Just Get Reincarnated as My Gag Character?! manages to sidestep most of these issues, for which I am grateful.

Firstly, Toru/Nacht (who I will refer to as Nacht and with a she/her pronoun throughout this review) uses this newfound power to do actual good. Not necessarily good in the greater cosmic or even altruistic sense – though from a certain perspective it could be seen as such. No, Nacht uses her power to help others around her, particularly Aisha. Nacht treats Aisha as a peer, if not exactly an equal, and their dynamic really does seem to be one of true friendship. It's quite endearing watching them run around and get into various hijinks together as a dynamic duo. In other works, this sort of situation where one party pledges their loyalty to another can often turn into something a bit… uglier, to put it mildly, with some rather uncomfortable overtones. That's never the case in Reincarnated as My Gag Character, and at no point does the reader get the sense that Nacht is being anything other than genuine in her care of Aisha.

Secondly, the manga is quite self-aware of the genre's underpinnings, but in a good way. Unlike many other isekai where the protagonist is keenly aware that they are in another world, Nacht does not set out to bend the world to her will or selfishly live out her basest desires. Instead, she acknowledges that she was using Real World Online as an escape in her past life as Toru, the game being one of the only places where she had any power or control in her day-to-day life between shifts at a dead-end job. She takes the Superman route with her incredible power, and the power fantasy because less about “look at all the things I can do without the shackles of consequences” and more about “look at how I can make everyone's lives better.” Just because Nacht includes herself in that definition of "everyone" doesn't diminish the force for good she is in the narrative.

It also helps that the manga is quite joyful. It's a simple, good-natured comedy that derives its humor from exaggerated faces and ridiculous scenarios, with no real feeling of bitterness or cynicism despite the self-aware nature of the writing. It's all very light-hearted and surface-level in the most positive sense. Nacht has the power of a demigod and uses that power to… act silly, more or less. There's an easy breezy feel to reading the volume, and despite it never being gut-bustingly funny it did make me smile and chuckle more than once.

The art carries this charm as well. It is very much a modern work in its sensibilities, by which I mean that there are a lot of rounded shapes to the characters. The cast all has a resting gumdrop shape to their faces and expressions, accentuating the humor of the character interactions. There are times when the action kicks off magnificently – spells of great power pop off the page with great detail and use of perspective. But by and large the characters on the page are making funny faces at each other and overreacting to silly circumstances, to the point where you almost get more comfortable seeing them as reactions than on-model characters. I think this is a wise choice and it contributes to the feel-good vibe the manga gives off.

If there are any negatives, it is that the work might feel a touch too light and fluffy at times. For a game called Real World Online, the game world does not feel terribly realized. The two settings are “big empty forest” and “big empty cave” with no prominent landmarks, sense of location, or engaging backdrops. Similarly, even for a comedy, Reincarnated as My Gag Character suffers from a serious lack of tension. Many comedies have at least a semblance of conflict to drive progression, such as “will the cat catch the mouse” or “our heroes roll into town flat broke yet again.” In contrast, Reincarnated as My Gag Character almost seems stuck in fantasyland purgatory, with Nacht summoning a table and chairs in an empty forest or meeting legendary warriors in the back of the most basic cave.

But these are minor criticisms. The first volume of Did I Seriously Just Get Reincarnated as My Gag Character?! is funny, looks good, and doesn't have a mean bone in its body, making it an easy pick for a quick escape into a sillier world.