 Hello there. So I recently was recommended a book called The Dragon Conjurer and I read it and The person who recommended it to me She said that it was you know just absolutely terrible and I'd probably get a laugh out of it And so I just like okay added it to the list like you know that happens fairly frequently with me But this one I just listened to the audiobook of it because you know I had a free credit on audible hashtag not sponsored because audible hates me I guess and I got through it and it is bad. Yes. It is kind of funny in some ways, but it's not It's not the worst thing ever. It's not as bad as it could be because The thing is while yes, the Dragon Conjurer is stupid. I've seen this exact type of story about 10,000 other times see the plot is about this dude He has a name, but I'm just gonna call him protagonist coon and he one day discovers He has some crazy magic powers and then he gets sent to this special secret school Which is about learning how to control his magic powers and then while he's there he goes on adventures and he fights bullies and a bunch of women start fawning over him and For some of you, this is probably sounding very familiar. This is the introduction song. It's not very good But it's not too long see if you're at all familiar with anime light novel mongas You know that sort of thing This probably sounds very familiar because magic harem high school is its entire own Genre over there and I've seen a couple of books do similar stuff to this too because I mean they're basically just trying to do Harry Potter But add in some stuff to make it a little bit more adult usually involving adding in some sex stuff But never mind that too much like let's focus on the anime stuff for now See there are just So many of these things like so many of them I don't think I could list them all off if I tried but here's a couple and dragon conjurer Fits most of the tropes and cliches involved here to a tee But at the same time it is a little bit better than I would have expected it to be had I seen that coming going in Like okay. Yes, there's a lot of dumb stuff like for example protagonist coon just has a harem for no reason You know, there's no real reason for women to be attracted to him They just they just are the world makes no sense Like why are they bothering keeping magic and all these monsters and everything secret from the rest of humanity like what's What's the point? I I don't know like This this never makes sense though because like thousands of years ago before humanity had modern technology They could have just come out and ruled everybody Forever like it just it just straight up doesn't make much sense when you think about it for more than a couple of seconds Protagonist coon winds up becoming the leader of the team that he's in after less than a week Like he's at this school for literally three or four days and people just decide, you know Let's make him the leader. He seems great. Like he already has Not perfect control of his powers, but very good control of his powers and he's already defeating other Bad guys who have been training for much longer just because he's that cool At one point he discovers that he can summon other types of dragons just by Speaking in other languages like I'm not gonna explain that too much, but he just decides Okay, what if I speak in Chinese for a minute and then another dragon up here so you can just summon dragons like that. He's just He's just really stupidly overpowered And What one thing I will say Right up front about this that makes it a little bit more mature and a little bit better than other Magic harem school things particularly in anime is that the characters actually have sex because like think about it in Actually just in anime in general, but in particular this genre The main character is surrounded by sex like they'll always go Basically as close as they can to showing nudity without actually showing it But he never actually has sex like even in stuff like high school DXD which is considerably raunchier than Most of its contemporaries that which high school DXD is a very funny show by the way You should check that out if you haven't already But even stuff like that They never actually have sex and I'm pretty sure a big part of that is just because Japan Despite what the porn which have you believe is still a fairly conservative country in a lot of ways But yeah in this protagonist coon just actually does have sex once or twice and while I do hate sex scenes I just I hate reading them so much and in fact I really hate reading protagonist coon describe all the women around him because he keeps talking about like Luscious hips and stuff and I'm just thinking man a man definitely wrote this Like this is prime men writing women material, but you know at the very least it is just a thing that yeah Adults do that sometimes so it's it's just handled a bit better and a bit more maturely Plus in this the characters are like college-aged rather than high school age So I don't have to feel weird about seeing a sexualized 15 or 16 year old girl like even if she's animated It's still weird to me, but with that out of the way I kind of just want to talk for a minute or two about Magic harem high schools and what exactly makes them work the way they do like you know, what are the Criteria that make them that way so number one is that protagonist coon has to be a dude You know obviously like this is aimed at men. It's a fantasy or rather. It's aimed at teenage boys Usually it's a fantasy for them. It wouldn't really make sense for the main character to be a girl in that case Number two the magic school usually isn't a secret There are exceptions to this rule sometimes the magic school is you know hidden from society for one reason or another, but usually Usually these types of stories are a bit lazier with the world building So it just takes place either in our world at some point in the future when magic has been just revealed to everybody That's surprisingly common or it's just in a fantasy world completely separate from our world Like that those are both pretty common They just didn't want to bother with making things secret and on one hand. Yeah, that is at least a little bit different and I Honestly prefer it, but the world building forward is still super lazy. So it I don't know. I just something about it doesn't appeal to me, but that is Very very common. That is one of the main criteria for making a magic harem high school Number three protagonist coon is ludicrously overpowered like I mean I Mentioned in the dragon conjurer how he discovers he can just summon more and more dragons depending on what language he speaks in and Maybe the lighter books will put limitations on that, but so far. There's there's nothing there But in all of these types of stories the main character just has like some sort of power Which is either completely unheard of or only heard about in legends and it just completely blows everybody else out of the water Usually as long as he can learn to control it like usually that is the one Limitation that he has at least at the beginning of a series is that he can't control it very well And so it doesn't do him a whole lot of good And so as he learns to control it better and better over the course of the series That's when he becomes more dangerous But even in cases where that's not the case usually he has like just more magic power than anybody So when it comes to fights, he doesn't have to be intelligent or anything. He can just Throw more energy into his beam burst or whatever And then he'll just defeat the bullies or he'll defeat the main villain or whoever else Sometimes he's overpowered in a really weird way though. Like there's this one manga I don't remember the name of it I'm not going to look it up. If anyone wants to share it down below feel free, but it was basically Very similar to this on the instead of magic It was sometime in the future and everybody had superpowers like just imagine my hero academia except a lot shittier and the main character had a power to shoot like this weird goo out of his body and It was actually not a bad power It was like really sticky and it would capture people and prevent them from running away But also wouldn't hurt them, but he could also use it to make like Barriers and shields or he could use it to make like a cushion when he falls from places. So it's actually a useful power but the main joke Please if you're in another tab, please note that I'm putting quotes around the word joke The main joke is that the goo he shoots out kind of looks like semen Which the first time you hear that it's not funny But I just didn't care much about it But the second third fourth fifth 27th times it it got a bit old But anyways, yeah, that's the point. I'm getting is that sometimes in magic harem high schools The main character is overpowered in a really weird way Lay just I don't know how to go into more detail about that but things like things like the semen goo stuff like that just That's how they can sometimes be overpowered now. Sometimes this is played for a joke or for parody like oh crap I'm forgetting the name of it again But there is this one anime which is making fun of this genre Where the main character is like the reincarnation of a demon king and so he has all the demon king's powers And in the first episode he beats a guy up using the shock waves from his heartbeat And then he kills him and resurrects him a bunch of times just to teach him a lesson. It's it's actually pretty funny I'll put up the name if I can remember it Number four The main character has a harem and by harem I mean there's just a bunch of girls that All are really into him for one reason or another and they just they make it clear how much they want the D But he can never actually date any of them because Reasons and the reason he has the harem Is because he has a nice guy Yeah, that's a that's about it. That's the only reason like once in a while There'll be a really stupid reason for why someone is interested in him And wants to have sex with the main character protagonist coon guy Sometimes there's a reason for that like sometimes. Oh, okay. He has these crazy powers That means our children will be really powerful. So I have to do this to bring honor to my family That's a surprisingly common one actually And other times it'll be like oh when I was a child. I was part of a Put upon minority A race of people or whatever in this world and he helped me out one time Therefore, I'm in love with him like that that's also a very common one But most of the time it's just because yeah, he has no personality that allows the audience to project themselves on to him therefore I Really like this dude and I'm in love with him and I want his babies, etc But at the same time no one acts in a forward manner Or at least they very rarely act in a forward manner like none of them ever just come out and say Hey, man, um, I'm really interested in you I think we should start dating like I know all these other girls are there So like if you're just not interested in me, I'd be upset, but you know Okay, are you interested in doing anything like no one ever just does that number five Which is one of the most important ones. There are very few male characters like other than protagonist coon, of course There can usually only be two or three Other character or other male characters that take up a significant amount of time Let's say because they can be like in the background or just be a goon that the characters Defeat in two seconds and then move on But they can't be like actual characters other than a couple of them And they pretty much always fall into one of a couple of different Archetypes like there is main characters best friend the main villain of the whole series A big bully that's at the school that the main character has to defeat to show off how cool he is usually he defeats him in like the first episode or The first couple of episodes at least There'll be some sort of mentor, you know Someone who teaches either protagonist coon or some of the other characters how to use their powers and how to fight Sometimes there's a school headmaster that's in there and sometimes there will be a more minor villain who is a creepy rapist Now obviously some of these archetypes can be mixed and matched and there is overlap between them, but Usually if there's another male character other than protagonist coon He will very rarely fall into any category that isn't one of those like in dragon conjurer Protagonist coon is in a team with four people There's like himself and there's another dude who falls into the best friend the archetype and then there's two members of his harem and Then his school headmaster is also a dude and Then there's a bully and so I think they've actually hit their quota for male main characters Which means the villain has to be a woman for the rest of the series Sorry, I don't make the rules if anyone else wants to read it and check with me. I'm willing to bet money That's what happens number six also very important. There can't really be a story There just has to be short adventurers Adventurers I should say like in dragon conjurer They go on like four or five different missions to like stop monsters and stuff over the course of the book And it's not a long book either like I think it would have been served better if they had just Cut out some of those and just made the remaining ones longer. So they only went on like two missions, but Okay, whatever that's that's not the important bit But yeah in this and hell for isekai stories as well There just isn't really a story at all like there's not any sort of structure There's not any journey that the heroes are going on other than maybe some vague evil threat that's off in the distance There's just The heroes do stuff now and again like sometimes they'll go on short little Adventures where they have to do a mission to stop an evil goblin or something a lot of times It'll just be harem hijinks. Sometimes it'll be main character coon showing up a bully sometimes there'll be training but there isn't like a Main story that they're just like yep We're going on this quest to defeat the bad guy or anything like that and It's kind of hard to go into more detail about how that works But this is one of those things that you kind of have to experience yourself to understand it. I think but overall Yeah, if you doubt me just check out basically any magic harem high school that's come out in the past like 15 years They barely have any story That's that's why the irregular at magic high school is one of my most hated anime of all time because I Watched like nine episodes and nothing happened or rather nothing happened that related to anything that came before or after And number seven this one is a more recent phenomenon and it seems to have originated in light novels But there has to be a really long really dumb title now. I've heard that the reason for this is because When people are scrolling through just long lists of light novels They want to stand out a little so they found a way to make it so that the title is also Like a summary of the plot so they wind up with really long names like problem children are coming from another world aren't they and You know, that's a really stupid title, but it is eye-catching. I'll give it that like dragon conjurer That's honestly too short and too to the point like it needs to have something really Stupid and long it needs to be something like I just learned I can summon a dragon and now a fairy is sucking my cock or Thank God I'm an only child because if I wasn't you would probably try to put my sister in this harem or you know something like that you know, but Whatever, that's not the end of the world. The point is a lot of these do have really long stupid titles and a lot of times for whatever reason the fan base refuses to use it the English translation So you wind up having to just sift through entire sentences of Japanese, which yeah, okay? That's that's not that's not important The point is those seven criteria are the main things that make a magic harem high school a magic harem high school You can throw in some other stuff too like a lot of times It only lasts one season and you never get any closure if you're an anime only fan So you have to go read the original light novel or read the original manga But a lot of times because they're not popular nobody ever translates them into English so if you can't speak Japanese you're shit out of luck and Overall dragon conjurer. I guess it it could be worse Like I really do mean that like I gave it two stars on Goodreads because it's it's a bad book Don't get me wrong there, but it's it's mildly competent in some ways like The people who made it seem to understand that yes It is dumb and I will grant it that the audiobook is really solid Like you know It's not just one narrator going over everything and doing all the character voices like they actually got a couple of different people To come in and do them as well So like the female voices aren't just a man trying to do a woman's voice very poorly like it's it's actually very well produced all I'll give it credit for that and Well, like I said, it seems to know it's dumb it's there for wish fulfillments and people to project themselves on to and I just I don't know I can't really bring myself to hate it even though I really am not a fan of this genre and I think that's because I do see Potential in this genre at least like there are some entries. I've read or watched over the years that I thought were fun it's just that they Are too similar to one another to the point where it feels like they're not even trying and if you really want an in-depth look at This genre and especially if you want to look at a particularly bad version of this genre and all of the problems that come along with it just watch the asterisk war sucks series by digi bro who nowadays is known as a Beatrice the Golden Witch I think I'm sorry. I haven't watched her work in a long time All I know is that she transitioned a little while ago But she removed that from her own channel. So I will just link to a different Upload of it, but it's a very long In-depth look at this one season law what rather the first season of a really terrible anime that fits into this genre and It's just really good. It's a really honestly one of the best pieces of criticism I've ever seen and it just goes into a lot more detail than I ever could in this video at least without directly plagiarizing from her and That was a lot of fun If you want more of me then consider checking out my second channel I just started it recently, but I'll probably be uploading more stuff to it as time goes on just stuff that doesn't really fit onto this channel and After this I'll probably be doing a video on the Lightbringer series like I have not Finished that one quite yet, but I'm very close to finishing it and I do have some thoughts overall, but You know, that's about it. See ya. 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