Lulutina and her five younger sisters, all werewolves, have been driven out of their home by humans and are having a hard time surviving on the run in the woods. But their luck might be changing when they’re saved by a white bear, just like the guardian deity in their stories, but this isekai’d-human-turned-bear isn’t sure that he’s the savior they’re looking for….
To address the elephant, or rather polar bear, in the room: Kumakichi Kumada (geeze, who could’ve ever guessed what he’d reincarnate as) does not look like a well-drawn bear. His design is so awkwardly simple that at first I thought that it was an unfortunate choice to select a manga artist who can’t draw a bear that well for this adaptation but no, a real bear appears at the very beginning of the second chapter and it looks much better drawn. Which means, this was an artistic and/or editorial design choice! Admittedly, all of the art in this volume looks rather lackluster, it’s all incredibly simple and even the shading looks like a bunch of tones were simply slapped on in a hurry, (the one drawing we see from the original light novel illustrator has much more charm and character to it for both the werewolf girls and Kumakichi, to the point where it’s almost embarrassing) and this art was definitely the first big stumbling block I had with this series.
To be blunt, you could say that this art was a good match for the story since frankly the story is pretty bland and unimaginative as well. In his previous life, Kumakichi was an experienced outdoorsman which means that he has plenty of valuable skills for roughing it in the woods with these young girls but, much like in Meikyuu: Labyrinth Kingdom, a Tactical Fantasy World Survival Guide, it actually feels rather dull to have a Gary Stu-type character who doesn’t have to struggle at all to translate their old skills to this new world. It did make me muse that no matter what flavor of Gary Stu the character is (either the “absolutely ordinary self-insert” kind of guy or the “imagine if you had these skills and how cool people would think you are” kind of guy), I rarely find them interesting; it’s definitely easier if the character isn’t meant to be a self-insert but I think that isekai creators are really overlooking how this trope could be played for humor instead of straight (give me the historical LARPer with a really eclectic skillset as a main character dammit!).
Kumakichi isn’t even balanced out by any more interesting side characters — the six werewolf girls that he falls in with serve more as an admiring audience of waifs with a pitiful backstory and, outside of the one designated love interest, they remain pretty interchangeable personality-wise. It seems like the story is going to have Kumakichi rely on the pre-existing folklore of the guardian deity he is accidentally impersonating to end the fantasy racism that has plagued these girls and maybe bring some innovation to the rustic lifestyle that everyone occupies, but it’s just another very rote isekai set-up where the only “unique” aspect is that the main character is a badly-drawn bear instead of say, a sword or a vending machine.
There are plenty of other isekai out there, and quite a few that I find genuinely fun to read, so that’s what I’ll be doing instead of sticking around for a second volume of this!