Ancient's Smashing Reviews

Anybody but You by @Kate_Marr

There was a story I read once. It was a long time ago on fanfiction website, where basically Naruto went back to his childhood with all the memories of his adult life. Knowing his power and his potential, he abused his spells to the most absurd degree to get 500-years of education and training in a single year so that when he graduated kindergarten he was on the level of god. He then etched out revenge on everyone he didn't like in the past life, though they hadn't done much in the current one. He got all the ladies in a messed up harem by 10 years old, both in and outside of his home. And he became the ultimate Gary Stu fantasy of bullshit proportions.

That was pain.

This story I just read reminded me of that. Almost like the author had read it and thought "lets do it again!"

TLDR; Mary Sue Revenge-fantasy and power-fantasy

Main Character - Mary Sue - The main character is a quick learner. Okay. She is rich. Okay. She is the daughter of a duke. Fine. Except she is also a princess, not a duchess, which is weird. She is angry. Cool. She has no flaws and everyone loves her on sight except for, wait for it, the typical daddy issues, who'd have guessed, and learns to outmaneuver everybody in a few months despite all rationality and she has bullshit magic. Honestly this is at the point it feels like a copy-paste.

Everything about her is told. She has perfect memory and so just instantly wiki-pages whatever decades-worth of history we need to know to us. Nothing is shown and what 1% of anything that is shown is unoriginal and steotypical. She is boring. Everything she touches is instantly boring.

I have nothing good to say about her. I see no potential as a character. From the very start the plan was obvious: To be a power fantasy and a mary sue. Generally they should be killed off on sight, but as this story did that in chapter 1 and she was instantly brought back in chapter 2, I don't think that'll work. She can overpower death, which is part of the stories problem. Nothing has consequence. Nothing matters.

The story promises different arcs with her going from revenge to love for the very person she wanted revenge on, but even this is boringly stereotypical and honestly, has little point for her when her very foundation as a person is this.