So I read a new isekai novel that I was NOT expecting to be good, I just wanted to see what the hell it was about and make fun of how bad it was: "JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World."
It's two days later and I'm trying to figure out WHY, exactly, I liked it - despite being YET ANOTHER isekai - and write it down in a paragraph or so.
It's not anime and I certainly don't expect it to ever BE anime, but it's one of the most feminist stories I've read in five or six years despite being about a teenager forced into the world's oldest profession, and it's a good read to boot - she's snarky and funny, and I honestly laughed out loud half a dozen times. It takes a look at the generic male otaku wish-fulfillment isekai from the PoV of a high school girl used to doing things like eating alone at a restaurant or just walking around town without being harassed and says, "Okay, if your genitals are convex this is fine, but if they're concave it's a raw deal." It's not a comedy or a porno, it doesn't gloss over how perfunctory and mechanical the sex is from a prostitute's PoV, but her attitude of "This is a shitty retail job where I'm selling myself instead of DVDs, but I'm not gonna it do BADLY just because it sucks" is pretty great on a lot of levels.
I should have been annoyed by the "What a twist!" moment about 3/4ths of the way through the book, because it came out of nowhere and wasn't even hinted at until earlier in the chapter, but once again her attitude towards the twist really sold it for me.
