It's a perfectly decent isekai and often quite good. Yukito Hirihara gets thrown into a D&D world after a gigantic terrifying demon visits him in Japan and kills him. He's now a first level magic-user with only one hit point. He could die from tripping over a pebble. This is quite funny and reflects a problem you can really have with low-level D&D characters. What's more, this first volume gives him a tough time. He's nearly killed by goblins and gets rescued by a paladin without enough strength to use her weapons and armour properly. They're saved by her horse. They get humilated at the adventurers' guild. Yukito's only stroke of luck is that he swiped a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide (ahem, "World Master's Guide") from the dodgy goddess who sent him here... but trusting it too much nearly gets him murdered by a smiling cleric.

The D&D homage is specific. A few manga pages are practically 5th edition character sheets, while distances aren't measured in metres but in feet (which Japan doesn't use at all). The gods literally roll dice... and they have the right dice too. Character classes are D&D-standard and Yukito's big plan at the end of this volume involves farming XP to raise his level and surprise his opponent with new skills. He even compares D&D game mechanics with computer game RPGs. It's so explicit that I can't criticise it. At least it's wholehearted, and not another computer game world.

The art's excellent. Aogiri Makoto can draw seriously hot women, but it's not exploitative or fanservice. Charlotte R. Braunia (the paladin) owns full plate armour that's realistic-ish, bar the lack of a helmet... and she wears it! Not just on her introduction, but whenever it would make sense for the character to do so. Monsters can also look memorably evil, e.g. the goblins and that dimension-crossing demon.

The series's potential problem is our 16-year-old Yukito's motivation. He's looking for his 14-year-old sister, Sana, whom he thinks was also thrown into this game world. How much does he love her? Lots and lots. To a worrying degree. His love is all-encompassing. When he quit school back in Japan and became a shut-in, she played truant too to be with him. (Didn't he even feel guilty about this?) They both love, love, love each other and, yes, it's played so hard that worrying readings are available. I'd guess that's deliberate, too. So far, though, Sana seems more like a saint or a macguffin than an actual person.

I quite enjoyed it, though. I considered buying more volumes, although ultimately I didn't end up doing so (and the series doesn't seem to have finished yet anyway). They could have pushed the D&D references even further, but that might have become parody. Yukito hasn't become a munchkin yet, but he's certainly determined to level up and rescue Sana. The series works. I quite enjoyed it... although a lot of that was to do with how hard the story was on this low-level Yukito. That'll probably change once he's levelled up a bit.