Getting kind of tired of the "slow life" stuff...

That's the fun stuff. It's his timid pushover nature that's enraging. What's the point of power if you're just going to do everyone else's bidding?

I get it if it's not your cup of tea, but based on the manga and some deeper characterization from the novel, Makoto is more of a "well-adjusted psychopath."

The academy arc and his students in general are necessary for the process of acclimating him to this world's values, and also making sure that he can see Hyumans on a similar level to humans instead of as lower than bugs in his "things that would make me sad if I broke" classification hierarchy. Other characters find him terrifying when they catch glimpses of his innerself and realize that he is just one really bad day or one bad misconception away from committing mass genocide (Ronna will see this soon).

The novel does a much better job with all of this tbh and makes it much less slice of life. It's just hard to show inner character thoughts without walls of text lol.

You can see it a bit in that first time he kills a Hyuman after they got into the "to be disposed of" weapons and caused a big explosion and hurt a bunch (and killed one) of the Demi-Plane residents. He has a flashback to when he sees a cat get run over as a child and remembers getting asked if he was sad and asking back "why" only to get a response of "because it's sad when things die." And only after being told that does he cry and appear to feel sad.

He was born with the broken brain structure necessary for a diagnosis of psychopathy, but didn't ever become a serial killer or problematic in general because he grew up in a loving family and had people around him gently teach him what "normal people" do and don't do and what is and isn't accepted in modern society. (These people can exist in real life and be just as blissfully unaware of their condition as Makoto, including the scientist who came up with the theory based on his own brain scans and childhood. The general concept is kinda like Dexter the tv show if you're familiar with it). There's a reason he's obsessed with what's normal for the modern world and why he automatically believes that anyone who doesn't conform to those values is a "bad" person. His moral code wasn't passively absorbed like most people; it was systematically drilled into him from a very young age to make sure there were no gaps so he could live a normal life in modern Japan.

We're not past what's been adapted for the anime yet, but after what's in the anime his followers start some coaxing to undo that "what defines a good person" brainwashing/conditioning he grew up with so that he can adapt it to his new world, without him having a straight-up mental breakdown where he completely loses all of his "kindness" that he was only conditioned to have.

I didn't pick up on it but now that you say it, it is quite obvious. Some interesting parallels with "Gwanjeon: Kang Jin Lee".

Huh, of course I know about psychopathy, but I didn't pick up on that just like the other commenter. Probably because I've been reading quite a few Korean/Chinese web novels where killing your opponent for relatively smaller things seems to be the norm.

That makes his character a bit more interesting. Though I still don't like the way the story is going at the moment. Hopefully it'll become more interesting again in a while...

As someone who's watched the anime, and skipped a fair amount of this manga just to see "wait a minute I've seen this before" and then finding stuff I hadn't seen.

The whole psychopath part of the MC is so SO lost in the anime adaptation, yeah he was cold as hell when killing that first Hyuman, but it kinda just... Fades, he hasn't done anything even vaguely similar afair.

So I've been having fun rereading(? Technically, since I know the overall story) this, and it makes the world and stuff feel a lot more real than the anime, a lot of nuance in most of the characters is lost in service of moving the plot along in the anime.

Yes I can confirm, that the next bit of story(once the main bit of student/teacher) stuff is really hype/cool. If you want to get to it early, and can't bother to wait, the anime does a good job (IMHO) translating the fights into motion, so watching it would fulfill the part you're looking for

It is super hard to notice in the manga and anime, especially when the genre doesn't tend to give you a good frame of reference for a morally complex protagonist in a fantasy world that isn't just edgelord. I only picked up on it because of how the novel delves a bit deeper into Makoto's characterization through other characters talking about him when he's not around (mostly Tomoe and Root, but occasionally Shiki and others) [+ some big spoiler stuff]. Makoto is an unreliable narrator (especially about himself), and we only really get his perspective in the manga.

It's more obvious when you compare how Hibiki and Tomoki changed from how they were in the modern world vs how little Makoto has. Hibiki and Tomoki represent two standard isekai protag character developments when looking at each of them as their side-of-the-story's protagonist. Obviously, Tomoki is trash from our perspective and Makoto's, but from Tomoki's POV he's just living the standard harem isekai protagonist life. Hibiki is a classic paragon hero who always does what she thinks is right, with the common caveat that she is going to be incredibly problematic when she's not on your side.

Very Vague Spoilers (To give you some hope):

After the current Academy arc wraps up (and what's already been adapted into the anime), we get to a long stretch of action and adventure that eventually leads into world-building exploration and more information about previously-isekaied individuals and Makoto's parents. He also starts taking a more active role in national politics after a debut on the world stage near the end of this arc.

Exactly. I think I got around 200 chapters into the LN before picking up on it though.

Sorry, but I can't agree to this at all. So he's a psycopath because he hasn't changed when he switched worlds? That's just stupid. Did someone here maybe forget that his parents ARE from that world, which means he has the genes and DNA to melt into it without all of his character changing.
And a psycopath only thinks about themselves and are emotionless when it comes to others. Makoto is the other way around-he doesn't care if he himself gets hurt while he gets mad if someone he under his protection does.

That's kind of the point, he got emotional training essentially from his parents, as a kid, he saw a cat die and didn't have an emotional reaction until his parents explained that it was supposed to be "sad" when something dies. He has Psychopathic tendencies, but since he's been carefully taught HOW normal humans feel about things, he functions ALMOST fully like a normal human.

Directly from Google (stupid AI thing tbf, but it draws FROM the stuff on the page)

- a person with a personality structure marked by a severe lack of empathy, a lack of remorse for harmful actions, and persistent antisocial behavior -

His first Hyuman kill, very clearly shows that he has Psychopathic tendencies. Even the most hardened of normal teenagers would feel some remorse for snuffing a life. Even if that person did something horrible, Makoto doesn't. Afaik it goes more in depth in the novelization, but he doesn't feel any kind of remorse for killing the bitch.

One can equate what he does as Masking. - a behavior where a person hides their true nature, feelings, or traits to fit in, avoid judgment, or stay safe -

Except it's become so engrained from using it for so long (since he was a child) that it IS his base. Some things slip through though. The way he first reacted to the girl in the archery club also kind of shows the fact that he isn't normal. He responded without any form of consideration for how he was responding. Which ended up causing her to cry.

You brought up how his DNA being from that world might cause him to fit in better there, which brings up Nature Vs Nurture, which is a whole can of worms I don't REALLY want to get into, but even with that, I don't think most people in this world are so cutthroat, in fact we've been shown that the people are almost exactly equivalent to earth humans. There are bad ones, there are good ones. And even with that I'd say with how Kind we can assume his parents were that his Nature should also be kind rather than cutthroat.

There are psychopaths in the real world who have friends and do kind things, they just lack the ability to FEEL the emotions properly. There is a very prominent story on some site (either reddit or some other posting site) of a person with a Psychopathic friend who stayed up at night to find something to help the poster with a problem (either was a parents car accident or cancer or sum) I forget the reason the psychopath friend did it, but it shows that they CAN take care of friends and have social relationships

You can feel free to disagree, but maybe don't be so condescending? I didn't forget that his parents are from that world; I just don't believe in genetics being the sole determinant of a person's personality and character. How you were raised, whether or not you were beaten as a child, what types of things your parents punished you for, what they didn't punish you for, and what you were praised for all play a huge part in how you think and behave as an adult.

My point is that his genetics make him like a psychopath by the standards of OUR world, but the way he was raised and the rules of society he had ingrained in him by his parents and teachers made him not problematic in the world he was born in. Normal people in our world don't need to be told that something dying is sad. Normal people feel sad when they see something die because they can feel empathy.

Psychopaths can care about other people. Psychopaths feel their own emotions; they just can't understand other people's emotions because they lack the capacity to feel empathy. What makes a person genetically a psychopath is that they cannot feel empathy at all due to the structure of their brain. A psychopath wouldn't know that someone could be sad because their grandma died without being told, but they might feel sad about their own grandma dying.

He's not a psychopath because he didn't change; he always was one. It just didn't show in normal life before he got transferred because his masking was so well ingrained and there was nothing to challenge it. Part of that emotional coaching he received from his parents and teachers was instilling a strong sense of responsibility in him.

Makoto was taught to be a responsible person. He feels responsible for the people under his protection and his followers, so when someone hurts them, he gets pissed because he has failed in his duty to protect them. He also gets pissed off when others around him don't follow the "rules" of morality that he was taught.

In the isekai world, the same rules that he's relied on for his entire life don't apply to the place he is now, and he hasn't been able to come up with new rules for himself to follow that will act as his new moral code. He's relying on his old one. Tomoe and the rest of his followers are gradually deconstructing that and altering it so that he doesn't go crazy.