As the isekai fantasy genre goes on, it gets harder to come up with truly original ideas. To do so, creators have to get increasingly weird and specific with what their protagonist gets reincarnated as, and this is a prime example.
REBORN AS A VENDING MACHINE, I NOW WANDER THE DUNGEON (Jidohanbaiki ni Umarekawatta Ore wa Meikyu o Samayo), based on the light novels by Hirukuma and character designs by Hagure Yuuki, with art by Kunieda. First published in 2021 and first published in North America in 2023.
PLOT:
Once he was just another salaryman, albeit one with an obsession fascination with vending machines. Then one day he is crushed by one, and when he awakens he discovers that he has become a vending machine. He is found by Lammis, a good-natured and super-strong country girl who takes him back to her village. It's there that his life as an adventurer begins, when he and Lammis are tasked with aiding with a hunt for ferocious frog-men.
STORY:
Believe it or not, I did not hate Reborn as a Vending Machine. Much of that has to do with Boxxo, the titular, sentient device. It's not that he's a force of personality; aside from his fixation on vending machines, his previous human self wasn't that distinct and even as a machine he is merely blandly nice. Hell, his human self isn't even given a name before he's unceremoniously bumped off in the first few pages. It has more to do with the fact that Boxxo has something that most isekai heroes don't have: limits.
Your average reincarnated Potato-kun is usually handed some sort of super skill or high stats on a silver platter, and if their story goes on long enough there's often quite a bit of power creep. That sort of thing fits with the sort of naked wish-fulfillment these heroes represent, but it completely undermines any sort of drama in their struggles against foes. Boxxo does not have that. He is a big metal box that cannot move under his own power, cannot speak outside of a few generic programmed phrases, and is dependent on a steady supply of cash for everything: refills, changing or adding products (which itself is based entirely on the things he had bought from vending machines previously), or gaining the most basic defensive magic. Boxxo has to exercise some cleverness to make the most of these limitations in a variety of situations. He's also dependent upon others in a way a lot of isekai protagonists are not. He literally needs Lammis just to get around, and he needs a steady audience of users to survive, and most of them are not cute merchandise-friendly anime girls. That is a genuinely novel concept, far more so than having a literal machine as a hero.
It's a good thing Boxxo is clever because nothing else present in this volume is not. Boxxo ends up in the same sort of generic, vaguely medieval fantasy world that everyone else does, and inevitably is dragged along on the same sort of guild-based adventuring that other stories do. There's plenty of people around, but none you could properly call characters in their own right save for Lammis. Even then, her golly-gee-whiz country girl personality comes off as a bit flat. That's not even getting into the way this story glorifies Japanese food. I should be used to it by now after reading so many food manga and isekai manga, but it's doubly weird to see fantasy people going into raptures over the joys of bottled corn soup, cup noodles, Pringles-style potato chips, and other convenience foods and drinks. It seems that all the effort the creators have to offer went entirely into Boxxo and nothing else.
ART:
This is one of those rare cases where the manga art exceed the light novel art. Hagure Yuki's work for the original light novels seems to be visually stuck in the 00s with its moeblob faces with weird little genki fangs and heavier reliance on fanservice. In comparison, Kunieda's art style is more modern in its look and isn't the least bit pervy. They also took the time to compose actual backgrounds. There's even a bit of pastoral beauty to the lakeside where Boxxo first appears (although I wouldn't be shocked if it's purely photo-referenced). The panels are a little cluttered, but they bring a decent amount of energy to the art, particularly to the battles. I only wish the paneling was a little more dynamic, as it would give those sequences a bit of visual punch that they desperately need.
RATING:
This series is published by Yen Press. This series is ongoing in Japan with 2 volumes available. 1 volume has been released and is currently in print.
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