Record of Wortenia War (ウォルテニア戦記 Wortenia Senki) is a novel series written by Ryota Hori. Originally a Web Serial Novel which was first released on Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2009, it was later published by Hobby Japan as a series of Light Novels in 2015 with illustrations by bob. The novels have a manga adaptation illustrated by Yukari Yagi which began serialization in Comic Fire in 2016, and both the novels and the manga are licensed in English by J-Novel Club.
Record of Wortenia War contains examples of the following tropes:
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The absolute best that could be expected of an aristocrat is that he can be counted on to act in his own long-term best interests. For the vast, vast majority, the aristocrats are Stupid Evil,
Selfish Evil, Obviously Evil, and Obliviously Evil who won't turn their nose up at any and every atrocity that will bring them personal pleasure, and treat their subordinates, rivals, sometimes even friends and family like absolute crap. In fact, an aristocrat that isn't an active Serial Rapist, or doesn't have a history of engaging in Gratuitous Rape, and isn't female, is exceptionally rare, at least among those who aren't already dead. - Bullying a Dragon: On a national and international scale! "Otherworlders" are summoned precisely because they can, more efficiently than the locals, harvest "prana," a magical energy that makes someone stronger the more he kills. After being summoned by a country's top magician, these "otherworlders" are either killed outright if they don't "measure up" or slapped into a magical ritual that keeps them from even thinking of disobeying the orders of their "masters" then they're abused and treated as lower than slaves. Women just get raped until they're completely broken and get thrown out like trash. Nobody ever considered that said "otherworlders" might find a way to break these magic shackles.
- Crapsack World: The audience is informed in Chapter 1 that the New World has no concept of human rights, and gets worse from there.
- Crime of Self-Defense: In the story, kidnappers can file criminal charges against their victims if they resist in the "wrong" way. Such a thing is first shown with Mikoshiba, but there are others shown suffering this.
- Did Not Think This Through: Most of the antagonists, if not all, are so fixated on immediate gain that they never stop, or even slow down, to consider consequences, drawbacks, or perils in their actions and decisions. As a couple of prime examples, Gaies, the wizard who summons Mikoshiba to this New World, decides it's a grand idea to "test" Mikoshiba's worthiness to be an Imperial "otherworlder" by attacking him with lethal force, only to find himself on the wrong end of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and Cold-Blooded Torture, not understanding why such a great talent is now hostile to the country he serves, and at a later time, Mikoshiba is capable of invoking a Heel–Face Turn when he informs some nobles that their promised reward for helping in a rebellion is a lie through logical deduction.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: All the antagonists, who are despicable beyond measure, have friends and family that they treasure, even if it's just as political tools. Even in the earliest chapters, a member of a bandit gang that attacked Mikoshiba and tried to rape the twin sisters Mikoshiba was trying to rescue mentioned having a wife and daughter while begging for mercy.
- Evil Is Petty: The nobles in Rearth loves this trope. They will forgo any opportunity for efficiency or fulfillment of objectives if they can get back against those who wronged them or will be more than happy to commit wanton sadism just to exert their power. a A Start of Darkness can be instigated by a war-hero seeing his fiance dancing with others at a public celebration, in his honor and Elena Steiner's daughter was mercilessly defiled then killed even though she stepped down because Hodram saw this as an opportunity to get back at her for "not knowing her place."
- Fantasy Gun Control: Despite random people being summoned to other world having modern firearms with them, it is quite jarring that even primitive version didn't exist. It turns out the "Organization" (composed of people who were summoned from the other world planning to take revenge on the kingdoms) is enforcing this trope. If they get a wind of someone got transferred with a gun or similar weapon, they will go any lengths just to retrieve or destroy it. All to ensure that the warfare would be locked in a Medieval Stasis.
- Fridge Horror: In universe. In the manga adaptation, when Mikoshiba learns the true nature of the summoning, and how nobody can be sent back, the manga shows some "unworthy" summons, an old woman, an obese otaku watching anime, and a convalescent child suffering from cancer...
- God's Hands Are Tied: Combined with Obstructive Code of Conduct. While the summoning magic can get an "otherworlder" off Wortenia just fine, it can't get them back to Earth unless the summoning magician can call upon Earth's guardian deity to "invite the traveler in." This only works one way. The reason "otherworlders" appear on Wortenia's world is that the guardian deities "invited" them in with Earth's guardian doing nothing to prevent it... People have been trying to find out the name of Earth's "deity" without success for centuries, and a book the size of an encyclopedia holding nothing but the names of gods from various Earth mythologies, including some long forgotten, which takes three days without stopping to eat or sleep to read, is shown to emphasize just how futile the search was.
- In the manga it seems that the god of earth is aware of it but unable to stop and as such incredibly pissed off at Wortenia's world.
- Good Is Dumb: The one character of indisputable virtue, Queen Lupiz, is so horrifically inept as a ruler that the outcome of her decisions is indistinguishable from the most despicable assholes. The only people who are loyal to her are loyal only because they're as inept and incompetent as she is, never tell her what her mistakes are so she can learn from them, and Lupiz uses her royal authority to shield them from the consequences of their actions while the competent are all, at best, fair weather friends because they resent being passed over or shouted down by Lupiz's inner circle. After all that, Lupiz has the gall, when in private, to scream and cry out that she doesn't understand why nothing ever goes right. Oh, and the one guy who is both competent and sympathetic to her, Mikoshiba, she betrays by "rewarding" him with rulership of the Wortenia Peninsula, which was abandoned for being overrun with pirates, monsters, and having a hostile geography that actively resists development in any way.
- Happiness in Slavery: Certainly in the "I'm happy to be a slave only because my fate would be worse otherwise," way and a slave's life is universally quite bad.
- Harsher in Hindsight: In universe. Princess Sardina berates Mikoshiba for not immediately "wagging his tail" at the country that summoned him, and considers him a dangerous criminal for escaping slavery. The man she's comparing him to, Saito, Sardina's retainer, later reveals, among a group of other "otherworlders," that his "loyalty" was forced upon him by powerful ritual magics that literally prevented him from even thinking about any kind of disobedience or disloyalty, no matter what his "master" did to him. His lover was raped and murdered before his eyes as a "test," and he's been wanting revenge for those 10 years it took him to acclimate...
- Hate Sink: Just about everybody who comes after Mikoshiba Ryouma is so inept, despicable, or both, that the fanbase howls with bloodcrazed glee when it looks like Mikoshiba's coming for them, or they find themselves getting their comeuppance. Like General Hodram being forced to watch his wife and daughter beheaded before being killed himself, while he's in a bloodlust rage, which in Japanese works, is a truly horrible way to die.
- Kidnapped by the Call: Played completely straight. Mikoshiba was eating lunch on the school roof during his lunch break when the summoning circle whisked him away to the Ortomea Empire's summoning chamber...
- Lighter and Softer: The manga removes a considerable amount of the World of Jerkass content. The main character is not nearly as sociopathic, as a prime example, and most of the Rape as Drama is skipped over, at least up to chapter 17 of the manga.
- Like a Duck Takes to Water: Mikoshiba acclimates to the New World in two days. Albeit with a great deal of luck. Other people summoned there took a decade and are still struggling. As it turns out, his grandfather, who summoned to Rearth and the first one to go back is preparing Ryoma in case he was summoned as he firsthand saw how his son and daughter-in-law was dragged to another world.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Everywhere. The vast majority of royalty and aristocrats love to push the peasants and commoners in their territory to the breaking point, seeing them as simply specks of dust on the road, and are utterly gobsmacked when they attack with deadly force the moment they feel they have nothing left to lose. The worst victim is Mikoshiba who has been betrayed by Queen Lupiz repeatedly, yet she constantly not only wonders why things never go right for her, but truly expects him to serve her faithfully...by dying quietly.
- Mugging the Monster: On a repeated basis against Mikoshiba... which is just how he likes it. Everybody who antagonizes Mikoshiba horribly underestimates him, and he exploits their shortsightedness to its fullest.
- Never My Fault: All the antagonists, without exception, make horrible, horrible choices, either in terms of morality, practicality, or both, yet when the consequences jump up and bite them in the ass, can't, for the life of them, figure out what they could have possibly done to merit said consequences, and honestly protest their "innocence."
- The most prominent example is Mikhail, Queen Lupiz's official "top knight." He drags Mikoshiba into Rozeria's woes by targeting Lara, one of the two slaves Mikoshiba "inherited" when he vanquished a bandit gang as he was fleeing Ortomea. THEN Queen Lupiz asks Mikoshiba to provide a valid strategy to deal with the insurgents, including the false "illegitimate daughter" of her father, the king, who is the person that Mikhail was tasked with eliminating, and it would have worked except Mikhail ignored and disobeyed Mikoshiba's very simple orders "scout out the enemy position, and return, do not, under any circumstances, engage the enemy" over a personal grudge, getting captured, his scouting unit eliminated, and ultimately costing Lupiz a decisive victory, giving legitimacy to Lupiz's enemies, and after all that, and a week of house arrest, he blames Mikoshiba for it all, including the resentment he gets from his subordinates and the general public for being given preferential treatment by Lupiz, calling himself blameless, even when neutral third-party eye witnesses actively point out how it was all his fault.
- The most notorious example has to be when General Hodram is introduced. Not only is he honestly flummoxed as to why he's being targeted, despite the fact that he orchestrated a coup against Lupiz in the first place, but when the former head general, the legendary White-sword Elaine is coming for his head as he's trying to flee into a neighboring country, he tries to protest his "innocence" when she points out how he murdered her husband, kidnapped her daughter, for ransom, demanding Elaine "retire" if she wanted her daughter returned, only to rape said daughter repeatedly, until she was nothing more than a broken doll, to then kill her and send back the body, since she was no longer valuable as a hostage, after Elaine had stepped down. Even when his own wife and daughter glare at him, he still doesn't comprehend how he was wrong.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: What's good and what's evil is purely what Mikoshiba says it is. To his credit, he happens to be right far more often than not.
- Pragmatic Evil: Surprisingly for a Crapsack World, this is averted by residents of Rearth and Ryoma of all people is ready to use this. Due to valuing honor more than their lives, the nobles see any instances of this as cowardly and dishonorable that Ryoma is even dumbfounded most of the time how they are ready to be in the Stupid Evil territory rather than cut their losses and live for another day. It doesn't help that they are so petty and sadistic.
- Rape as Drama: Rape is a recurring theme in the story, in ways both subtle and gross.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Many people either launch attacks at Mikoshiba or try to manipulate circumstances in such a way that he winds up dead, because they fear what he's capable of and worry that he might turn on them. It is precisely because of this that Mikoshiba turns on them and brings them to ruin. Even after word gets out that this is how Mikoshiba operates, people keep on trying...
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: While slave owners are a mixed bag, slave traders are universally horrible, horrible people who treat slaves the way the most unethical "kill shelters" treat their animals. The only reason slave traders don't rape their female slaves is that it would ruin the resale value.
- Sociopathic Hero: Or Villain Protagonist, depending on who you ask. With the sole exception of the twin sisters Sara and Laura, Mikoshiba can only see people as pawns on a chess-board or resources to use and exploit. He couldn't care less about their well being unless he personally benefits from it. Still, the world is so crapsack, that he's seen as a major improvement, even when he employs Child Soldier armies, in the thousands!
- Stealing the Credit: It is the norm for "noble" knights to steal the accomplishments of their underlings, especially if said underlings are born of commoner blood, and the "noble" knights are honestly shocked if the subordinates resent them for it.
- Stupid Evil: As the rest of the page's trope descriptions can attest, Pragmatic Villainy seems to be an alien concept to the people of the other world.
- Suicidal Overconfidence: The Fatal Flaw of the world setting. As Mikoshiba gets explained to him from a bar-tender he befriended."The greatest threat is not the strong monsters. You can run from them easy enough. The greatest threat comes from the weak monsters because adventurers get careless, complacent, and overconfident, only to find themselves in way over their head before they know it."
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: Invoked and lampshaded all over the place, especially where it concerns Mikoshiba Ryouma. The only thing more dangerous than failing an assigned task is succeeding "too well." In this World of Jerkass, if you win enough achievements to merit recognition, you gain enough jealousy and resentment to have your "friends" and neighbors draw blades against you. As a prime example, Ryouma takes up adventuring and joins the guild so he can travel the world, hoping to find a way home. He does such a good job that it catches the Guild Master's eye. Unfortunately, the Guild Master "rewards" this effort by forcing Mikoshiba on a quest deliberately designed to drag Ryouma and his two slaves into Rozeria's woes.... and it only gets worse from there.Lupiz: Once the enemy's been killed, the warrior that won the fight can be killed off is the truth of the world everywhere.
- Trapped in Another World: Played With. While Mikoshiba Ryouma can leave the New World he's been dragged to, he still can't get back to Earth by any known means, and if he tries, he's likely to be spending eternity bouncing back and forth in the dimensional boundary between the two worlds.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The stronger "otherworlders" get, the crazier they get, especially once they unlock their ability to cast magic. The fact that they're all horribly abused as a matter of course, without exception, including the protagonist, doesn't help.
- World of Jerkass: Everybody with any authority only cares about what benefits him, personally, and is either seeking to exploit others or is so horribly inept and incompetent that it's impossible to tell the difference just by looking at the result. This includes the protagonist After he becomes the lord of Wortenia Peninsula against his will. In Mikoshiba's case though, he is considered extremely benevolent by comparison as he at least doesn't treat people beneficent to him like trash, and leaves the rest alone if they don't antagonize him first.
