Next, there's Chiba, Haru's classmate who got sent to the fantasy world along with her and now makes a living as an adventurer. Haru's coworkers, for instance, are background characters with little contributions to the story thus far, yet their relationships with her are quite wholesome and cute. Of course, there are typical isekai archetypes in this story, but even they have their humanizing moments. Speaking of refreshing, let's talk characters. She's also quick to call misogyny by its name whenever she notices it in the world, something rarely seen in animanga. Some customers are really shitty to her, others are nicer, but she makes it very clear that she doesn't owe anything even to the nice ones. She never sugarcoats how she's treated or what she thinks of the men she services. The author never makes you undeservedly sympathize with Haru's customers either. Indeed, this story isn't all dark despite some sexual content and violence here and there. This characterization even results in rather poignant moments where I got a little choked up with emotion at seeing her get to live a bit of the carefree youth she didn't have in her original world. It tackles her previous life in an interesting way, and gives believable explanations for why she does the things she does, including the reason she chose sex work. Good deal to humanize her than most of this genre. Haru, the protagonist, isn't a blushing naive klutz, but she isn't some dominatrix puppetmaster either. This probably has to do with how the original light novel is geared towards a female audience, so there's no gross glamorizing when it comes to sex work. This idea of a high school girl becoming a sex worker in an isekai setting seems rife for gratuitous objectification and unhealthy "romance," but the story is way more balanced than I expected. I read this one on a whim without expecting much, but this turned out to be a lot better than the premise would have you believe.
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