okay so this is a book i kinda liked and kinda didn't. it was fun reading about the pizza and the mc learning to work in this world.

i hated Lillia. i wanted to smack her silly every time she breathed. she her gluttony was sorta cute at the beginning then annoyed the crap out of me about half way through the book.

other that, it was fun.

Do not read this book on an empty stomach or it’ll leave you hungry.

This is a one-shot, single volume light novel about a boy, named Kaito getting reincarnated as a hero of making ‘high-calorie foods’, specifically pizza. He enters a small country of elves where they eat mainly vegetables without seasoning and look a bit underfed.

The concept of this light novel is light hearted and almost parody driven. There are mentions of dragons, slime and mandrakes but that’s about it, except for the dragon a bit. We also don’t touch on any heavy topics, themes, magic or other abilities. The story is simply about a boy trying to make pizzas and looking to open his parlor and everything is pretty much easy going from there. There is no clear system guiding Kaito on his journey as a new hero or any clear indication of how he should level up and what level he’s at. The story doesn’t indulge in too many details seen in typical reincarnation stories and keeps to the theme of pizza building.

The story is very repetitive from pizza making to character personalities. Kaito doesn’t learn a lot of pizza varieties from the magic bag of cards he received, and by the end of the book doesn’t learn many varieties either. Also, as the steps to making pizza are quite similar the process is repeated throughout but shortened near the end of the book. Besides Kaito, there isn’t much character development for any of his other elf friends either. Most of the elf characters have extreme personalities, such as Lilia’s gluttonous appetite or Queen Eleonora being a tsundere. They usually run Kaito into awkward situations and slight trouble but it reads as a running gag eliciting a laugh. Although I did find some instances frustrating to read about and just well, there to make up a chapter.

Overall, the book was quite bland to read about however I did enjoy the simplicity of it. Don’t get me wrong here, I love pizza but there’s not much in the book that pulls me in for a re-read. There wasn’t any interesting events/situations, there’s no harem, there’s no developed romance or mystery and the humor gets repetitive and tiring after a while. It’s pretty much a calm, easy read and great to read in between some of the more serious light novels or books.

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If you like pizza and elf girls then you will like this book!

Considering the very few other reviews I've seen for this particular light novel all seem to have the same harshness for this book, please allow me to shed some illumination on why The Hero and His Elf Bride Open a Pizza Parlor In Another World is a fun, awesome little book, and deserves some more praise and recognition.

Upon first glance, you may assume that this book is part of the over-saturated isekai genre [ie: a fantasy subgenre in anime, manga, light novels, etc. revolving around a normal person ending up in a fantasy world one way or another] and in a way that assumption isn't entirely incorrect. However, some quick searching I did after this book popped up in my Amazon recommendations revealed that The Hero and His Elf Bride Open a Pizza Parlor In Another World is actually meant to be a parody or satire of the existing tropes within that subgenre in order to just sort of dick around with the over-used concepts and have a little fun in the process. Additionally, each chapter is sort of meant to be read as individual short stories or drabbles that fit together as the sum total of a greater whole, which helps to add to the feeling of episodic stories one would see in a comedy isekai anime.

I've seen other reviews call the characters all one-dimensional outside of the POV character, "Kaito the High-Calorie Hero", but let's be fair: all of them are meant to fit certain archetypes within this trope-heavy subgenre, and in a way Kaito is no exception to that either. This doesn't mean that they're any less fun though, at least not in my opinion. I think without the context that this is meant to be something of a parody or satirical take on the genre as a whole, then the one-dimensionality of the characters can be grating rather readily comprehended.

All in all however, I enjoyed this light novel immensely. It's a very fun little read and I think it personally helped spark some imagination, and not just a few giggles either. I do highly recommend that people interested in reading more light novels give this a chance, and hopefully you go into it with more open-mindedness and awareness of the context I've explained here.