Joou Heika no Isekai Strategy
Her Majesty's Swarm

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While the current 6.90 score is understandable, I still have to say that this was good quality popcorn entertainment for me.

I don't want to talk about the ending, since it was obviously (and sadly) axed and the author had to wedge a conclusion into a part, that just wasn't meant to be there.

The synopsis is exactly what you get. The author seemed to have fun making this manga and it translated well into my reading experience too.

One thing that I really liked about this story, the "connected conscious" gimmick. I can't imagine how uncomfortable I would be in this situation, where my thoughts could leak ... into an army of spiders, who are expecting me to lead them to world domination and have no problem mutilating people in half with ease. Also, feeling every one of their wound as it was mine would surely drive me insane.

Apart from this, it's a somewhat standard isekai and you'll find plenty of your favorite tropes here as well, but it tried to do those in a decent pace, so it never felt slow to me.

In conclusion, if you are looking for an isekai junk food with a slightly crazy and evil MC, you'll probably like this one.

This is the power fantasy of someone who played the Zerg campaign in Starcraft and made it an Isekai. It even opens with a quote from Starcraft. University student becomes Isekai'd to an RTS game world where she's the queen of an insectoid swarm. In revenge for some bad things, she chooses to rain hell on the world. Some kinda interesting stuff about how the "Hive Mind Collective" of the Arachnae (her swarm) is affecting her mind, but not explored enough. Likewise seems to end abruptly with ambiguous ending. Imagine the introduction of a brand new challenge, new adversary and twist, big setback... then ... it ends, all in one last chapter

This manga was recommended to me by a friend who initially praised it highly, giving it 10 stars. However, half an hour later, he suddenly changed his rating to just 4 stars. Naturally, I wanted to know more, and he assured me that he was only referring to the last chapter. While he might have a point there, he was still an ass to sway me with his praise to read it.

I want to make it clear right away that I wouldn't recommend anyone to even start "Her Majesty’s Swarm." Even if I were to highlight its positive aspects, I would only do so for ... the sake of completeness. The ending – yes, the manga concluded after 42 chapters – ruins everything.

But let's start from the beginning. "Her Majesty’s Swarm" revolves around a nameless girl who is obsessed with a strategy game and was quite skilled at it. Her favorite faction was the so-called Arachnae, a swarm of spiders sharing a collective mind. As is often the case in manga, she suddenly wakes up as the queen of this swarm, which seeks death, destruction, and victory...

There are many interesting ideas that such a plot could explore. How did she get into this world? How does her connection to this swarm affect her? Whom and how does she attack? Does she build a kingdom? Can she somehow return? These are questions that a reader might ponder, and to my surprise, the manga does too. Frankly, other than these diverse questions, I found everything else rather mediocre – I don't like the art style, the characters, the world, and the answers to the questions are not adequately addressed to like, understand, or form any strong emotional attachment to. But hey, the manga still has time to answer all these questions, to make the strategy more engaging, to build a subplot around nation-building or something similar – right? As I mentioned earlier, the manga is concluded, so that won't happen.

But hey, doesn`t this mean it's just a mediocre, very brutal strategy isekai manga? Unfortunately not, because you can tell how rushed the ending is. You can tell it only came about because the manga had to be discontinued. Most, if not all, questions are left unanswered or answered very unsatisfactorily, the ending feels sudden and open. If I hadn't been warned beforehand, I would have been disappointed in my search for further chapters.

So it should be understandable that I do not recommend "Her Majesty’s Swarm." In summary, I saw potential, waited for something to be done with it, and then the story was abruptly cut short. Even though the light novel apparently continues, after the rather mediocre chapters and the dreadful ending, I really have no desire to spend any more time with "Her Majesty’s Swarm."