Literature / Reincarnated as a Sword

Don't mess with this cute little girl.

''I opened my eyes to find myself in another world. For some odd reason, I ended up as a sword. Before my eyes laid a plain full of magic beasts, and so, I launched my body and flew in search of a partner, a wielder (females only).

Wait. Absorbing magic stones gets me skills? Oh hell yeah! This be fun! More, more, give me more! Gimme all your magic stones! Okay, yeah no, but I am accepting anything anyone’s willing to give.''

This tale is one that follows your everyday nerd, normal as could be, save for the fact that he happened to reincarnate as a sword.

Reincarnated as a Sword (Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita, literally "I Became the Sword by Transmigrating") is a Web Serial Novel written by Yuu Tanaka which was first posted on the site Shousetsuka ni Narou from 2015 to 2024. It was picked up for publication as a series of Light Novels in 2016, which are illustrated by Llo and published by Micro Magazine. A manga adaptation began in 2016, illustrated by Tomowo Maruyama and published by Gentosha. An anime adaptation by C2C began on October 5, 2022 (Sept 28 on one streaming service in Japan that remains 1 week ahead of Broadcast). After it finished airing, a second season was announced.

Seven Seas Entertainment has licensed the light novels in English, along with a manga spinoff called Reincarnated as a Sword: Another Wish, illustrated by Hinako Inoue, where Fran and Teacher get sent to various parallel worlds.

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Reincarnated as a Sword provides examples of:

• Above Good and Evil: The Goddess of Chaos doesn't care about human morality, and creates dungeons that spew monsters to keep the world from stagnating. And yet, she's actually one of the most benevolent Gods in the setting.
• Adaptation Expansion: The light novel and manga have several events that don't occur in the original web novel.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the light novel, while Teacher initially hopes for an attractive wielder and finds Fran cute, he very quickly establishes a father-daughter relationship with her. Fran, meanwhile, between being a kid and living as a slave, has No Social Skills (including being Oblivious to Love) and wouldn't notice anyway. The manga, however, keeps the plot but shifts their interactions to have Teacher constantly having to remind himself to behave around Fran between Nosebleeds, with Fran not literally being, but filling the archetype of, an exasperated girlfriend rolling her eyes at the antics she's socially conscious of. The anime returns to a father-daughter relationship.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Most, if not all, of Fran's enemies are significantly more repulsive in the anime than in the manga or novels. The slaver who loved to kick Fran around and used the slavery magic to force slaves to sacrifice themselves to cover his escape from the two-headed bear is stout and covered in scars, as opposed to his more handsome appearance in the manga. Darum, the mercenary-turned-adventurer, and his entire party, look more like talking monsters than humanoids. The goblin dungeon boss is so mutated it doesn't even look like a goblin anymore – in fact, the adaptationally far more hideous goblins actually look attractive by comparison.
• Alien Sky: The world where the story takes place has at least 7 moons with a very complicated orbital pattern.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The "monster" races are, at best, mindless beasts, unless they're a magician's familiar.
  • The Blue Cat Tribe are so odious, it takes almost 200 chapters in the web-novel before even one is shown to be anything other than a Smug Snake Card-Carrying Villain, and the only reason why he even has any redeeming features at all is because he was specifically raised contrary to his people's philosophy by a slave caravan driver, solely to hide the slaver's despicable activities from the general public.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: On the one side, we have a bloodthirsty sword, and a 12-year-old little girl who has to be given a reason not to kill people who antagonize her, along with the people who support them, along the entire spectrum of "good" morality. And on the other, we have genocidal maniacs, dog-kicking villains, and an actual God of Evil.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The gods and mortals generally find it impossible to see eye-to-eye on things, which leads to some gods like the god of nature being super harsh by human standards. People like the Goddess of Chaos, in part, because she's actually pretty reasonable and merciful.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: When tutoring some low-ranked but promising adventurers, Fran warns the archer Naria that she can't rely exclusively on her bow. She needs some type of light melee weapon to defend herself in close combat, or she'll die when the enemy gets close.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The gods have a fondness for ironic punishments, though we only have two examples. One of them is the king Trismegistus who messed around with the Evil God and ended up creating a monster that destroyed an entire continent. His punishment was to be trapped inside a barrier with it while being granted perfect immortality. He can't die until the Abyss Eater is destroyed, but can't do anything but fight it. All the gods' punishments are apparently similar in that not only is it very specially tailored, but there's also always a way out. For Trismegistus, it's slaying the Abyss Eater with the implication that he'll one day succeed. For the Black Cat Tribe, it would be to either have a group made up exclusively of Black Cats destroy an S-ranked evil being, or for a solo Black Cat to destroy a kin of the Evil God. Doing so would remove the curse from all Black Cats everywhere.
• Curse Escape Clause
  • If Trismegistus ever manages to slay the Abyss Eater, his curse of immortality will be broken and he'll finally be allowed to die. It's hinted that the beast is gradually weakening over time as the mortal races send in fighters to pick away at it.
  • To negate their own personal curse, a Black Cat can slay either one A-ranked evil beast or a thousand weaker ones. Ending the curse for their race requires a similar feat but on a much larger scale.
• Deconstruction: Give an ordinary denizen of a fantasy world a legendary sword that is capable of great feats, and most stories will make them become some sort of legendary hero or great villain. Give it to an abused child slave that's all but set to die pointlessly, in a world that would rather she died because of her clan's infamous history and thus has nothing to live for, and you get a Blood Knight that may be nice to those who are kind to her, but is down for Murder Is the Best Solution and pragmatically eliminating threats before they become a problem if it's in her newfound power unless they give a good fight. Fran's a hero because of Teacher and the deeds they do together as she follows his words faithfully, not by her own inclination.
• Disaster Dominoes: In an amusing Summon Bigger Fish way. At one point, a pirate vessel towed by a water dragon attacks the merchant ship Fran is protecting. This attack draws the attention of three Kraken. The fight with the Kraken draws the attention of a Midgard Wyrm which eats the pirate ship, the dragon, and at least one of the Kraken before moving onto the merchant ship. Then the Wyrm's actions draw the attention of a Leviathan which views Midgard Wyrms as its favorite snack. It winks playfully at Shishou before swimming away, wyrm still in its jaws.
• Driven by Envy: After learning what evolved Black Cats are like, the main characters suspect that the reason the Blue Cat Tribe hates and oppresses them so much, is because anything a Blue Cat can do, a Black Cat can do better, especially post-evolution.
• Elemental Fusion: People with magical affinity of two different elements (which is rare) can combine them to create what's called a compound element:
  Water + Earth = Wood
  Water + Wind = Ice
  Water + Fire = Life
  Wind + Fire = Thunder
  Wind + Earth = Sand
  Earth + Fire = Metal
• Everyone Has Standards: Though Beastmen put a lot of weight judging people by their strength, even they find the Blue Cat Tribe detestable for oppressing the Black Cat Tribe despite how weak most Black Cats are. Rigdith even goes so far as put the Black Cat Tribe under his protection while they rebuild because while such mercy isn't really typical of beastmen, they simply don't have the strength and numbers to pull themselves back up alone no matter how strong certain individuals may be.
• Fantastic Racism: Amazingly, aside from the most arrogant of the nobility who look down on everyone, and the much later human-supremacist country of Bahadesh, the humans don't suffer from this, but the Beastmen tribes tend to be quite racist toward each other, especially toward the Black Cat Tribe (of which Fran is a member), who are looked down on by all.
  • The Black Cat Tribe is racist toward the Blue Cat Tribe in self-defense, as the Blue Cats are clearly trying to enslave or exterminate them, and have been for centuries.
• Freudian Excuse: Blue Cats as a whole have three. First is that anything an evolved Blue Cat can do, an evolved Black Cat can do better. Second is that they were literally forced into the role of slavers originally and those who disobeyed incurred the wrath of the current Beast King centuries ago. Third is that the Black Cats back in the day were being dicks, even setting aside the evil god stuff.
• Funbag Airbag: Fran first meets Amanda when she walks face first into her boobs and the resulting bounce knocks her to the ground.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Food variant. Teacher's recreations of various Earth food dishes – curry and katsudon – become so popular that they kick off a bit of a culinary revolution.
• Good All Along: Despite Dias and Aurel's suspicions and the Beast Lord's Patricidal title, he's actually a good guy. Turns out, it was the previous Beast Lord who had been a real bastard, so his son killing him is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the whole reason they were at odds to begin with, was because Rigdith wanted to end the Blue Cats' slave-trading and the discrimination against the Black Cat Tribe!
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Blue Cats focusing on nothing but the slave trade for centuries has left them quite weak and unpopular among Beastmen. While people only feel vaguely sorry for the Black Cats for being victimized so badly, they do find it unpleasant to deal with a race willing to sell their own kind into slavery. They've also weakened and grown less in number over the centuries because all the Blue Cats left now are typically the descendants of slavers, not warriors.
• Honor Before Reason: Despite finding their beliefs repulsive, Zehmet still covers for Blue Pride at the risk of his own life because they're still his soldiers. After having their slave trading rubbed in his face he apparently finally gives up on them as hopeless.
• Hotter and Sexier: The manga is considerably more explicit than either the web or light novels. For example, in the novels, it is only mentioned that Fran and the elf female receptionist bathed together, in a public bathhouse. In the manga, the bathing is actually shown, with uncensored nudity (for the adults).
• Laser-Guided Karma: A slave caravan is under attack by a two-headed bear monster and one of the slave merchants orders the slaves to delay it (and be slaughtered) so the merchants can escape with their lives. A few seconds later the slave shackle on a severed arm hits the merchant in the back of the head, knocking him face-first into a sharpened jutting root.
  • When the caravan's leader tries to make Nameless hand over the magical talking sword she found by brandishing her slave contract, said sword carves through the contract and about half the guy's head before he's even finished speaking.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Slaves are bound with one that forces them to obey all their master's orders. When Teacher destroys Fran's contract, her collar and cuffs immediately crumble to dust, meaning she is truly free.
• Marshmallow Hell: Amanda likes to hug Fran tightly and without consent (in a motherly way), resulting in her suffocating from her large bust size.
• Might Makes Right: The primary reason Beastmen tribes look down on the Black Cat Tribe, which lost its ability to "evolve" some 500 odd years before the start of the story, is that among Beastmen, it's normal to view the weaker person as "responsible" for whatever happens to them.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: To Fran's shock, the Blue-Cat leader of Blue Pride is actually a decent guy who apologizes for his subordinate's dickish behavior, demotes him, and says he feels ashamed of how his people treat the Black Cats. Well, it doesn't shock her that he'd say it, but what shocks her is that he actually means it.
• Noodle Incident: The kingdom of Raydoss is the first, and last, country ever to try conscripting adventurers into their army during times of war.
• Old Master: Kiara is pushing seventy and in poor health, but she also had the blessing of god of battle for fifty years, which required her to engage in life threatening battle at least once a month. The benefit was a large boost to raw stats and double stat gains on level up, meaning that despite her age in pure stats she's probably stronger than Fran, even setting aside her vast experience and skill. Though this only gets her so far: She's unable to break past the royal maid in charge of caring for her.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Shishou, aka "Teacher", will kill anybody who tries to wield him without his consent, and he's not alone. The aptly named God Blades, each and every one of them powerful enough to level an entire country, are very, very picky about who can wield them, and the consequences to try and force them are never pretty.
• Reincarnation: The protagonist, Shishou ("Teacher"), is a sword in this new world, but was originally a middle-aged man in Japan who was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
• Reincarnated as a Non-Humanoid: Shishou being reborn as a sapient sword when he used to be human is what happens at the very start of the plot.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The Evil God was defeated and torn apart long, long ago, but while his pieces were sealed he's not truly dead yet. The Black Cats five centuries ago broke at least one seal on him to siphon power from him, which incurred major divine wrath as this put the entire world in danger.
  • In the third light novel, Shishou is revealed to have something sealed into the wolf's head-shaped crest on his hilt. After running afoul of a magic-draining sword, that seal is weakened enough to where that something manages to escape for a split-second.
• Sentient Phlebotinum: The protagonist is not the first nor only intelligent "sword" in the story, and is not likely to be the last.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Volume 1 when Shishou first makes Fran curry he says "Welcome to the Restaurant to Another World"
  • The anime OP shows Fran Sky Surfing on Teacher, like Studio Gainax's Daicon IV intro.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Slavery is a capital offense in most of the countries in the world setting, aside from those who are condemned into it as an alternative to the death penalty, after due process in a court of law. The one and only country that welcomes slavery, Raydoss, is well-known to be a Wretched Hive.
• Spotting the Thread: After escaping from a disastrous attempt to infiltrate the Sydran Royal Palace, Master notes that it seemed that the enemy somehow knew their every move and suspects a mole. He asks one of his allies to rouse the disheartened infiltration party by swearing to succeed the next time, which everyone replies to with their own oaths. Using "Essence of Falsehood" and "Magic Detection", he realizes that Sarut was lying when he made that oath, and he was carrying a concealed magic item, which later turns out to be a magic communication device he was using to leak their plans to the enemy. Instead of exposing him there though, Master comes up with a plan to Feed the Mole, which serves to further cement his guilt when Fran exposes him after the plan goes off without a hitch.
• Supreme Chef: While Fran and Master both have a maxed Cooking skill and the former even has a title boosting her Cooking prowess, the true master cook is Io, the lady that runs the orphanage in Bulbola. Using low-quality vegetables and no seasoning, she's capable of making soup on par with Master's best curry. It's implied that the curry she makes when she has the proper ingredients is also better than his, despite still not really using any spices.
• Taking the Bullet: Fran tries cutting Zehmet's sister some slack since Fran considers him a friend, but when she gets pushed too far, she ends up taking a swing at her anyway. Zehmet jumps in front of her blade and Fran agrees to withdraw, but warns him that if the attitude of his men hasn't improved by the time she returns, there will be consequences.
• Training from Hell: After Kiara shows how powerful Black Cats can be, Beast Lord Rigdith comes to idolize her and asks her to teach him. Her training was apparently extremely difficult but paid off: He's easily the strongest character seen so far. Fran and Master are literally incapable of landing a blow even when he isn't paying attention.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: After evolving, Fran's status skyrockets and Beastmen are nearly in awe of her. She ends up visiting the Black Cat village only to find them a beaten-down, timid group after living through centuries of slavery, so she spends a brief time explaining what they need to do to evolve and why, gives them a bare minimum of combat experience and then gives them some basic swordsmanship practice and tips on how to become mages, with particular emphasis on wind and fire magic plus instructing them to raising their agility and magic stats: Wind and fire are necessary to use lightning, which along with hitting the level cap and having magic and agility is necessary to become the special Black Heavenly Tigerkin instead of a normal Black Tigerkin.
• Wild Card: Adventurers as a whole. They don't want to be tied down to any one country or political system, and ally themselves to whomever they want, whenever they want, for however long they want. There is but one country that has ever tried to force their loyalty. Nobody else wants to follow the example.
• Wretched Hive: The Kingdom of Raydoss. The more that's told about it, the worse it sounds. To date, they've sent slaver caravans into neighboring countries to kidnap the citizens and enslave them for purposes of Human Resources, performed human experiments that make Unit 731 seem benign by comparison, and they're actively trying to channel the power of the God of Evil for their own ends, with the four Archdukes vying for martial supremacy against each other, leading the country to the brink of civil-war.

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