I just remembered they devoted a whole scene to Mike and Will burying a dead body for no reason other than to poke fun at—

Should I Read SVSSS? (Scum Villain's Self-Saving System)

... is a question you've been asking yourself so let me help you make a decision.

Summary:

Shen Yuan dies from rage reading the final chapter of a popular webnovel series: Proud Immortal Demon Way. With all his complaints and curses at the author, he gets transmigrated into the body of Shen Qingqiu-- the villain of the story. Now, he has to fill in plot holes, ensure the main plot points of the story still happens (this includes the original SQQ's actions to make things difficult for the Main Character), all while trying to gain favor with said main character.

The Good:

The highlight of this series is definitely its humor. It helps if you're familiar with harem anime or some of the straight cultivation webnovels. The kind with an OP main character who gets all the girls (+ fanservice) and show how cool he is by face-slapping all the villains. The author does a great job of poking fun at these tropes with SQQ's narration. If you enjoy satirical stories that do not take themselves seriously, you would like this book.

I really enjoy the characters of this book. Nobody's all good or bad, they just have conflicting motivations and different personalities or upbringings. I wish I could say more, but it would be spoilers. I'll expand on this in another post.

What plot armor? I noticed this in MXTX (the author)'s novels a lot. The plot likes to turn its back on the main character. By that I mean, there are times when the outcome of a scenario is up to luck, and the main character ends up with bad luck a lot of the times. If you don't like stories that bend over backwards to make things work for the main character, I think you'll enjoy this series.

The Questionable:

Age gap. In the story, we start off with the ML being 14 and the MC probably around 20s. Not to worry though, nothing happens until the ML is an adult. The feeling I got about this age gap is like walking in a tightrope, but never falling to one side. It has a nuance that I believe would make their relationship reasonable, but if age gaps make you incredibly uncomfortable despite the nuances, I would recommend not to pick it up.

If you're new to the genre and aren't familiar with the tropes the series is talking about, it might be a bit difficult to understand what's happening. However, if you decide to get the book, there is a glossary at the back that explains some of them!

If you like stories that guide you gently through the setting and you like to be immersed in your senses first before something happens, you might find it difficult to like this story. The series is generally fast-paced and only focuses on details that is currently relevant to the main character.

I hope these points help! Feel free to let me know if you end up reading the series and if you have, let me know which parts you liked/didn't like!

The Threat

Short opinion: I might have had empathy for David while reading #20, but that all disappeared real fast around the time Jake tells Ax that they need to start looking for Tobias not in the sky but dead on the ground.  

Long opinion:

This book has always struck me as being a study in military leadership.  We get relatively little introspection from Jake for once (and thank goodness; as much as I love that kid even I think he needs to lighten up on the self-loathing sometimes) because this is a book about how the Animorphs are doing something very right.  Specifically, they are operating exactly as a small military unit should—and it takes a clueless, selfish outsider in order to act as a foil and show just how friggin’ competent these child soldiers actually are.  A lot of that competence comes straight from the Animorphs’ absolute, unhesitating trust in their leader, to the point of literally being willing to die at his command.  David throws a pretty huge wrench in the works by simply being there with the team, and none of the Animorphs handle that challenge to Jake’s leadership particularly well.  Then again, considering how much of the plot of this book hinges on the Animorphs needing strong leadership just to stay alive, one can appreciate their disgust at David’s disobedience.  

Because Jake holds that team together.  Marco might tease him for his lack of science knowledge, Rachel might treat him like a little brother, Ax might enjoy winding him up with the whole “prince” thing, Tobias might happily poke fun at his bad grades, and Cassie might be quick to point out his lack of people skills, but they all respect the hell out of Jake.  Again and again in this book (and in the series as a whole) they prove that they literally trust him with their lives.  Sure, it helps that going into the war Cassie and Marco have both been friends with Jake for years while Rachel’s known him her whole life, Ax wants anyone who can tell him what to do, and Tobias has latched on like a barnacle learned that he can rely on Jake to help him out.  But Jake also earns that trust over the course of the war.  He goes into every battle with six Animorphs, and he comes out of every battle except the last one with six Animorphs (X).  He will deliberately refuse to ask his team to do anything he isn’t willing to do himself, and he will physically throw himself between the line of fire and any of his friends if he can.  

…so it’s patently ridiculous that David thinks he can win leadership over the Animorphs through biting people.  It seems almost silly to consider that David thinks Rachel and the others will seriously acknowledge his superiority as a direct result of him hurting someone they love.  And yet that exact trope is incredibly common in fantasy and sci fi.  Highlander, Pacific Rim, Dune, The Sword of Truth, X-Men, Spectrum, Babylon 5, Journey to Chaos, and like 400 other books and movies I don’t have space to list all portray male characters winning or attempting to win leadership roles (or infinitely worse, the respect of relatively passive female characters) through punching each other.  Technically speaking, David and Jake’s little catfight is a classic dominance battle… and Jake loses.  Badly.  Non-technically speaking, David never had a prayer of getting the Animorphs to respect him as much as they respect Jake pretty much no matter what he did.  

Because this whole book is all about showing the boundaries of Jake’s authority, which are far-reaching and close to absolute. When Ax says that it would be smarter for him to join Jake in following David into David’s bedroom, Jake insists on having Ax in the backyard and Ax goes to demorph without question.  During the opening scene, Jake asks Tobias first for clothes for David and then for a seagull, and Tobias runs off (flies off?) to go grab both immediately.  When the Animorphs first pop up inside the banquet hall pillar next to the yeerk pool, Jake asks Rachel to go into battle morph… and then asks her to demorph thirty seconds later.  She does both without grumbling.  When the seven of them are facing down the (apparent) army of hork-bajir controllers, Jake asks Marco to attack the thirty-odd controllers while alone and unarmed (pun intended) and Marco just says “you’d better be sure” before he goes ahead and does it (#21).  Cassie and Jake toss the issue of What to Do About David back and forth, but Cassie defers to Jake’s judgment.  When the seven of them are poised to grab the Russian prime minister and Jake suddenly says “Battle morphs! Now!” without a word of explanation, his narration notes “No one asked why. No one hesitated” as everyone frantically starts morphing (#21).  

However, Jake also repays that trust in spades.  His snap-judgment order to have the team go into battle morph saves their lives when otherwise Visser Three’s trap would have closed on them all.  He doesn’t get Marco killed because he’s right about the hologram within a hologram, and he also correctly calculates that having Ax demorphed during that final battle with David is more valuable than having him in harrier morph would be.  When asking for favors from Rachel and Tobias he says “please” and “thank you” and “sorry for the trouble,” and offers to repay the surf shop out of pocket so that Tobias or David won’t have to.  He freely admits that Cassie’s a better judge of character, Rachel is a better fighter, and Marco is a better strategist than him.  He verbally acknowledges Tobias’s skill at aerial fighting and Ax’s at blade fighting.  

More than that, he knows his team.  Not only does he take the time to study all five of his friends, but he also spends this entire book trying desperately to figure out what makes David tick.  He says, “I knew each of the others. Name any situation. I could tell you exactly how Cassie or Marco or Rachel or Tobias or even Ax would react. But David remained unknown. Unpredictable,” and he’s right (#21).  He moves the chess pieces around and around and around solving the dual problems of the world leaders’ conference and the seventh Animorph throughout this trilogy, and eventually figures out how to solve the leaders himself and how to move out of the way to let Cassie and Rachel solve David.  He knows that when the David situation needs a gentle touch to use Cassie, that when the Animorphs start dropping like flies Ax has to “get Rachel,” and that when it comes to attacking controllers with finesse he needs Marco.  He tells Cassie that “I’m just a moron when it comes to figuring people out,” but the truth is that, while he might not be able to do it as easily as Cassie does, he’s still got the necessary brain power (and empathy, for that matter) to figure people out just fine on his own if given enough time to do so.  

All of the moments when Jake making snap judgments—and the other five core Animorphs following those judgements—result in lives being saved also justify the fact that Jake is pretty harsh at several moments in this book.  He threatens David’s life after catching him breaking into the hotel room, and actually snaps at both Marco and Rachel when they try to ream David out for nearly betraying them.  He risks everyone’s lives by sneaking them into the world leaders’ summit, and he goes after David on the roof of the mall with the intention of killing David to avenge Tobias.  Jake is not anyone’s dad (as he reminds the team again and again) but he’s also not a mere “teacher or principal or whatever” the way David tries to make him out to be.  The Animorphs’ lives depend on them having a strong leader who gives intelligent orders and can expect them to be obeyed immediately without question.  David threatens the continued existence of the entire team by subverting that order.  

Again, if this was a different type of science fiction series, then David winning the fight against Jake would be enough to promote him automatically to being leader of the Animorphs.  If this was a very different type of story, then David winning the fight against Tobias would mean he’d get to be Rachel’s boyfriend.  K.A. Applegate shows that those kinds of gender roles are frankly ridiculous, because the qualities that make Jake the leader of this team have nothing whatsoever to do with his ability to punch or bite things.