Let’s talk about consent and objectification and stories crossing into territories I’m not very comfortable with.

*there will be minor spoilers up to chapter 47*

When former high schooler and now-mermaid Zhao Xiaokui commits suicide by swimming to the surface of the ocean, she is transmigrated back into her original body. She quickly realizes that five years have passed since she left her world, and someone seems to have taken over her body during that interval.

After encountering an incident and saving a girl from drowning, Zhao Xiaokui experiences a sudden pain in her body. When she nearly faints on the street, she’s taken home by wealthy CEO Shen Zhifei, the fiancée of a man the previous Zhao Xiaokui appeared to have an illicit relationship with.

In the world of After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back, the mermaid is a powerful supernatural being. Despite being considered “weak” in her old world, once she transmigrates back to Earth, Zhao Xiaokui experiences unprecedented power gains. This leads certain forces to take an interest in Zhao Xiaokui early on, causing trouble for her and female lead Shen Zhifei.

Over the years, I’ve developed a fairly accurate intuition about what stories I know I won’t enjoy, but there’s always that one novel that manages to sneak up on you.

Going into After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back, I was intrigued by the reverse transmigration concept. It reminded me of reverse isekai stories like The Devil is a Part-Timer and Re:Creators—except this time, a person from our world has gone somewhere else and returned.

I was looking forward to seeing Zhao Xiaokui readjust to a “normal” life and slowly settle back into her own body.

Instead, what I got was a hodgepodge of all of my least favorite tropes.

*Sigh.* Okay, so, I believe that “taste” is a huge factor in our enjoyment of any given work. If a story doesn’t align with your tastes, it doesn’t mean that the story is inherently bad—it could just mean it’s not for you.

But, and I say this as nicely as possible, After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back makes it really hard for me to justify all of its proclivities.

Along with their heightened abilities and beauty, the mermaids in After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back also have—uh, how do I put this—more primal “needs.”

And I want to make this clear: I’m not inherently opposed to authors playing with type of biology. I believe it can be written well.

But I’m also experienced enough to realize that the narratives which utilize these ideas have an unfortunate tendency to cross into territories I’m not very comfortable with.

And while After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back isn’t the worst offender in this regard, it certainly isn’t doing itself any favors by comparing the first intimate encounter between its main leads to literally being under the influence.

As a consequence of the story’s narrative choices, it’s heavily implied that Shen Zhifei and Zhao Xiaokui get into a relationship because of Zhao Xiaokui’s biological imperatives. Zhao Xiaokui doesn’t think she has any feelings for Shen Zhifei until her body tells her to feel that way.

The novel also repeatedly likens the main characters’ relationship to that of a mother taking care of a child, and it’s difficult not to ignore this aspect of the romance when Zhao Xiaokui does treat Shen Zhifei like an older maternal figure in her life—it’s almost like, to Zhao Xiaokui, Shen Zhifei just happens to be the person who was around when no one else was.

I already find it hard to stomach this “style” of romance, and Zhao Xiaokui’s obsessive possessiveness of Shen Zhifei after she becomes “enlightened” about her “mate” is just the icing on the cake.

These and more are the moments in After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back where I genuinely had to do a double-take to process what I was reading, such as when a side character jokes about getting into a relationship with his coworker’s seven-year-old sister, or when a plotline blithely “solves” the problem of a fairly disgusting villain by…a victim’s cold-blooded revenge?

Or, and this is my least favorite, the blatant objectification of Zhao Xiaokui’s features. And to be clear, we aren’t talking about some once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon here.

It happens constantly. Over and over again. In fact, I’d be surprised if there was a single chapter where someone or something didn’t comment on Zhao Xiaokui’s figure.

My jaw audibly dropped at this gem of a line:

“Her body and facial features reach perfect symmetry and the golden ratio. The degree of symmetry is almost unmatched. I believe she has research value. Her genes, at least for body type and appearance, likely realize the theory of perfect human genetics.”

Which, yikes. I, for one, wasn’t expecting to see eugenics being espoused in my trashy supernatural lesbian novel today.

I originally planned to power through After I Transmigrated as a Mermaid, I Transmigrated Back so I could write a proper review on it. But I just couldn’t do it. No amount of supernatural energy in this world could have convinced me to torture myself with finishing this novel.

So here we are.

Please let me know if you finished the novel, your thoughts, and your opinions. I’d be happy to have a discussion in the comments. Since I DNF’d the novel, I can’t—and won’t—claim to speak to the overall quality of the work, so I’d love to get a different perspective.