I realize this was finished eleven years ago and you may never read this review. Nevertheless, I’d like to say that I kind of hate you. I read a couple paragraphs yesterday morning. It is now 3 a.m., and I have been reading for the better part of seventeen hours. I’ve ignored chores, children, cats and occasionally my bladder.

This is unquestionably a masterpiece of character development and cultural analysis. The plot wasn’t bad, either! ; )

Brilliant work.

Really liked that Harry was mostly competent and grew as a wizard and a person in a believable way.

The narrative was a bit hard to slog through at first, parts of it dragged, but I can't point to specific examples, here, of how to improve the engagement. It would probably take a good professional editor to rewrite and chop sections.

Anyway, the Japanese immersion was well done, and the character insights and growth too.
BUT, the crap about all the bad guys (except maybe that one minister) having "good" reasons for what they did is just that... Crap.
Bad guys always think that they are justified (or don't think about it at all), but their reasons rarely stand the tests of logic, nor of evidence. Some people are just evil, and most people with the same, or worse, experience as the bad guys aren't nearly as malignant.

Anyway, that Harry ended up doing so well, with some nice (but not "comic book") power-ups, and with reasonable support, and with solid character growth, covers a lot of sins.

The ending was especially well done, but one wonders: Why no love for Tonks, nor the Order of the Phoenix? ;)

I've read a lot of HP fanfic over the past two decades, and to me this one is up with the best I can recall. Thank you for a unique and incredible read!

It has been 10 years since this story is complete, but I'll leave a review for all chapters read thus far.

It is interesting what Minister Shacklebolt deemed necessary to do to Harry after knowing a large portion of what his life was like up to that point and the most recent events too.
I believe Kingsley failed more than the 4 task in that test, just due to what he did to Harry, imho.

I strongly suspect that the aspects of the Japanese culture is what stopped Kingsley to let this play out.
I think he's hoping to have instilled in Harry the mindset of British Wizarding Community first rather than an individualistic view.
I also think, if Harry had gone to a country with an individualistic mindset, Kingsley would've been more insistent that Harry return home.

Great story!

Five stars!

Off to read sequel...

I read through part of 7 with a fair bit of skimming. This seems decent, but not quite compelling. I suppose the biggest thing that stands out is the Goblins create a problem, and it looks like Harry is the one that is indirectly being forced to help solve it. It's sort of realistic, but I'm not sure it fixes the Wizarding world's underlying problem of usually waiting for others to fix their problems, though perhaps you touch on that later in the story.

Enjoyed this story. I didn’t like having to take time to read through the alternate/false timeline, but now have a better understanding why you wrote it to be so long.

Well I guess I should’ve been at least a little bit more patient and finished the chapter before I made my last comment

I was really enjoying this story up until the point of the rescue from the goblins. I’m very much disliking this whole alternate memory, one chapter was more than enough of it. I’m have a difficult time making me not just skim through the rest of the story until I get back to his real reality and understand what the crap Kingsley and Hestia have planned for him.

Kingsley: So, you going to live here?
Me (if I was Harry): Not as long as everybody and his Minister thinks they can just pop in whenever they feel like it.

thanks for helping me possibly understand my mother.

Kudos, One of my favorite fanfics ever.
Well written and great development. I read it once before but stumbled upon it again and I appreciated it just as much the second time.

I find myself very surprised that there are not more reviews on this story.
Your plot is well thought out. The new magic you used is consistent with canon (as opposed to some of the silly stuff in fanfiction).
Maybe part of the problem is the depth of thought involved. I, for one, appreciate that you’ve dealt with real adult issues and developed the characters in a logical post-canon fashion, but it’s likely that many fanfiction readers are looking for angst, romance and formulaic cliched plot devices.
Above all of that, though, is the fact that you a really good writer. You have a great command of the language (I meaning grammar and punctuation) but beyond that, you are a really good wordsmith.
I look forward to reading the next piece of this story and really hope (for everyone’s sake) that you have at some point published “original” works.
Thanks!

Loved it very much... Wonderfully written... Superb plot... Great twist...

"It explained why he was a Parseltongue"

He's NOT a Parseltongue! He's a Parselmouth! That is what you call a person who can speak Parseltongue, which is the name of the language.