Dang, the last update was 2 years ago

So in Arifureta Zero, there is a bald Paladin named John that wields Soul Magic. When fighting the liberators, Miledy, Oscar and crew, he realized his lover(?) was the leader of the liberation army before Miledy and that she was killed leaving Miledy in charge, he slowly felt disgust and fear at how Ehit manipulates the world like a chessboard.

The manga got axed before it got to the point of him straight up defecting to the liberator's side but him and another women are the only other Ancient Magic user left, so most likely Miledy chose to stay behind, using John's Soul Magic to transplant her into a doll made by Oscar's Creation Magic and John kept his soul form in Divine Mountain to test people, I think he also did it to find and turn people who might have doubts about the church

Looking at the chapter names and the cover... this is the last volume isn't it... 😭

Why do stories these days like to have several chapters where the MC is just straight up missing?

Nah the queen is too stupid to know how to use the martyr card properly and she doesn't seem the type to apologize, she'll probably just blame everything on the Ivans for the landslide killing her dad

They can't end it, it's an episodic manga, publishers can make at least 500 of these and the mangaka can live off 500 of these

"Watch closely!"
By that I mean watch a few kilometers away

Don't worry, no one from the Angenas listen to sage advice

been waiting to make that reference for years but someone always beats me to it

Yeah, No. 5 is in a castle, No. 1 and No. 9 are pets and No. 8(? or is it 6?) is a farmer

It ain't filler, this is going to be the start of the main arc

I mean... they already translated the LN all the way through vol 12 so you can just read that

honestly at this point there's no difference between .5 chapters and regular chapters

I haven't read anything above vol 15 yet(finals yay!) but from what people say, Masayuuki is pretty major in the later volumes

Here's a hint: the next arc is about the sequel game

You are kind of restating my point here, I said "that the manipulation / mind control thing is a bit too repetitive". Most of the antagonists in the story just end up being bottom of the pyramid used by someone one step higher on the pyramid and the MC just kept ending up finding out about a higher up and his forces have to level up again to fight up the pyramid. I mean slowly encroaching a person's mind and finally taking over their body can also be considered a type of mind control. The way the story presents the villains' defeat in this way every once in a while is ok but when it happens every time, it makes for a unsatisfying conclusion, there were also times when the antagonists end up taking each other out before there was some kind of resolution especially when they were portrayed as a major antagonist, Yuuki taking out the Russos, Feldway taking out Yuuki

Yeah Japan has a very domestic mindset when it comes to any kind of business so most of their exports are really just leftovers from the domestic market, in contrast to Korea who really wants that USD to flow in. But root cause of the problem with both Japan, Korea and US right now is that all 3 of their entertainment industry have too much money on their hands.
A couple months ago dozens of great webtoons and manhwa were cancelled in the middle of their season bc big companies like Kakao were having an acquisition war, small and medium sized companies were caught in the middle of it and now bad and mediocre ones are being renewed instead.
There's no need to talk about the US's current state with how f*cked up and chaotic it is rn, tho I do feel like a rebound is coming in the next 5-10 years.
The manga/anime industry is getting more and more corporate which is something you really don't want in a creator centric industry. The silver age with One Piece, DragonBall, InuYasha, Naruto, Bleach, etc is really great storytelling. Now what we get are reboot/sequels like Boruto and DragonBall Super or cookie cutter fantasy stories. I'm not saying everything is terrible, I mean Tensei Slime is pretty good and og stories like One Punch Man and Yozakura Family. but there are some great ones out there that deconstruct the popular narrative and show new possibilities but were snuffed out because anime producers wanted cheap and quick animation so they heavily used CGI, like Arifureta and Kumo Desu(I cannot stress this enough, I think I wrote a 4 paragraph comment ranting on about how they butchered Kumo Desu which was my fav novel), or they get cancelled bc merch and bluray sales aren't up to standard.

All the entertainment industry nowadays are looking for the next "it" thing, like Netflix cancelled Inside Job bc ratings or HBO cancelling all their cartoons bc the new exec doesn't like cartoon(its a real thing, the exec got promoted from producing reality shows), but sometimes things just take a bit longer to get people invested, imagine if they cancelled the Office on their 1st season

Love how every .5 chapter is just the full body pages colorized

The reason why USA producers can afford to mess up adaptations is because of network tv and streaming services. Both of which they can't get direct fan feedback on and can only speculate base on ratings, new shows were given shitty time slots and were always on the verge of being cancelled while established shows get primetime treatment which made them cancel good shows on their 1st season when things just started to take off but shitty soap operas on their last legs get renewed bc it airs at 7-8 and the tv is turned on for background noise while people eat

Japan is also getting really bad these days with getting formulaic but in a different way. You can notice that a lot of anime only get one 12 episode season nowadays and the ending is really rushed but also open ended incase they get a season 2. That's bc the industry is oversaturated. Studios can afford to mess up a popular novel/manga bc there are still thousands waiting in line to get adapted.
What they do want is merch, manga and novel sales bc that's where the real money is. OG readers want merch for their characters but there won't be merch unless it becomes an anime, so producers green light an anime for a somewhat popular series but they can't make more than one season because they think its not popular enough. So they make the anime but made sure to throw away the fun fillers and character growth and focus on plot centric episodes to streamline it for a ending. Then to make sure potential new fans would buy the manga or novel, they leave a somewhat open end mystery that would frustrate you unless you read the manga or novel.

In the case of Villainess lvl 99, there's only 4 vol of materials and arguably only the 1st vol is about the demon war so in a monetary standpoint they only need to make one half baked, condensed season and generate interest for the manga and novel.