"This is not a parody, this is only pure mockery."
-Guest, 2018
The next round of The Grand Tournament was about to begin, but there was something quite disturbing to Max, a presence he hadn't felt in a very long time.
A presence he was desperately missing.
Gary felt it, too.
"Where's the negative reviews?" Gary asked.
"I... I don't know."
For over three years now, Gary and Max, Mariy and Hajime, the entire world of The Perfectly Regular at Magic High School, had been basking in the warm glow of angry reviewers, giving them the fire and passion they needed to keep going.
But now... Max's match was almost here...
And it was Spopovich from Dragon Ball Z, that huge buff dude with an M on his head who beat the shit out of Videl for an entire episode.
Max, being as perfectly regular as he was... was no match alone. He needed poor reviews to give him strength, or else he'd end up just like Videl, being allegedly a really good fighter but then being completely sidelined immediately after the real plot starts and never once contributing in a meaningful way for the rest of the plot.
That wasn't something Max wanted, not even if it meant his boyfriend Gary or girlfriend Mariy would become even more powerful than they already were.
He needed bad reviews!
"Can you find anything online?" Max asked.
"I'm looking, I'm looking," Mariy said. "There hasn't been anything lately. I'm not sure if we can inject anything into you fast enough."
"We might have to coast on an older review," Max said. "Give me one, ASAP. Please."
"Here's one," Gary said. "Listen up:
"Edgy kids who think the world cares a tiny shit about their RANDOM HUM0RZ and mad trolling skills.
"You're not a special little snowflake. You're not funny. You're nothing, really. Let it go. Trying to rile up the world while safe behind your little screen must be awfully exciting. I can only imagine what kind of issues you have in your actual life if you find your time spent doing worthless shit like this.
"Signed by... an anonymous Guest."
It was an old review, but the sodium chloride contained within surged into Max's very being, energizing the cells in his chakra and powering up all of his magical abilities. He went from being the perfect 5.0, the average in the class and the average in the school, all the way to being... a 5.5, the perfectly above-average.
And he looked at Spopovich with a grin.
That guy didn't have any bad reviews to feed off of. His life force was weak.
And he was going down.