As I feared, they rushed through the whole first novel pretty much. There was no build-up to how he ended there, there's no weight to anyone's action or his transformation. I don't blame them, since other than the setup, his struggle to live through the maze after he falls takes just about the whole novel which is hard to adapt, but how he slowly transforms his mentality it's one of the charms. And what led to that transformation is even more important.

And as you mentioned MFauli becoming a hero by hard work, since that's precisely what that character was all about and the courage he shows while being the weakest, until he was forced to adapt.

I don't know, I'm not sure if I'm going to care enough to give this series a try, guess I'll wait to see how people are reacting after a few episodes.

I'll just say that I did a quick scan through the first episode as I just wanted to get a quick impression from it, I really hope I proved wrong.