saga of tanya the evil

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan as “Youjo Senki” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Richard Tobin.

For most of this light novel series, there has bee one character pushing back against its main premise: Colonel Lergen. He’s been the one to boggle at the fact that a child is behind most of their major battles, and he also is able to see the terrifying soullessness that Tanya’s combination of military training and past-life management memories can do. We sympathize with him as the lone voice of reason. As such, the scene near the start of this book where he tries to “negotiate” peace with Ildoa is absolutely jaw-dropping. No one in the Empire (except Zettour and Tanya) is really aware of exactly how badly they’re losing the war, and nobody (including Tanya) is quite aware of exactly what the rest of the world thinks of the Empire as a nation. Actually, Rudersdorf may realize this as well. But his solution to the problem is not one that even the Empire can tolerate, and thus Zettour and Tanya are forced to once again make the title of the light novel be as accurate as possible.

For a series with the title The Saga of Tanya the Evil (or, for that matter, The Military Chronicles of a Little Girl), Tanya is not in this book as much as previous volumes. Huge chunks of the volume are dedicated to Lergen’s negotiation with the Ildoans,. and later with his leading the attack on those same Ildoans. We get lots of Zettour here, as he attempts to persuade his friend that he’s being stupid, and then, persuasion having failed, is reduced to assassination. But even this goes pear-shaped, because the Empire’s foreign office is so bad at everything that the Commonwealth use this opportunity to put in their own assassination attempt. As for Tanya, she’s still trying to think of ways that she and her unit can defect (and kudos to her for actually thinking of the unit here at all), but that’s getting more and more difficult.

I want to take some time to talk about the artwork of Shinobu Shinotsuki, which tends to run to two different kinds. There’s the overdramatic gorgeous pictures, such as the ones we see in the color pages. And there’s the ones that look like a total cartoon. Sometimes literally, as one shot of Lergen and Calandro screaming at each other shows drops of snot coming from one nose as if they’re Crayon Shin-chan, while the background has cute l’il caricatures of Tanya and Visha. (Visha also gets a picture of the volume’s funniest moments, trying to eat as much as possible as quickly as possible because they finally have good food and will never get more of it.) The most telling moment, though, is when we read, in Tanya’s matter-of-fact narration, about her idea for an initiative, along with her misgivings about it, and the illustration shows her laughing maniacally as if she’s just shot a dog. One wonders how much of this chronicle can be trusted.

Good news, we get the 12th volume in a few months. Bad news, that’s the latest from Japan, and it came out three years ago. That said, we have a long ways to go before the Empire finally falls, so strap in.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan as “Youjo Senki” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Richard Tobin.

Credit to the author for knowing his key strengths. He is very good at having our heroes assume something about the enemy, and then cutting to the enemies’ viewpoint and seeing that this is 100% incorrect. Missing the real point and assuming the worst are The Saga of Tanya the Evil’s bread and butter, and we get a ton of that in this volume. Tanya is seriously thinking about defecting now, but worries that she doesn’t bring anything to the table and other countries don’t know who she is… despite her being the most infamous soldier of them all. She and the rest of the battalion assume that the Commonwealth are sending their new recruits to be meat shields as part of some sinister plan… but it’s just the fact that the battalion catches them completely flat-footed. And everyone on the Empire’s side is trying to see how to end the war in a way that will not destroy the country or inspire a revolt among the populace… but this war is no longer winnable.

Tanya is all over the place this volume with her battalion. First she travels back to the Federation side where she has to help with a very clever and convoluted plan of Zettour’s that requires her to essentially be a decoy. Then she has to go all the 3way back to the West, as Romel has a master plan to hit the Commonwealth where it hurts, in their Navy… a plan which also requires Tanya and her group to essentially be a tasty distraction. Both times things work a bit too well simply because Tanya and her fellow soldiers have gotten inhumanly good at what they do. Sadly, this book is no longer about military victories but about political victories. And those are in short supply. The military can’t help there. The foreign office, with all the diplomats, is trying to do something about three years too late. And Rudersdorf still seems very hung up on a plan that is 100% treason.

Fans of Visha will be happy to see she gets some time here, mostly hanging by Tanya’s side during the battles, though we also get Tanya trying to lecture Visha on how to end the war, something that does not go very well – Visha, like the rest of Tanya’s soldiers, is a bit of a meathead when it’s not about battle. There’s also a lot of focus here on Drake, the Commonwealth soldier who’s currently allying with the Federation… at the request of the Commonwealth, which makes it all the more irritating they think he might be turning communist by simply being near them. One character is interesting merely by her almost total absence. Mary Sue is here, but we don’t see her except as a sheer force – literally. Once again she sees Tanya and goes for the kill, and no one can stop her. She doesn’t need a face, or even a name anymore. She’s pure magical vengeance, here to smite Tanya down. I don’t know when the final confrontation between them comes, but it won’t go well.

There’s a new translator here as well, and the book still reads pretty well, though it’s a bit more… staid, I guess. It can be hard to make the dry military chronicle parts of this book sing on the page. Still, definitely looking forward to the next volume, as we see if we really will go down the dangerous route we’re headed.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan as “Youjo Senki” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

The start of this volume makes it seem like it’s going to be a breather after all the battles from last time, and to be fair there are fewer battles here, but breather is absolutely the wrong word. After nine books, it appears that Tanya and Colonel Lergen are finally on the same page. That’s not a good thing. Especially when they’re saying things like “hey, would you be OK with strafing the government and making it look like an accident?”. Then we get Tanya meeting with first Uger and then von Rudersdorf try to get Tanya to have actual, real human reactions to things and she simply… can’t. She is unable to see why people might be wanting to cry at the fact that the Empire is on the verge of ruin. She gets the danger, and in fact is already thinking of fleeing the Empire for another country, but… the combination of her previous life’s Eliezer Yudkowsky approach to everything and her current self’s being brought up in the Army literally most of her life have led to a broken person.

Now to be fair, after looking at the cover of this volume (whose Latin roughly means “the same night awaits us all”) you might be wondering what the hell I am talking about. But there is a very big difference between Tanya screaming and ranting in her head and how Tanya actually interacts with other people. The cover picture is probably meant to be her reacting to having to deal with Doctor Schugel, who has found a much better way to make mages into guided missiles than he did the last time. While most of the brigade has actual shore leave, Tanya’s core group has to go provide escort over the seas so that General Romel and his men and retreat form the South. Which means taking on a British fleet. Easy peasy. Of course, the ones left behind on shore leave are not having an easy time of it either, as the Commonwealth has decided to do a sneak attack, and the Navy is too incompetent to see through it.

Because I always talk about Visha, let me just say that I find it interesting that, while Uger and von Rudersdorf cannot seem to fathom the way Tanya thinks, Tanya feels the exact same way about Visha, wondering how she is able to blithely take care of things with a smile on her face and a song in her heart. Especially when our little team passes through “neutral” Ildoa, and has it ground into their faces how far the Empire has fallen in terms of offering even the basic staples. Just eating a delicious fish dinner is enough to nearly destroy Tanya, because she understands the message it’s sending. And this also leads back to the cliffhanger, where the Empire is being told to invade Ildoa – a seemingly impossible task. Just how many more seemingly impossible things will they be forced to do? After all, they’re soldiers, not politicians.

As always, this is the opposite of a light read, and as lengthy as ever, but if you can put up with Tanya sounding like she’s posting to “AITA?” on Reddit sometimes, it remains a rewarding series.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

I mentioned this a bit in my last review, but it’s even more obvious here: the ‘winning’ part of Tanya the Evil is well and truly past, and we’re likely to see more and more of the Empire losing badly down the road. This book has the Empire try what seems to be a very clever strategy, Tanya and her group do their bit fine, and it just… fails. Due to lack of supplies, because the empire is running out of everything. It’s especially interesting as this is framed around a “won the battle but lost the war” siege, in which Tanya’s somewhat smaller corps has to lay wait in a railroad station and let themselves get surrounded, then get rescued. As it happens, they pretty much are able to rescue themselves. This despite the fact that, to Tanya’s surprise, the Federation are getting much better at being mages. After the last volume, where we almost had peace but then got it kicked away, there’s no way this ends for the Empire in anything but annihilation.

The big change in this volume is that Zettour, after pissing off the government, has been demoted and is sent out into the field. Well, OK, it’s not a real demotion, but he’s not allowed to really take charge. He does anyway, though, because it’s hard to say no to a Lieutenant General. Most of this book shows off that, while the title may be “The Saga of Tanya the Evil”, Tanya is more of a pragmatist above all else – the only evil we see here is her explaining to her green recruits why looting corpses during wartime is fine. Zettour, though, can be even worse than she is. That said, he too is getting an upfront demonstration of the fact that the Federation are getting much better at waging war. It helps show off the difference between action at the front and what the leaders in the rear hear about that action.

Oh yes, Visha almost dies. I can’t recall if I’d mentioned this before, but Tanya the Evil is based off a webnovel, but the LN adds a lot of things. One of those things is Visha, who wasn’t in the original story. (This is why fans get annoyed when they hear “spoil me does Visha die?”.) So sometimes you have to worry about her, because she’s cute and less morally void than Tanya (slightly) and we like her, so her death would have impact. The interesting thing is that we don’t get this near-death from her POV, but Tanya’s, who has suddenly noticed that Visha is not reporting in because she’s busy fleeing from a crazed Commonwealth soldier. (Guess who? Yes, Mary Sue is back, and she’s as vengeful as ever. She is, however, attacking the wrong person. See, light novel artist, this is the danger of making Tanya and Visha look too much alike!) Fortunately, she survives to make coffee another day.

The book ends with Zettour ordering Tanya to help him win the war that needs to be one – the one at the capital, which is to say the war against their political leaders who are demanding total victory. I’m sure this will go well! In the meantime, enjoy what is essentially a siege book with added military theory.

(In Omnia Paratus translates to “ready for anything” and, contrary to popular belief, did not originate with Gilmore Girls.)

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

This book came out just before the anime began in Japan, and right about the time the manga started. As such, it’s the first one to be possibly influenced by both of those sources. I’ve talked before about how I don’t think Tanya’s pragmatism is usually as evil as the author wants us to believe, but sometimes he digs deep and shows us that there really is a difference in the way she (and her soldiers) think and everyone else. This book has an Ildoan Colonel observe her unit during a Federation attack, and is horrified that the soldiers not only plan to attack a town but also to bomb a church. Tanya’s cheerful explanation of how this is all perfectly fine due to the rules of war (and the fact that the Federation hasn’t signed any agreements) can be chilling as you realize how she’s not thinking of morality in a general sense at all. And then you remember that this is meant to be an anti-war series, and it all makes sense.

Tanya is all smiles on the cover, partly as she’s entertaining the observer and tries to be on her best behavior, but also has there’s a very real chance that we may be achieving peace again. Lergen spends most of the book in Ildoa, negotiating a peace with excellent terms for the Empire. And the generals (and Tanya) make sure that those terms are acceptable by absolutely trouncing the Federation, who have stronger weapons, better shields and well-trained men now but still lack aerial mages, and that’s making all the difference. Unfortunately, peace is not decided by the generals. We get another look at the ruling government of the Empire, and it’s chilling. By the end of this book, you realize that there’s no way the series can possibly end with anything but total, 100% defeat for the Empire. That’s a ways down the road, but… get used to war is what I’m saying.

The last volume was mostly talk and little fight, and this one goes in the other direction, being mostly filled with battle after battle. Our core team stays alive, and wins each battle, but there’s no mistake – things are getting harder. The enemy is starting to prepare for Tanya’s pyrotechnics, and she’s stunned when, for the first time, one of her “blow everything to hell” attacks does not blow everything to hell. Even when they do win due to clever tactics and overwhelming mage superiority, the Federation are able to make their retreat to fight another day. Even worse, they do so in an orderly fashion – discipline is winning. These are not the enemies Tanya wants to fight, as they’ll only lead to bad things for her and her fellow soldiers. That’s why she’s so happy at the end of the volume, not knowing what’s been happening with her government. I expect a big freak out from her at the start of the eighth book.

So a good, strong Tanya volume, better than the last, and reminding you again that when war is being fought, no one wins. The title’s translation, “As you sow, so shall you reap” could not be more appropriate.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

Sometimes war can be filled with pitched battles, back and forth action and excitement, and sometimes war can be filled with not a heck of a lot happening except people talking about tactics. The same holds true for Tanya the Evil, especially in this sixth volume, where action scenes are kept to an absolute minimum in favor of dialogue, inner monologue, and a lot of grumbling about the futility of war. Which, it has to be said, makes for a book that’s a bit of a struggle to get through at times. Most of the time Carlo Zen balances his dry military tactics prose with other scenes that pick up the pace, but we don’t have that here, so some of this book is simply boring. But not all of it. There is, once again, the threat of peace on the horizon, and Tanya is all for it, though she’s not the one in charge, and you get the sense that von Zettour is not simply going to agree to anything that isn’t “we win, and then discuss terms”. Winning, of course, is not happening right now.

The title is Latin once more, and means “Nothing Will Surprise Me”. That’s put to the test in this book, which sees the nation of Ildoa getting involved – seemingly to be a neutral broker for peace, but in reality looking to get the best deal for themselves by playing both sides. As the Empire is not-Germany, Ildoa is not-Italy, though their political leader seems to be nothing like Mussolini so far – Carlo Zen is avoiding the main Axis villains in this series. The Empire is understandably rather wary of Ildoa, who put on a show of strength that actually shows off that they don’t have much strength to back it up. Still, an overture for peace is a start. Certainly it’s what Tanya wants, to the surprise of everyone – possibly the funniest scene in the book is when she talks with Visha, Weiss and the others in her unit and realizes how they’re all warmongers, not realizing who trained this into them.

On the other side, we have the Commonwealth and the Federation still making very awkward allies, as they come to the realization that the Empire is far stronger than they had expected. (The Empire, of course, is coming to the same realization about their enemy.) Colonel Drake appears to be the Lergen of the Allied side, and he has his own Tanya analogue in Lieutenant Mary Sue, still bright and idealistic and shiny and driven by sweet, sweet revenge. “The Saga of Tanya the Evil” is a Western title, albeit one approved by the author, I believe – the Japanese title, Youjo Senki, translates as “The Military Chronicles of a Little Girl”. Tanya is evil in the sense that she’s working for the Empire, and she can be morally reprehensible at times, but she knows about war and why things happen. Mary Sue, though, can’t believe everyone doesn’t think the way that she does, and she’s a headache to everyone around her. I really want to see her and Tanya fight again – perhaps I should watch the movie.

So there’s a lot of talking but little forward movement in a book which sees Tanya’s unit going from the Federation to the Empire Homeland and then up towards the Entente Alliance in an effort to win the war. Which Tanya knows isn’t happening, but she can’t convince anyone else. A necessary read for fans of the series, but it’s really dry and dull at times, I admit.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

The subtitle of this volume is translated as “Hell Follows Hell”, or more colloquially, one mistake leads to more. Tanya learns that here in a book that shows off how imperfect all the sides are. Tanya herself, due to her rabid anti-communist mindset (and the salaryman inside her, who I honestly tend to forget about most of the time) is slow to realize that the not-Russians fighting them are actually fighting for their homes and native land… not for communism. This is huge because it changes the entire way they have to fight the enemy. She also runs into Mary Sue for the first time, and while there’s clearly a much larger fight still to come, it’s a difficult battle that depletes her elite unit of a quarter of its entire force. (That said, rest assured all the characters whose names we can remember survive.) And of course Britain and Russia are having their own issues with lack of manpower, lack of supplies, lack of materials… we’ve reached the attrition stage of the war.

The cover art has Tanya standing at the gravesite of the soldiers who fell in that battle, and it reminds us that just because the title is “Tanya the Evil”, and Tanya frequently does morally reprehensible things, does not means she is 100% black of heart. She cares about her subordinates, mourns them, and has long passed the Tanya of the first book who was merely looking for “meat shields”. Likewise, General Zettour, at the end of the book, as he attempts to coerce/cajole the separatist parts of the Federation to join them, thinks that as a good person, he’s appalled, but as a soldier fighting for the Empire, he’s willing to be evil. A person who commits mass murders but feels really bad about the whole thing is still a mass murderer. And, on the other side of the coin, we have Mary, who is bright and shiny and filled with thoughts of revenge and I suspect is so naive that she will be led by the nose whenever she runs into someone manipulative.

Other things to note: as I feared, Loriya is still around, and still a pedophile. It’s not played for laughs as much, but still disturbing. Speaking of which, the soldiers joke at one point about Tanya marrying Visha for her coffee-making skills, and Tanya briefly ponders whether, as a male mind inside the body of a young girl, he would qualify as gay or not, but then promptly decides to not think about it. Which is fine, I won’t either. Tanya is twelve. In fact, the fact that Tanya is twelve comes up an awful lot here: after four volumes of mostly having everyone ignore the fact that she’s so young, we get a bunch of scenes to reinforce it: she can’t interrogate the Federation prisoners as they won’t take her seriously, she can’t get into the celebratory party at the Officer’s Mess as she can’t drink, etc. It’s a nice reminder that the basic premise of this entire series is meant to be, deliberately, very screwed up. War makes people send a child to battle.

I’ve heard that Tanya light novel fans and Tanya anime fans disagree quite a bit, and I suspect this book definitely falls on the reader side, being interesting more for the discussion of warfare than for the short, yet well-written battles. There’s also a lot of great wartime sarcastic banter between the soldiers here, which I enjoyed. For those who don’t mind long, lecturing tomes, this is still very good.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

I’ve talked before about how Tanya the Evil is at many times written like you’re reading a history book. It’s actually a bit weirder than that, as you’re reading several competing history books, each with its own agenda. This is made obvious in the sections involving the Federation, aka not-USSR, whose style of Communism under “Josef” is mocked mercilessly, even to the point of having one section written as a children’s history book. The Federation in general comes in for a bashing this volume, partly because, well, Communism under Stalin, please look at real history, but also because Tanya is virulently, rabidly anti-Communist and says so most of the time. The book starts with her taking her team to “put a scare” into the Federation capital. She proceeds to overdo it. One of the more interesting bits is when she tells Visha, who escaped the Federation as a child, not to hold back her hatre3d and to go all out. Visha, who honestly doesn’t recall much of her childhood and isn’t really driven by hatred, is rather nonplussed.

It can be difficult at times to remember that Tanya is not the heroine, merely the protagonist. We’re meant to be a bit horrified by her. Quite a bit. The trouble is that most of the book is in her semi-1st person monologue, so sympathy naturally falls with her, especially when the war is not going her war, which is constantly. There’s a glorious bit when she’s on trial for some of her actions when they realize that this little girl is, in fact… acting like a petulant child. Even when she finally gets her wish of a transfer to a non-combat position, it doesn’t even last two weeks. But we’re not really meant to like ANYONE in this “war is hell” series. Not the Empire’s generals. Not the government, who are invisible but making poor decisions behind them. Not the Federation, who I would call a parody of Stalin’s Russia were it not already hard to parody. And not even the Commonwealth or the Unified States, who we see training up their own crack mage unit, complete with blonde Kansas girl Mary Sue, who unfortunately runs into Tanya in her first combat and realizes that Tanya was the one who killed her father. She doesn’t take it well.

These books continue to be bricks, far longer than almost all light novels that aren’t DanMachi. A lot of that is tactics and military discussion, and I say it again: don’t read this unless you’re fascinated by such things, because it will drive you mad. One other downside: we’re introduced in this book to “Josef” and his number two, who is named Loria. Loria is based on Lavrentiy Beria, who was a sexual predator, and it’s this aspect that Carlo Zen mines for “humor” (and also horror, to be fair), as he spots the 12-year-old Tanya (she must be twelve by now, right?) stomping all over Moscow burning everything in sight and decides that he needs to make her his. It’s as disturbing as it sounds, and it gets a color illustration that makes it much worse. Sadly, I expect to see more of him. As well as Mary Sue, who’s a talented newbie this time around but is now driven by hatred and fury, so I expect her next run-in with Tanya will be very different.

Tanya fans who only watched the anime will be happy to know this is where the new stuff begins (well, technically the end of the last book). It’s still a very interesting series to read, but remember that the author is actually a left-wing socialist. Tanya is not here to be admired. No one is, really.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

As has been noted before, Tanya the Evil’s world is essentially an odd mashup of World War I Europe, with appropriate touchstones. That said, it’s perfectly content to mess with the timeline in order to move things along, and the third volume does this incredibly quickly, moving from World War I to World War II in the space of about three months. The victor may have changed, but the players are much the same, though we do get a few new – and more obviously inspired by real life history – characters. The “Duke of Marlborough” is Winston Churchill, complete with color illustration in case we didn’t get it (not to mention the subtitle of the book), and Tanya’s new commander in the African – sorry, Southern Colonies is “von Romel”, which is almost TOO on the nose. And of course there’s Tanya and her crew, who manage to almost single-handedly win the war only to see peace remain elusive. In fact, Tanya’s desperate plea to let her unit stop the Republic from getting away is probably the highlight of the entire book.

We begin with a giant slaughter, as is usually the case in these novels that make no bones about war being hell – at least for Tanya’s opponents. She and the 203rd are literally shot at the enemy on giant rockets, and they proceed to lay waste to most of the republic’s main forces as well as their HQ. It is amusing to see Tanya’s constant cynical, worried POV as the group essentially walks in and walks right back out almost unharmed. There are times when she is unaware of how good she is. So all that remains is to sign a peace treaty and negotiate the end of the war… something not done by the military, alas. The cease fire allows the Republic to regroup and the Commonwealth to stop pretending they don’t care, and thus everything is for naught. As for Tanya, she regards being sent south as a punishment for her freak out at the generals, but when we see them scheming it, it’s more that they just don’t have any real resources, so need to use the 203rd to have any chance of doing anything. The Empire is running out of money and resources.

And we may be getting a new player into the game. The Unified States have been mostly neutral here, but they also have Mary Sue, the daughter of Anson Sue, who Tanya fought and killed back in the previous book. Mary is unaware of this, but she is extremely patriotic and also has a buttload of magical talent, so is ready to fight and die for her country. In terms of the series, she promises to be something of a rival to Tanya, which is good as lately there has been the sense that nothing can stop Tanya once she gets going. It will be nice to see her have a bit of a challenge. Mary Sue seems sweet, but given that we already have the ‘sweet girl’ card in this deck with Visha, I suspect that won’t last long. The illustrations also make her look a bit possessed, to be honest.

Tanya the Evil is still wordy as all get out, and I’d honestly only recommend it if you’ve read military biographies and histories before. But if you want to know what happens after the anime ended, this is the volume to start with, as the anime wraps up about 3/4 through this book. I’m still waiting to see how all this turns out.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

So in the afterword to the second volume of Tanya the Evil, the author talks about how much his editors and readers want to see more of the guys in the cast rather than Tanya herself, and how he is adamant about keeping Tanya front and center. And I get that, he’s correct as far as it goes. But I also understand the feelings of the others, because too much Tanya, particularly when we’re smiling and nodding along with her point of view, is not only overpowering but actively harmful to a degree. The Saga of Tanya the Evil works best when it shows us the disconnect between what Tanya is thinking and what the rest of the cast thinks she is thinking, and there are several very amusing moments here where we see that. But it’s not nearly as many as the first book, and pure, unfiltered Tanya, which we get here for long stretches at a time, risks the reader coming over to her point of view. Which is not, I suspect, what the author is going for.

The title is, as are all the titles in this series, Latin, and means “further beyond”. It’s also the national motto of Spain, one of the few countries in Europe that doesn’t have an equivalent here. The “plot” of the second volume reads almost like a book of short stories, and those who expect to see more of Tanya vs. Being X beyond her constant grousing are going to be disappointed. Instead, Tanya and her unit perform like the A-Team, dropping into war zones and magically coming out successful even when they’re unaware of it. We hit the Tanya equivalents of Romania, Norway, and France here, and also take a little bit of time to perform a few wartime atrocities. There are occasional flashforwards to reporters discussing these events as history, and it’s made pretty clear that history is not going to be happy with Tanya’s actions. It’s also made pretty clear the Empire is not going to be on the winning side when the war eventually ends. Now that we’re getting England… sorry, The Commonwealth into it, who knows where the books will take us next?

But again, as I said, there’s a whole lot of Tanya point of view in this book’s 7,963 pages. (That’s a slight exaggeration, but is is punishingly long. Readers may feel better knowing that, although all Tanya volumes are long, none in the future are QUITE as long as this one.) There are a few exceptions – we’re introduced to a new recruit whose job is to boggle in horror at war and Tanya (possibly not in that order), and we also meet a man who looks like he’s being set up as a major antagonist, Anson Sue (whose daughter, god help us, is named Mary Sue)… except he’s promptly killed off without Tanya even knowing who he is, so the whole thing ends up being anticlimactic. We occasionally see some of the Empire higher-ups, or a brief POV of the other side. Even Visha gets very little to do in this book besides be Tanya’s adjutant. The readers want more of the other characters because it provides some balance and different coloring. All Tanya is like eating potatoes every day.

I’m still not ready to drop this series, which is odd given “this is too dark” is the main reason I tend to drop light novels these days. I think Tanya’s odd historical and military tone works in its favor – the book may be filled with ludicrous amounts of discussion of ammo, shells, and the rules of war, but its dry tone sets it at a remove from the actions it describes. And I can’t deny that I find Tanya fascinating, and I’m still not sure how much the author wants us to like her. If you enjoyed the anime (which I admittedly haven’t seen), I can only imagine this is a must buy, as there’s lots of stuff that must have been cut to ribbons in adaptation. As for me, I will read on, but I can’t deny that at the end of the day one word comes to mind reading The Saga of Tanya the Evil: Exhausting.

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri and Kevin Steinbach.

The first thing I noticed when I saw the first volume of Tanya the Evil on my phone is that it is long. Really very long indeed. You could fit four volumes of Kagerou Daze into one volume of Tanya the Evil. I noticed that this volume has two translators, and I wonder if the main reason for it is that each volume is so long. (I double checked – the second volume is actually longer.) The second thing that I noticed about Tanya the Evil is that it is, at heart, a military novel with a dash of magic and “reincarnated into another world” as its gimmick. If you’re reading it for the reincarnation or the magic, you may be disappointed – if you’re reading it for the military maneuvers, you’re in luck, this is absolutely the book for you. This is the story of not-Germany, its new war hero who has the appearance of a small girl but the mind of a cynical, calculating HR director, and the evil God who sets things in motion.

OK, “evil God” may be stretching the point, as it’s more petulant hissy fit God, but once again we have a book I’d ask the hardcore religious to stay away from. Our hero is a ruthless HR director who is pushed in front of a train after laying off someone with a grudge. He meets God, who is upset at the lack of faith in him these days, which our hero can’t help but snark back at him for. In response, God reincarnates him in a world that is on the brink of war, as a young orphan girl. He keeps all his memories, though, and apparently in addition to being an HR director he was a bit of a military nut. As now we have Tanya von Degurechaff, a 9-year-old child prodigy sent to the front line to battle as a mage because, well, the Empire is mostly OK with this. The problem is that Tanya is just a bit too brilliant, and also somewhat disturbing…

One of the more interesting aspects of this book is also one of its most aggravating: the narration, which is mostly first person from Tanya’s perspective with a few exceptions, alternates between “I” and “Tanya” constantly, as the HR director still tends to think of himself as being slightly separate from the little girl’s body he now inhabits. This really shows off the disconnect that should normally be there for most people who go through the standard reincarnation schtick, but it’s also very disorienting, and by the end of the volume I was wishing the author had chosen a different way to achieve this. The gimmick that works much better in the book is Tanya constantly doing things as a way to ither a) stay alive or b) get herself assigned away from combat, and having her actions misinterpreted as insane gung-ho soldiering by the generals and powers that be. It doesn’t help that her main weapon that makes her even more powerful literally runs on the power of prayer, much to her bitter chagrin.

The author says at the end of the book that those who like happy endings should stay away from this series, and indeed I’m not sure I can read this on a regular basis. For this one volume, though, it was fascinating, even with all the military jargon. Yes, we have yet another Japanese author fascinated with World War I/II Europe, and our heroes are yet again essentially Germany with the fascism toned down (you’ll likely think of Legend of Galactic Heroes as you read it). But I just liked the back and forth between Tanya and the rest of the cast, and also liked the occasional glimpses we saw of her judging humans as something other than meat shields. Well, OK, one human. Pretty much just Visha. But you have to start somewhere. The Saga of Tanya the Evil is a rich and rewarding read, provided you spend the time to plough through it, and don’t mind Tanya’s constant first/third person perspective switches.