so i'm a spider so what?

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

(Note: This review, especially towards the end, gets more spoilery than usual as you can’t not talk about the end.)

I have to admit that “they battle a bunch of fighter jets in order to infiltrate a UFO with tanks and robots” was not really the plot I was expecting when I picked up the seventh volume of Spider So What. But, having finished the volume, I can’t say I’m too disappointed in it. We’ve seen robots and cyborgs in this series before, of course. It also helps to show off the true arrogant brokenness of Potimas, who manages to be an evil elf while at the same time being an embarrassed chuuni who can’t bear to see people using his old design specs that he made back in the day. There is not one moment in this book where you like him, and the relationship between him, White, and the Demon Lord helps to remind us that the “truce” between the later two is miles and miles ahead of the loathing and antipathy they feel for Potimas. They might even be… friends?

After accidentally freeing two world-killing pieces of tech from an underground bunker simply because of her insatiable curiosity, White and the rest of her merry band have to join forces to destroy it. Unfortunately, this means joining forces with Potimas, whose designs they’re based on, as well as the Pontiff and a group of local dragons. Most of the book is spent on the battle, with White’s chatterbox narrative voice, constantly belittling and mocking herself and showing self-doubt at every confrontation contrasting with how everyone ELSE sees her, which is to say an emotionless, morally ambiguous nightmare who is STILL GETTING STRONGER. There’s a lovely moment where White is in a fury and the Demon Lord wraps her in thread to stop her. White immediately teleports out of it, and while she’s calm again, she notes offhandedly the Demon Lord looks super surprised but doesn’t get why. This push and pull on her character is one reason this series works.

Then we get to the climax of the book, where the Demon Lord, Potimas, and White are faced with a bomb that is about to explode. There are really very few options that are available. Still, I suspect only White could come up with “swallow the bomb”, which causes a Daffy Duck-esque explosion but does not, remarkably, kill her off. Good thing too, as Vol. 8 is due in the spring. What’s more, she has now leveled up to the point where the “game system” part cannot help her anymore… she’s a god. “D” helpfully explains this, and decides to give her another name: Shiraori, which I will start using in future. (Notably, “D” does not suggest calling her “Wakaba”, supposedly her old name from Earth, and refers to her as “nameless spider”. This feels very much like ominous foreshadowing.) As a God, Shiraori as all the power she used to and more… but has to learn how to do everything without the “game world” help. Including walking on her new human legs. To her, this is very much “restarting from zero”.

So overall, a solid book of fighting, but the last fifth or so is dynamite (literally), with one revelation after the other. I can’t wait to see where things go next. (Also, when will we catch up to the other kids?)

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

Alas, for those who want to know what happened after the cliffhanger on the “hero” side of these books, you’re still going to have to wait. The sixth volume takes place entirely in the “past” part of the books, showing our spider heroine, Ariel, Sophia and Merazophis mostly going from town to town and bonding, while at the same time the world recovers from the battle that happened in the fifth book. The non-Spider parts of the narrative bounce between Sophia, who may be a vampire baby but is also a reincarnation, so we get her thoughts on everything that’s going on, and Ronandt, the elder mage who honestly spends most of the book as ridiculous comic relief till he finally snaps out of it. There is one big battle near the end, featuring a much better Giant Spider Invasion than the one we saw on MST3K, but for the most part this book is far more introspective than previous volumes. There’s barely any stat listings!

I am at last allowed to talk about the spider heroine while using a name. Ariel names her White, fitting her appearance. This is in fact something of a power play, as naming something works the way it does in a lot of high fantasy, but it doesn’t have much effect on White as she’s already ridiculously powerful. Indeed, after Ariel figures out exactly HOW White is able to continue to be immortal, she reluctantly concludes that she HAS to ally with her, as not doing so could be disastrous. As for White herself, her thought processes are still “teenager with no real moral or ethical sense’, who’s able to cheerfully force a baby to march through the forest in order to build up their stats. That said, she’s definitely better off being influenced by Ariel, as we find when she has to confront her parallel minds, who have gone rogue and decided to destroy all of humanity. Thus we get the one battle of the book, as it’s spider vs. spider.

Ronandt, as I said, is still reeling from his first encounter with White, and unfortunately proceeds to learn exactly the wrong lesson from it, which is to try to study the spiders in the labyrinth to see how they grow stronger. The humor here has a dark edge to it, as while it’s somewhat amusing to see Ronandt run around nude and be treated as creepy by anyone who sees him, it also reminds the reader that White is a SPIDER, and that the ways that she gets stronger are not human ways. Nor should they be. This leads to a rare heartwarming moment in this mostly cynical book, where he realizes why he became a mage in the first place and goes out to stop the spider invasion even though he knows it will mean his death. (Fortunately, White gets there first.) I also liked him bonding with Julius, here a young and emotionally broken hero rather than the confident (and dead) older brother figure we meet later.

There’s some other good stuff here, such as the confrontation with the Pontiff who runs the world’s largest religion, or Sophia’s reflection on her past life (she was the stereotypical bullied nerd) and why she hates White so much (White was sort of like Komi in that her paralyzing inability to communicate came off as cool beauty.) It’s enough to make this volume very good indeed, even though I wish we’d checked back to the future with the other reincarnated cast.

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

There are a few series where you simply have to wait a few volumes/episodes for it to get really good. In fact, that’s the cry of the obsessive fan trying to get someone to try things. “By the way, it only REALLY gets good about the 26th episode!” they say, and then cry as they watch the interest in their new friend’s eyes die. But it’s true. Take, for example, the series So I’m a Spider, So What?. The first few volumes, while entertaining, suffered from a very real problem, which is that the spider slowly making her way out of the dungeon, along with the endless leveling up and pages of stats, was not inherently interesting. There were moments of excitement in the fights, and some plot development, but having her totally separate from the rest of the main cast was annoying – especially as it turned out she was separated by time as well. But now the spider is on the surface and interacting with the world. The result? The best book in the series, by far.

As with prior volumes, the books are divided into two segments which alternate. The first deals with our spider, who has run into a fellow reincarnated student, who is a vampire baby. Her parents are human, though, “vampire” is just the role she got when reincarnated. Spider takes an interest in her, and ends up getting embroiled in a fight between two countries that is turning deadly. There’s also a very familiar elf who wants to get that vampire baby… and kill her. Oh yes, and there’s also the demon lord, who is rapidly becoming a bit… different, personality-wise, thanks to one of Spider’s other minds hacking away at her own. Now I know why I thought Ariel was our heroine when I first met her. She has the “narrative voice” in her outward personality. But the spider (who I won’t name just yet, but we do seem to find out her identity here) is actually, when we’re not in her headspace, socially awkward and mostly silent.

Meanwhile, in the future, the demon lord’s army is taking on the elf village. The elves were not exactly nice when we went into the village last time, and here we find they’re possibly worse than the so-called villains – they’re dismissive of humans, physically abusive towards Anna, the half-elf girl, and in general you are not all that troubled by the idea of them getting wiped out in this battle. Which is good, because it’s leaning that way. Sure, the kids’ teacher is the elf leader’s daughter, but there’s only so much she can do, especially as everyone doesn’t trust her. And there’s the revelation that most of the “missing” kids – and indeed, one who was presumed dead – are on the side of the demons. It’s troubling for Shun, who is still a very shiny and noble hero. That said, one of the two or three cliffhangers we get here implies that may be changing soon.

While the “spider” part of the book ends in a very satisfying place, the “hero” part of the book is riddled with “what happens neeeeeeeext?” questions. Sadly, we’ll have to wait till the summer to find out. Till then, though, enjoy a book with excellent plot and character development, less stats than previous books, and some gripping fights. Really loving this now.

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

I’m still not quite sure about where out spider girl stands in terms of the current timeline (my current guess is that she’s the “white” girl rather than the demon lord, despite personality differences), but the two timelines are definitely starting to converge a bit. Or at least the spider is out of her dungeon… mostly… and starting to see the world. More to the point, much as I like seeing the spider’s adventures fighting things, I’ve become far more interested in the rest of the reincarnated kids, who are (mostly) all reunited at the Elf Village this volume. It’s a shame that the Demon Lord is about to annihilate all the elves. And also that the kids at the elf village feel rather strongly that they’re being used by their teacher. Which… may be true? Certainly Ms. Oka is not the pillar of goodness and light that, say, the teacher from Arifureta is.

On the spider side of things, she gets to the top of the dungeon, but the battle between both her mother and a higher spider that her mother calls in to help means that most of the time she’s shuffling back and forth between the dungeon and outside, fighting a mostly losing battle against various enemies. With a character as overpowered as our spider girl, there has to be a balance to show that she has it tough as well, and we certainly see it here – she’s decapitated twice, and is constantly at death’s door… and this is AFTER gaining the power of immortality, which she rightly assumes is not quite as great as it sounds. We also see one of her rare overconfident decisions, as she goes to fight the final battle against her mother with just better stats, not realizing that her mother is even craftier at traps.

Still, spider battles are not as interesting to me as the adventures of Shun, Katia and company, still trying to deal with the fact that Hugo has mind controlled the kingdom into making them public enemies. They go to the elf village to regroup, but that requires going through the dungeon to get there, which means running into some of our spider girl’s leftover selves. It’s not really clear how she pulls this off, but given it’s about 18 years later it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s just that powerful. In any case, there’s no battle with the heroes, but her mere presence – and announcement that she’s a reincarnation – is enough to stun everyone. Things don’t get better when Ms. Oka explains the mechanics behind this world and what the elves are doing to ensure that the gods/administrators don’t win. Honestly, their plans just sound mean. You can see why the other kids are sort of angry about being told to farm and never get strong. I don’t blame them.

We end with a bit of a cliffhanger, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t have to worry about remembering most of these kids for much longer. Meanwhile, our spider has finally met another reincarnation… and she’s a vampire! Will the two plots finally converge? Well, now that we’re out of the dungeon, we can hope things move a bit faster. And hey, not NEARLY as many stats in this book! Excellent news!

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

So yes, readers more familiar with future events in Spider So What were probably laughing at me in my previous two reviews. I admit to being completely taken in. It was easy enough to assume that the spider’s climb up through the dungeon was happening around the same time as the rest of the plot we were seeing on the surface. Except, of course, that doesn’t make sense at all, because the plot on the surface has been happening over the course of the last eighteen years or so. Whereas we’ve more or less been following the spider’s journey up the dungeon since birth, and it has… well, not been eighteen years. So yes, all of my desires for the spider to get to the top and join up with the main plot are somewhat embarrassingly for nought. She IS in the main plot… as the head villain. That said, there’s still something weird going on here.

As always, this is a book of two halves, alternating. The main plot deals with our spider doing what she’s been doing, slowly moving upward and fighting monsters. The interesting thing going on here, which the reader is only partially let in on, is that after her Taboo level reaches 10, she’s apparently given hidden insight into the nature of this entire world. Unfortunately, her hyperactive teen narration does not actually tell us much about this, presumably because spoilers. It likely has something to do with the two mystery “admin” figures we see, one of whom – D – looks to be behind a lot of what’s going on. *are* they trapped in a game? It doesn’t seem likely. The other big news here is the spider’s fight against the dragon that terrified her so long ago – this time, he’s stronger and tougher, and the fight is probably the highlight of the book. It is amusing seeing the spider’s immaturity here compared with what we see in the epilogue.

The other half of the plot involves everything going wrong for Shun. It’s not enough that his brother is dead, but Hugo, the arrogant jerk from last time, seems to have now mind controlled most of the kingdom into doing his bidding and killing the traitor. This includes, seemingly, his little sister, and also his best friend Katia, who is still dealing with a bit of gender dysphoria here. Things go very bad for our heroes, but, oddly enough, not as bad as you’d expect, as several times the villains essentially allow them to get away. They even comment on this. That said, there are a lot of genuine casualties. I wonder if it’s simply that the reincarnated folks are the ones that can’t be killed? In any case, there’s a lot going on here, and most importantly, it helps distract from spider going on about her stats in the main story, which is still happening constantly.

Unsurprisingly, firing off ta few big plot guns pays off, and this was easily the best volume of Spider So What to date. I look forward to seeing what’s happening next, both with the spider and the humans.

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

This series continues, very deliberately, to be a book of two halves, albeit unequal halves. The main thrust of the story remains our spider heroine slowly ascending the dungeon and defeating stronger and stronger monsters while keeping up an inner monologue that sounds like she’s high on a dozen pixie stix all the time. The other half of the story is interspersed in between this, and deals with Shun and the rest of the reincarnated students having a far more normal isekai life… well, normal compared to the spider. The difficulty is that forward plot progression is entirely confined to the latter – a couple of the students have clearly gone a bit mad from the new world, Shun finds being a hero actually involves killing things, there’s a giant demon invasion happening as we speak, and oh yes, the demons are seemingly led by another reincarnated classmate. I want to know more about this. I have to be content with Spider Levels Up And Reads Her Stats.

Spider’s progress is the biggest strength of the book. She is hilarious, and it gets even better when she’s able to subdivide her brains so they can think about different things, and they start arguing with each other. She’s arrogant as heck except when she’s being attacked by killer monsters, and there’s an ongoing disturbing thread about her not realizing that she’s lost any moral or ethical sense – every time she reads about her taboo increasing and wonders why that is, you sort of smack your head. At the same time, spider’s progress is the book’s biggest weakness as well. There is endless discussion of her stats and skills, complete with charts (which are what pile up the page count), and she has to overanalyze all of them. Sometimes this is amusing, but a lot of times it can get very tedious, even with her excitable inner voice.

As for Shun and company, as I said, they’re pursuing a much more common isekai narrative. We’re introduced to Hugo, another classmate who seems to have gone completely insane and power mad, as well as Yuri, who has accepted God as her savior in a very over the top way. (Given that God in this work appears to not only exist but be the sysadmin, not too mad an idea, but she’s a pure “religious zealot” type, so will no doubt be an antagonist.) The most interesting thing going on here is Katia, who was a boy in Japan but was reincarnated as a woman here, and seems to be the ONLY one who’s not the same sex. She becomes very accepting of this, and is also clearly starting to have feelings for Shun, which everyone notices except her. It’s not, perhaps, as amusing as the author wants it to be, but it’s definitely interesting, and handled pretty well.

The book ends with a nasty cliffhanger for those on the surface, even as our spider heroine just keeps rolling along. I’m enjoying these books, but I really hope that the two plots converge soon, as I’m drawning in stats a bit too much.

By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

The entire genre of ‘transported to another world’ (isekai) has grown massive and huge. Be it via dimensional portal, game gone wrong, or simply death and reincarnation, Japanese teens and young adults keep finding ways to enter a new world, pick up a sword, and start grinding like it’s 1999. And as you can imagine, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd, to have a premise that does not make the average reader go “oh, this again”. And thus we have the influx of being reborn in another world as something weird. Next month we’ll get slime monsters, and in April we may hit peak ridiculousness with vending machines, but for the moment we have spiders, as our vaguely named heroine (we hear about a mean nickname, but her actual name seems deliberately vague) wakes up after an explosion seemingly destroys her classroom to find… she’s a spider. A tiny, weak spider, the sort you kill in Level 1 of your new game. Now what?

To be honest, the other light novel title I kept comparing this to as I read it is Arifureta. The bulk of the book is similar to the middle of that series, with the spider getting into tricky situations, figuring out how to survive them, and getting increasingly strong, even if she may not realize it. Contrasting this we cut back to her other classmates, who have also been reincarnated in the same fantasy world. Some get off well – Shun is a prince with high magical talent, though he’s still a newbie to actually using it. His (male) best friend from their previous world is reincarnated as a (female) noble, though (s)he seems to take it in stride. And one of the “queen bee” types from their class is a dragon, and Shun’s familiar. We even get the cute but immature young teacher who’s there to help find the rest of her class so that she can show them the right path, which is pretty much exactly like Arifureta.

Whether you like Spider So What (which is what I’ve started to call it) depends on how much you can deal with the spider’s narration, which I would describe as first-person hyperactive teenager. In her previous human life, our heroine was apparently a quiet girl, more comfortable gaming at home than interacting with others. Which is fine, but it doesn’t quite mesh with her personality as a spider, which feels like one two hundred page run-on sentence. The plot is simple – watch her kill and eat things (even if it’s a bad idea), gain more experience and levels (which she (and we) can see, in a manner similar to the Death March books), and gradually get into some pretty badass battles – the fight against the bees near the end was probably the best scene in the book, and shows off how far she’s come. Aside from a “it was me all along” moment when we realize the egg she couldn’t open was actually the dragon egg that housed another reincarnated student, she never meets the rest of the class – their narratives are mostly separate. I’m not sure how long that will go on, though.

So I’m a Spider, So What? is not quite as goofy as I’d expected, and when you remove the veneer it’s actually pretty similar to other titles in this genre. But the fact that the lead is a teenage girl, even if she’s a spider, is refreshing, and she’s certainly plucky. I found this pretty decent, and I’ll read more to see where it goes.