Manga Bookshelf

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Sean Gaffney

Can Someone Please Explain What’s Going On?! ~A Sign-on-the-Line Wedding Story~, Vol. 6

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By Tsuredurebana and Rin Hagiwara. Released in Japan as “Dareka Kono Joukyou wo Setsumei Shite Kudasai! ~Keiyaku Kara Hajimaru Wedding~” by ArianRose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Emily Hemphill.

The previous five books in this series have all had me writing fairly positive reviews, but they’ve all had me turn around like Lieutenant Columbo and say “there’s just one thing that bugs me”. The constant focus on Viola being thin is telling. The use of the word “fatso” in a previous book. The fact that this book is very much on the side of the rich nobles doing whatever they want – even to other countries. Everyone keeping things from Viola “for her own good”. And it all comes to a head here, in the final book in the series. Except it’s not the final book – there are three more, which seem to be of the “side story” variety. But the author talks about how the books end here, and the tacked-on epilogue almost reads like a cancellation. Not that I’d blame the editors. Viola is still a wonderful character, but this book in particular belongs in the pit of shame.

Most of the main dilemmas of the series have now been resolved, with the possible exception of Viola’s superhuman inability to realize that she is loved and cherished by all around her. That will be fixed with this book, which sees the arrival of The Crown Prince and Princess of Aurantia. A country bordering their own, they’re here looking for husbands and wives, and have their hearts set on Viola and Cersis – despite the fact that Viola and Cersis are already married! Unfortunately, they’re also sort of cartoonishly evil. It’s up to Viola’s newly mastered martial arts skills and 100-meter dash abilities to try and save herself from a nasty kidnapping and a definite international incident. Once she does this… perhaps a re-wedding is in order?

So let me get this out of the way. Both of Aurantia’s royalty (also darker-skinned, but I won’t even go into that) are described negatively by Viola and everyone around her. The prince seemingly looks like a linebacker, being described as “burly” and “2 1/2 times as wide as Mr. Fisalis”. Funny, in the illustrations he looks as handsome as all the other men. This does not apply to the princess, who is called “fat”, “plump”, etc. and mocked and belittled by all Viola’s noble friends through the entire book. It’s really grating, and I’d also like to remind readers that just because a character is bad does not mean we get to start in on fat shaming them. They really are pathetic villains, and I will admit it was fun to see slim Viola shoulder throw the Crown Prince, but it still irked me. Also irking me was the constant “we’ll keep this a secret from Viola”, either due to not wanting to worry her, or wanting to surprise her, or just to tease her. I mean, literally in this book we see that not telling Viola leads to bad things in their relationship, and yet everything is STILL kept from her. Viola herself is still the best part of the book, but even she grated on me when all her friends were attacking the royal visitors in their best “catty” way and all Viola could do was inwardly say “Eek, girls are scary!”.

The book ends with Cersis and Viola having a “second wedding” now that Viola has finally admitted she is no longer a wife in name only. Then, to my great surprise, we jump forward several years for a quick epilogue, which shows Viola’s child (and another on the way) and reads very much like a Jump series that got cancelled at 3 volumes. If this were the final volume, I’d think it was the publisher’s doing, but there’s definitely more coming, so it just reads as super abrupt. I admit I will be reading the next book in the series – I like Viola’s inner narrator – but boy howdy, this book took everything wrong with previous books and put it together in one big cocktail. Recommended for those who love to see rich white men winning the day.

Pick of the Week: Beasts, Cats and Murders

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KATE: Oh man… I don’t even know where to start. I’m morbidly curious about Kaori Yuki’s latest series Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost, even though I know that it’s probably a fever dream of non-consensual relationships, lurid plot twists, and wackadoo costumes. I keep putting it in my Amazon cart and removing it because deep down, I know it’s probably bad. Two titles I did pre-order, though, are the latest installment of Asadora!, a twisty, suspenseful story with a plucky female lead, and the second volume of What’s Michael?, a wonderfully weird and funny collection of cat comics.

SEAN: It’s a VERY nostalgic week all around, so I will pick What’s Michael? this week, because it’s so strange, and because buying it might mean Club 9 if we wish hard enough.

ANNA: I am also not sure if I’m actually going to read Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost but I will make it my pick just as a nod to Kaori Yuki’s chaotic energy.

MICHELLE: Although I’m also planning to read Asadora! and What’s Michael? at some point, and have at least some interest in Kaori Yuki, this week I’ll buck the trend and pick the manga adaptation of The Decagon House Murders. I’m a big mystery buff and the novel’s been on my to-read list for years, so I’m really looking forward to this one.

ASH: In addition to the latest Junji Ito manga, I’m interested in everything that everyone else has mentioned so far, but what I’m most curious about this week is Megumi Hayashibara’s The Characters Taught Me Everything now that it’ll be available in print.

MJ: I’m going to admit that chaotic energy is basically my kryptonite, which means there’s no way I can resist Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost. If I can’t have anything new from my favorite agent of chaos, Yun Kouga, at least give me Kaori Yuki.

She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man, Vol. 1

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By Ryusen Hirotsugu and fuzichoco. Released in Japan as “Kenja no Deshi o Nanoru Kenja” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Wesley O’Donnell. Adapted by Adam Lee.

Sometimes I take a flyer on a book that has a premise that sounds meh and am happily surprised… but not always. Sometimes it just presses all the wrong buttons. Sometimes it goes ways I’d rather it didn’t. Sometimes it’s just Not For Me. This is different from a book being actively bad, where I have no idea who it’s being written for. She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man (which, spoilers, I did not care for) has a very defined audience. It’s for gamers who enjoy fantasizing about their game becoming real. This is old hat by now in light novel land, but the webnovel for this series came out almost 10 years ago, so it may be suffering from “I came after all my imitators”. It loves discussing mechanics of the game and how they’ve changed. It enjoys having fun with gender confusion, which can be quite interesting, but is written here from a very “guy” perspective. The battle was OK. It’s just… not my thing.

To be honest, I should have known where this was going when our protagonist takes the name “Danblf Gandador” as his wizard character. I think we’re supposed to mock this, but… In any case, one day he spends an evening designing an alternate character skin of a young, cute girl, then passes out. When he wakes up, he finds that he’s now in a world that resembles his game… but in the body of the cute girl. Fortunately she still has all of Danblf’s skills and powers, but she’s going to have to do some careful lying in order not to get found out… especially since 30 years have passed since she was online last! Now calling herself Mira, she spends the rest of the book trying to find other gamers who may also have been trapped here (there’s quite a few, though we only meet two here), taking out the odd lesser demon with her overpowered summons, and dealing with how to use the bathroom or get dressed now that she’s a cute young girl.

For propriety’s sake I’ve tried to avoid mentioning it in reviews before this one, but dangit, Japan has far too much of an obsession with young women wetting or about to wet themselves. There’s a reasonable explanation in this book – Mira is getting used to being a girl AND being a non-game character, so isn’t really thinking about toilets till it’s almost too late – but it still reads like a fetish and I hate it. Other than that, if you read the plot description and thought “this sounds an awful lot like In the Land of Leadale, you’re right, it does. This definitely came first, but sorry, I read Leadale before it, and it comes off second best in most areas. One thing I did like was the camaraderie between the gamer characters once they’ve reunited – they really do seem like good gamer buddies, and it reads naturally. The big battle was also pretty good, with a nice scary cockatrice. I just… wasn’t enthused about much of the rest, especially the cast’s tendency to want to either dress or undress Mira as if she were a mannequin.

If you’re a gamer who enjoys this type of genre, there’s a lot to like here, and I think you’d enjoy future volumes of the series. I’m not that, so I’ll be stopping here.

The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, Vol. 1

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By Hirukuma and Namako. Released in Japan as “Murazukuri Game no NPC ga Namami no Ningen to Shika Omoe Nai” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

One of the more interesting surprises of 2018 was a light novel series that, on the face of it, looked like the stupidest premise in the entire world. It was called Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, and its plot was exactly as you’d expect. And yet it not only proved far, far more entertaining than anyone could imagine, but also very good at keeping this a realistic and well-thought out world starring a guy who is a literal, non-moving, vending machine. The reason I bring this all up is that I was not planning on giving The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real! the time of day till I saw that it was by the same author as the vending machine story. Can lightning strike twice, I thought? Well, good news there. It wasn’t just a fluke, this is a very good author. This book, about a 30-year-old NEET bum watching a group of five ex-villagers trying to survive, is excellent.

Our protagonist is Yoshio, a man who’s spent the past ten years living at home with his family holed up in his bedroom. He won’t leave the house, he won’t get a job, his parents and sister are seemingly disgusted with him. Then one day he gets a game in the mail, asking him to watch over a sim group of villagers fleeing from monsters trying to survive in the wild. There’s Gams, the soldier defending them all; his sister Chem, a healer; and a normal not-very powerful family: Rodice, Lyra and their 7-year-old daughter Carol. As Yoshio plays the game, he begins to notice that these NPCs are far too natural and well-written to actually be computer generated. What’s the game part? Well, he’s God, and once a day he can write them a prophecy, as well as perform a miracle if he amasses enough Faith Points… which mostly come from spending real-life money. Well, typical game.

As you can see, the plot description makes a reader go “meh”, but as always the execution is where it matters. We spend just as much time concentrating on Yoshio’s home life as we do on the NPC villagers, and it turns out there are multifaceted layers as to exactly WHY he gave up on life and is being a NEET in his room. His family, too, are all dealing with their own issues. The game, therefore, serves as a way to get Yoshio to start caring about life and other people again, and it works quite admirably. By the end of this first volume, he’s opened up to his parents, re-bonded with his sister, and gotten a regular job (if only to pay for the game). The villagers are not quite as interesting as the Yoshio side (the one bit of humor in the book, which features Chem being a brocon and competing with a 7-year-old girl for her brother’s attention, I could have done without) but they also have their nuances, and I appreciates that they really do need Yoshio’s help to survive, but not because they’re innately weak or anything – this world is dangerous.

There are several hints that this may not quite be a “game” at all, mostly due to the offerings the villagers send him by sacrifice every day being then mailed to Yoshio from an address in Hokkaido. I expect the end two books in the series will go deeper into that. (Like Vending Machine, this seems to stop at Book 3.) Still, once again this writer takes a seemingly flat premise and expands on it beautifully. I will absolutely be reading more.

Slayers: The Mystic Sword of Bezeld

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By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

At long last, we are reading Slayers novels that are new to North America… though honestly, sales for the Tokyopop version of later novels in the series were pretty tiny, so I suspect it was new stuff for a lot of readers. This arc also was not adapted into an anime, as they did their own anime-original arc with Slayers Try, a decision not loved by the author, who hated the relationship between Xeloss and golden dragon Filia in particular. Instead, here we see Lina and Gourry, now a twosome again, trying to find a replacement for the late Sword of Light. Sadly, swords like that cannot be found just lying around, and so they’re reduced to chasing after rumors. This leads them to the titular sword, and also to a young girl being menaced by two mercs, two assassins, and seemingly the narrative. Will the sword turn out to be real? Will the sword turn out to be a trap? Will Sean once again spin out 500 words on super short novels that are fun to read but hard to review?

As noted, Lina and Gourry are by themselves at the start of this arc. That said, somehow Amelia and Zelgadis manage to get the biggest laugh in the book, as Gourry’s seeming inability to remember them leads to the illustrator drawing a spectral version of the duo stomping on his head. Instead we’re introduced to two mercenaries who, while they part ways with our heroes at the end of this book, one suspects we’ll be seeing them again soon, if only as they take up far more space on the cover than the supposed victim being attacked. Luke is, to put it bluntly, an asshole, but his heart seems to be in the right place, and honestly, snarking at Lina, the Queen of snark, is something that she could probably use. Mileena is a mage who seems somewhat stoic and mostly is there to be the sensible one and to shoot down Luke’s romantic overtures, though there’s implication that it’s not a complete lost cause.

As for the plot itself, boy, the average life expectancy of anyone in Slayers who is not a main character must be insanely low, and even if you live, you usually end up being homeless, villageless, or cityless. There’s a lot of wholesale destruction here, with villages set on fire, innocent assassins (erm, well, semi-innocent) getting possessed by mystic swords, and a monstrous demon with insane regenerative ability and also the ability to kill folks and keep them in a sort of perpetual zombie state. Good thing Lina has Dragon Slave… which is not good enough this time. And there’s also Gaav Flare, which… no longer works without Gaav, who was killed off in the last volume. Whoops. That said, the way that they do get rid of the big bad at the end is the second funniest part of the book, and also oh so very Lina Inverse.

So yeah, the usual Slayers novel. Good fights, good laughs, lotsa death, super short. Can’t wait for the next one.

Manga the Week of 8/18/21

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SEAN: Mid-August, and I cannot confirm this, but I imagine it’s hot. At least here in North America. Australia might be saying something different.

Airship, in print, gives us Adachi and Shimamura 6 and Mushoku Tensei 12.

Digitally, the early debut is The Haunted Bookstore – Gateway to a Parallel Universe (Wagaya wa Kakuriyo no Kashi Honya-san), a fantasy about a girl who lives in a bookstore that caters to spirit people. Then one day she rescues a boy from an exorcist family! Can she convince him all spirits aren’t evil?

ASH: This appeals to me on multiple levels.

MJ: Okay, same.

SEAN: There’s also The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter 5.

Cross Infinite World has a 2nd volume of the enjoyable but exhausting to say title Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends: The Figurehead Queen Is Strongest At Her Own Pace.

Dark Horse has the 2nd and final What’s Michael: Fatcat Collection, rounding up the rest of what Dark Horse published from this classic 80s manga.

MICHELLE: Oh, hey! I was wondering what had happened with this.

ASH: Glad to see it finally coming out! I love the series and am happy to see it back in print.

MJ: Oh!!

SEAN: Ghost Ship debuts Shiori’s Diary (Shiori no Nikki), from Nihon Bungeisha’s Manga Goraku Special. A wife finds a diary showing evidence of her husband’s many affairs, so decides to start a diary of her own… and start having sex with others as well. From what I hear, this is more ‘high tone’ than Ghost Ship’s usual fare.

ASH: Huh!

SEAN: They’ve also got Destiny Lovers 7 and the final volume of Yokai Girls.

J-Novel Club has some nice print stuff for us this week. We get the debut in print of The Unwanted Undead Adventurer, which is a skeleton isekai, but this one is a kinder, gentler skeleton.

MICHELLE: I was not prepared for the existence of the skeleton isekai genre.

ANNA: Nor was I.

MJ: Well, huh.

SEAN: Also debuting in print is the manga omnibus of The Faraway Paladin (which is also getting an anime soon). If you ever wondered what Superman would be like in a high fantasy world, this is not far off. This has Vol. 1-2.

ASH: I’m still waiting for the original novels to be released in print (supposedly coming next year!), but I’ll take the manga in the meantime.

Also out in print: Ascendance of a Bookworm 9 (aka Part 3, Vol. 2); By the Grace of the Gods 5; In Another World with My Smartphone 17; and Otherside Picnic Omnibus 2, with Vol. 3-4.

Digitally, J-Novel Club has Can Someone Please Explain What’s Going On?! 6, Mapping: The Trash-Tier Skill That Got Me Into a Top-Tier Party 6, Otherside Picnic 5, Reincarnated as the Piggy Duke: This Time I’m Gonna Tell Her How I Feel! 2, and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey 13.

In print, Kodansha brings us the latest Kaoru Yuki title, Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost (Rakuen no Bijo to Yajuu). This runs in Kodansha’s Palcy, and is probably in the artist’s usual genre of “is this romance, horror, or both?”.

MICHELLE: That cover is great.

ANNA: Good to see more Kaoru Yuki coming out.

ASH: Ooooh! Kaoru Yuki!

MJ: Oh, I’m so excited!

SEAN: They’ve also got That Wolf-Boy Is Mine! Omnibus 1, containing the first two volumes.

Also in print: Blue Period 4, the 16th and final volume of Boarding School Juliet, and Go with the Clouds, North-by-Northwest 5.

The digital debut may be more familiar to mystery fans: The Decagon House Murders (Jukkakukan no Satsujin), a manga based on the classic mystery novel. A mystery club travels to a remote island to solve an unsolved murder… but is this really all it seems? Umineko fans will find a lot of this rings a bell.

MICHELLE: I’m looking forward to this one!

ASH: Oh, nice! I enjoyed the novel, so will want to check the adaptation out, too.

SEAN: Also out: Cells NOT at Work 4, Nina the Starry Bride 4, Undead Girl Murder Farce 3, and Will It Be the World or Her? 8.

One Peace debuts a new title: I Belong to the Baddest Girl at School (Pashiri na Boku to Koi suru Banchou-san), a Kadokawa series from Young Ace Up. A boy is being used as an errand boy and bully victim by the girl gang leader of the school… or so he thinks. She’s actually trying (badly) to confess. I am always down for banchou girls.

ASH: Same!

SEAN: Also from One Peace, the 5th manga volume of The Reprise of the Spear Hero.

Seven Seas debuts Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero (Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha), a title from Houbunsha’s Comic Fuz that seems to be part of the popular ‘demon lord in modern Japan’ genre.

They also have Slow Life In Another World (I Wish!) (Isekai de Slow Life o (Ganbou)), an Overlap series from Comic Gardo. A reincarnated guy does his best to avoid conflict in his new world… but he’s getting attacked, he’s getting slaves, and he’s getting more problems.

There’s also Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor 12, The Ancient Magus’ Bride: Wizard’s Blue 3, Arifureta: from Commonplace to World’s Strongest 7th manga volume, Magical Angel Creamy Mami and the Spoiled Princess 2, School Zone Girls 2, Superwomen in Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit 2, and Thigh High: Reiwa Hanamaru Academy 2.

ASH: I’ll have to admit, despite greatly enjoying the original series, I have yet to actually try any of the spinoffs of The Ancient Magus’ Bride.

Viz has a new Junji Ito manga, Sensor. Is anyone else reminded of the days when an Arina Tanemura manga would come out from Viz every month? It seems like we’re at that point with Ito.

ANNA: I would like to read more Arina Tanemura manga!

ASH: As would I! And more Junji Ito for that matter.

SEAN: Also from Viz: Asadora! 3, Assassin’s Creed: Blade of Shao Jun 2, Golden Kamuy 23, Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt 16, Urusei Yatsura Omnibus 11, and Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead 3.

Yen On debuts the print version of Megumi Hayashibara’s The Characters Taught Me Everything: Living Life One Episode at a Time, which had a digital version out a while back. This memoir is part talking about roles she’s had over the years and part self-help book.

ASH: I’m looking forward to this one.

SEAN: Yen On also has Baccano! 17, which wraps up the 1700s arc (and might seem familiar to anime fans), and Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki 6.5, which, as you may have guessed from the number, is a short story volume.

What manga will you read no matter which continent you’re on?

I Shall Survive Using Potions!, Vol. 7

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By FUNA and Sukima. Released in Japan as “Potion-danomi de Ikinobimasu!” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hiroya Watanabe.

After essentially rebooting the series last volume, possibly the biggest surprise here is how little Kaoru has to survive using potions. They come up a few times, notably when some of the cast need to be healed ASAP, but they aren’t the running gag of “make me an ‘x’ that’s really a potion bottle’ that they used to be. Mostly her abilities have become similar to Mile’s Storage, which is to say she can whip out transport or food when needs must. This is not to say that she’s just sitting around and doing nothing however; she and Reiko are getting a business off the ground, using their two new ex-orphans as employees, and there’s also the occasional muttering about finding a husband, though even Kaoru seems to have realized it won’t happen as long as she looks that young. Indeed, most of the first quarter of the book is about starting the business… and Kaoru finding loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Then they go looking for more employees…

Kaoru, of course, always seems to think that she can disguise her absolutely ludicrous abilities and just be an average, everyday businesswoman, and Reiko seems to be going along with this. Both of them seem to have forgotten what happened 70-odd years ago, and how Kaoru was literally enshrined into myth and legend. The running gag for this book, which is quite amusing, is how all of the young kids working for her know who she is but try not to say anything because she’s clearly avoiding the subject… even as she once again does something that only the legendary Kaoru could do. Speaking of the kids, this is a fantasy world isekai, so I will warn there is a lot of child labor here. That said, they’re paid well, and it’s an improvement on the virtual slavery they were stuck with before. As with Kuma Bear, you’re supposed to regard it as heartwarming.

The other subplots in the book feature Leia, another goddess who has essentially come down to Kaoru’s country so she can see why Celes is so fascinated with it. For the most part, she acts like a somewhat naive ojou, but there’s a very nice scene at the end of the book where she starts to realize what living actually means, and it’s well-handled. The other big event, right at the end of the book, is Kyoko’s arrival, the third of the “KKR” trio from Japan. As far as I can tell, the rule of thumb of their lives in Japan was that, while Kaoru threatened her way out of trouble, and Reiko blackmailed her way out of trouble, Kyoko seems to have simply gotten into trouble – she’s presented so far as a bit of a fluffhead. She shows up in a UFO, as her ability is to be able to create literally any ship – sadly, she can’t create crew for these ships, so she’s reduced to crafts that can be used by one person. She promises to add even more chaos.

For those who miss the old supporting cast, there is a brief after story showing what Francette and Roland are up to… and the answer is “raising kids so powerful that no one can defeat them, along with a Red Sonja-esque desire to marry only someone who can defeat them”. Still, while this wasn’t as world-shattering as the last book, it was a good solid volume.

Bookshelf Briefs 8/11/21

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Sean is our hero as he shoulders the burden of this column solo.

D-Frag!, Vol. 15 | By Tomoya Haruno | Seven Seas – This manga is here for romance and jokes, but the jokes are so prevalent that the romance tends to fall by the wayside. Technically there are a bunch of girls who have fallen for Kazuma, but honestly, in reality he and Takao seem to have the only relationship with actual sexual chemistry. This is especially helped by a wacky sequence where Kazuma has to dress up as a girl to avoid Takao’s protective father, and ends up being quite a believable one. Takao has now finally left Kazuma’s house (minus one bra, which becomes another running gag), but the others are still there, despite the meteor preventing them from moving back home being taken care of by the power of EEL. Deeply silly. – Sean Gaffney

The Dangers in My Heart, Vol. 1 | By Norio Sakurai | Seven Seas – This bizarre little comedy was not quite what I was expecting. Our “hero,” Kyotaro, is a wannabe edgelord who keeps narrating inside his head and dreams of killing his classmates… except no, he doesn’t, as he’s far too much of a wuss to do anything. He has a repressed crush on Anna, the “best girl” in class, who is not only popular but also turns out to be a model on the side. That said, as he and the reader slowly realize, Anna is… strange. Stranger than she likes to let on, really. What ensues are a series of short chapters where he tries to stop the other horny teens in his class from sexually harassing the girls, while also watching Anna break her stereotype. Not sure if recommended? It was OK. – Sean Gaffney

Horimiya, Vol. 15 | By Hero and Daisuke Hagiwara | Yen Press – We’re nearing the end of the manga at last, after the misstep that was the anime (not a disaster, but not as well-received as hoped). The anime helped highlight the manga’s main flaw, which is that it absolutely will not let Hori’s temper and tendency to hit Miyamura go away, and it continues to walk a fine line between “it’s funny in a Looney Tunes way” and “this is abusive behavior and I, the author know it,” with a side of “they know they’re into S&M so it’s OK.” It feels weird, frankly. Yuki and Tooru are still the secondary not-quite-a-couple, but frustratingly, that’s all they seem to be. And of course there’s the focus on endless minor characters I can’t remember. This is still a mess, but it’s almost over. – Sean Gaffney

Love at Fourteen, Vol. 10 | By Fuka Mizutani | Yen Press – Do you love age-gap romance? Or romance that looks like age-gap romance? Then this is the manga for you… at least when it’s not focusing on its main couple, who continue to be the main reason to keep reading it. We’re not walking back the moving away yet, and it’s really hitting them both hard, to the point where they do a “day trip” to talk about how far away it will be. There is talk of them having sex (which they are quick to point out is legal between two fourteen-year-olds in Japan), but neither one has knowledge beyond rudimentary, so they back off to research it. Frankly, it’s too soon. As for the others, well, they are what they are. I do like the sad lesbian helping out her next-gen equivalent, though. – Sean Gaffney

Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 9 | By Ammitsu | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Resolving the cliffhanger from the last volume turns out to go exactly the way every reader thought it would. Ran is taken away by her dad and there’s a bit of “you can’t see him again” going on. It’s all mainly because her dad is sad that his little girl is growing up. Akira manages to win the dad over by basically being his usual self, and in the end Ran agrees not to have any sex before marriage, because … well, because they’re so pure, really. That said, we’re only a volume away from the finale, so it’s time for one last little wrinkle from Ran’s past to show up and stress everyone out. If you miss Kimi ni Todoke and wish you could read more of it only with even more innocent leads, this is the manga for you. – Sean Gaffney

We’re New at This, Vol. 8 | By Ren Kawahara | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Turns out that Ikuma being a salaryman is not that big a shift from Ikuma being a contract worker, though it does mean he has to go out with his boss and get drunk more often (a staple of Japanese corporate culture, and I’ve never liked it). Fortunately, while he and Sumika still sometimes have trouble communicating their needs and desires, they still communicate better than 90% of the other married couples in manga. That said, things end with a fight here, as Ikuma’s womanizing friend has finally met a nice girl, and Ikuma and Sumika differ on whether this is a good thing or not. Their fight will probably spill into book nine, though given the cliffhanger I’m guessing Ikuma is correct here. Sweet fun. – Sean Gaffney

The Whole of Humanity Has Gone Yuri Except for Me | By Hiroki Haruse | Yen Press – This two-volume series is out here in one omnibus, and that seems to be the correct decision, because I doubt this premise could sustain a long series. A high school girl wakes up one day to find everyone in the world is now a woman, and always has been. She’s in a parallel world… and she’s straight! Or is she? If that premise makes you go “heck yeah!,” you’ll be fine with this SF series, as she and her seemingly aloof, secretly disaster lesbian schoolmate try to figure out what happened and if she can return to her own world. If you saw the premise and sighed, it’s not going to magically be any different than what you’d expect. – Sean Gaffney

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, Vol. 2

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By Reia and Haduki Futaba. Released in Japan as “Koushaku Reijou no Tashinami” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Andria Cheng.

It’s not always easy trying to reform something. First of all, how much can you really do? Iris is the acting governor of her land, and is doing a great job of building it up and modernizing it. But what about the next domain over? What about the entire Kingdom? What about the Kingdom next door, which is not nearly as well off as you are? These are not questions one can easily answer, and Iris has trouble coming up with answers either, though she’s doing her best to try to make changes that everyone is going to want to emulate. Fortunately, as I noted in my previous review, she has a ridiculous number of allies who are there to help her make those changes. Unfortunately, she also still has a large number of enemies. The villainess otome game aspect of this continues to be a very small part, while the politicking and intrigue are definitely at the forefront. Which is for the best, really.

Iris may be the glory of Armelia, but that means little to the Kingdom as a whole, which does not know she’s behind the Azuta Corporation and thinks of her as the noble who got shunned by the second prince. That said, an invitation by the Queen Dowager to a major function helps her start to reintegrate into high society, helped along by the prince, who is being an absolute dick, and also Yuri, the protagonist of the otome game that this supposedly is based on, who is at best ridiculously unaware of everything and at worst an actual enemy agent. Then, just when things seem to be going really well, word comes from the Church that Iris has been excommunicated! With employees leaving her company and neighboring domains refusing to allow trade, is there anything Iris can do to possibly get herself out of this? If only she had a really hot assistant who was secretly the first prince…

As I said earlier, the otome game aspect of these books is minimized, but I do want to come back to the character of Yuri. I’m not sure if the author of Duke’s Daughter read My Next Life as a Villainess before starting this (there are many other examples of the genre, but Villainess did begin on the web about 8 months before this title), but it’s hard to look at Yuri and not see Evil Maria. Which makes sense, given that Iris is essentially Good Original Catarina, without the personality of the Japanese girl overwriting her. I appreciate that Iris can’t be sure if Yuri is a spy that is seeking to have the kingdom collapse simply because if she is, she’s so bad at it. There are many other ways to go about doing this rather than acting like a cliched otome game heroine trying to get all the Good Ends with the various boys. I doubt we’ll ever get anything from Yuri’s perspective, but it would be interesting.

With another crisis solved, you’d think the series would be wrapping up quickly. But alas, the first Prince absolutely does not want to marry Iris, as he’s far too content seeing her “flying free” and changing the entire world. it’s hard to disagree with him. That said, I hope Dean sticks around, if only for her own mental health. This was an improvement on the first volume, though it has the same flaws.

Pick of the Week: Skipping This Week

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SEAN: My eyes this week are on Skip and Loafer, a Seven Seas title about a “country bumpkin” moving to the city that has me just with its cover – the combination of body and face on the lead is wonderful. I’ve heard many other good things about it as well.

KATE: I second Sean’s recommendation: Skip and Loafer looks like a delightful bit of escapism.

MICHELLE: This is definitely a case where the cover has utterly sold me. Count me down for Skip and Loafer, too!

ANNA: I’m all in for escapism, Skip and Loafer is my pick as well.

ASH: Who am I to break the consensus? Skip and Loafer was already going to be my pick this week, but seeing so many other people choose it makes me even more interested.

MJ: Okay, it’s been a heck of a week and I haven’t even had time to really look at this, but if all these people, with their impeccable taste, are enthusiastic about Skip and Loafer, I have no doubt I’ll be into it too! My pick this week is blind trust in my amazing colleagues!

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Home Alone

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By Hajime Kamoshida and Keji Mizoguchi. Released in Japan as “Seishun Buta Yarou wa Orusuban Imouto no Yume wo Minai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

The first four books of the series had its main character, Sakuta, helping out a different girl each time who had what he termed “Adolescence Syndrome”, where an inner issue they were suffering from showed itself in an exterior way. Mai was turning invisible, Tomoe was time looping, Rio twinned herself, and Nodoka bodyswapped herself with her sister. Through all this, though, we were also learning of Sakuta’s own past – both his encounter with a high school girl named Shouko (who he rediscovers but not in high school) and his sister, whose reaction to bullying, and his frustration and reaction to her own pain, is what jumpstarted all of this. Now, at last, in this 5th book, we finally get to focus on Kaede. She’s more determined than ever to leave the apartment and go to school, to the point where she has a list of tasks in her diary. Together with Sakuta, can she succeed? Well, yes, but that’s not necessarily a wonderful thing for all involved.

Much of this book is about moving forward and trying to take a next step. For Sakuta that means actually applying himself. Mai, despite her celebrity, is going to college, and Sakuta wants to follow her there a year later. For Kaede, this means a whole lot of things. Just going to school is fraught with tensions, given that whenever she sees someone she doesn’t know, especially someone wearing her school uniform, she has a panic attack. She’s also re-exhibiting signs of her adolescence syndrome, which is definitely not a good thing. (Given that when this happened before, the authorities thought her mother abused her, I worried they might zero in on Sakuta, but thankfully this does not go there.) And there’s another, even larger issue: Kaede, as we discover here, has no memories from before two years ago. Given the way amnesia works, there’s a danger that she might lose herself no matter what the outcome.

There is a large chunk of this book that is very heartwarming. Seeing Kaede’s determination is great, trying to take small steps despite her terror. Sakuta strikes exactly the right notes, knowing when to push and when to retreat. The scenes at the zoo were magical, and brought a smile to your face… which of course makes the last fifth of the book all the more tear-jerking. It’s startling to see not just Kaede but also Sakuta re-develop symptoms from adolescence syndrome, and of course it happens when Mai is out of the city and can’t help him. Fortunately, he has Shouko – the older version – to help him once again. That said, she’s not Mai, and I wish that Mai had been there to talk him out of it. Mai remains the best part of this series. In any case, I’m not sure where Sakuta’s family relationship will go from here, but hopefully his romantic relationships will survive the cliffhanger. They probably will, she’s eminently sensible.

I joked on Twitter that the next two books would be light and fluffy – trust me, I saw the movie reviews, and while I don’t know what’s going to happen I know it’s a tear jerker. But so is this, in its own way, as we take a look at what makes up a person’s identity, and how fragile that can really be.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life: Whiteout

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By Mato Sato and nilitsu. Released in Japan as “Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

The second volume in this series picks up right where the first one left off, with Menou and Akari arriving in the Port City Libelle. Akari is here to have a vacation, Menou is here to try to kill her, and makes an attempt, but it fails as the others have. More worryingly, the terrorist organization we saw on the train in the first book has also got a hook into this city, and it appears to actually have the approval of the royal family – or at least the royal princess, who seems somewhat… detached from life. Menou’s not getting any help from the Church – they loathe her. The fight-loving princess finally meets her, but, unsurprisingly, just wants to fight. And Momo is doing her best to help, but things might be a little more difficult than any of them had assumed. Why is one of the four Human Errors out of her fog prison? Why does she know Akari? Even more chillingly, why does she know Menou?

So, first of all a warning: while this is not quite as bad as, say, Roll Over and Die 4, it is a very gore-filled and violent book. Pandæmonium is our villain here, and she’s a little girl who can essentially resurrect herself from her own body and blood – meaning that she can be killed endlessly and literally crawl out of her dead body. This is, needless to say, disquieting, both as a concept and as prose. She’s a classic type – the killer little girl – but that does not make her any less difficult to deal with. Akari’s own subplot is also rather chilling, as we get a lot more time in the head of the original Akari, the one who is not an airhead (though both are in love with Menou – indeed, that’s pretty much the one trait they share). The revelation from Book 1 is gone into further, and I wonder if a happy ending is truly possible for her – or if death is the only solution.

Not that the world has really had a solution to the isekai’d heroes before. We don’t get much more backstory, and a lot of it is filtered through Pandæmonium, who sees everything in terms of a movie, but it’s pretty clear there’s more going on here than just “the four human errors turned evil and were all destroyed”. For one thing, the one who put them down has also vanished from history… maybe. We get hints here and there as we go through this book that Menou’s past is tied to the human errors more than she’s aware of. (She’s also mostly figured out what Akari is doing, so it’s not simply making her ignorant on purpose.) As with the first book, everything ties back to her mentor Flare, who she gets her nickname (Flarette) from. Good news! They may reunite soon! That is the end of the good news.

Apologies for being somewhat oblique, but this is the sort of book that runs on mysteries, and I’m not ALWAYS a giant spoiler factory. If you’re reading this for the yuri, you may be disappointed – it’s there but isn’t a focus. If you’re reading this for lots of cool action, dark mysteries, and a bit of existential horror… OK, more than a bit… then this should serve you quite well. If you got off the Roll Over and Die train after Book 4 caught up to Japan, pick this up.

Manga the Week of 8/11/21

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SEAN: August continues. It’s still 2021, you know. Not 2022 yet, I promise.

ASH: I do sometimes wonder at what year it is, so I appreciate the clarification.

SEAN: Two print novels from Airship: Drugstore in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist 2 and Skeleton Knight in Another World 9.

In early digital news, we get two debuts. Monster Musume The Novel – Monster Girls on the Job! is pretty much exactly what it says.

ASH: Huh, I had missed that there was a novel, too.

SEAN: She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man (Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja) is about a gamer whose OP character is an old man. Then one day he falls asleep and wakes up in the world of the game… but he’s a young girl! What else can he do but pretend that she’s his disciple?

Denpa Books gives us Gambling Apocalypse: KAIJI 3.

ASH: Glad to see this coming out!

SEAN: Ghost Ship debuts Sundome!! Milky Way, a Shueisha series from Grand Jump about a salaryman who runs into an alien girl who wants to have his baby. The trouble is, when she gets embarrassed she reverts to her alien form. This is from the creator of Yokai Girls.

ASH: Not to be confused with the now out-of-print (though still available electronically) Sundome by Kazuto Okada.

SEAN: J-Novel Club has, in novels, Are You Okay With a Slightly Older Girlfriend? 4 and The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan 10.

On the manga side, they debut Villainess: Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons (Doushitemo Hametsushitakunai Akuyaku Reijou ga Gendai Heiki wo Te ni Shita Kekka ga Kore desu), whose light novel we’ve already seen. The manga runs in Suiyoubi no Sirius.

And we also get Record of Wortenia War’s 3rd manga.

In print, Kodansha has the 3rd volume of the delightful A Sign of Affection.

MICHELLE: I really will read this at some point.

ANNA: I love this series. It is one of the few series that I decided to get digitally because I didn’t want to wait for print.

ASH: I just recently picked up the first volume! I’m looking forward to giving the series a try.

SEAN: The digital debut is Yamaguchi-kun Isn’t So Bad (Yamaguchi-kun wa Warukunai), the story of a girl who finds the scary-looking classmate of hers is actually quite a kind person. It runs in Betsufure.

MICHELLE: I know this is a well-trodden shoujo genre, but dangit, I usually like these.

ANNA: Unsurprisingly, me too!

ASH: Saaaaaaame.

SEAN: They also have Are You Lost? 7, Cells at Work and Friends 5, A Couple of Cuckoos 5, Defying Kurosaki-kun 16, Giant Killing 25, and Police in a Pod 3.

MICHELLE: Insert perennial Giant Killing squee here.

ASH: I really enjoyed the anime; I still need to read the manga!

SEAN: A lot of debuts for Seven Seas. Chronicles of an Aristocrat Reborn in Another World (Tensei Kizoku no Isekai Boukenroku – Jichou o Shiranai Kamigami no Shito) is another “the title is the plot” isekai, and it runs in Mag Garden’s Beat’s.

I Got Caught Up In a Hero Summons, but the Other World was at Peace! (Yuusha Shoukan ni Makikomareta kedo, Isekai wa Heiwa deshita) is a Kadokawa series from Comp Ace. Our protagonist is accidentally transported due to a hero summons… but there’s no war? Demons are our friends? No adventuring either? Good thing there’s piles of girls to glom onto our potato of a lead guy!

Skip and Loafer is a series from Kodansha’s Afternoon about a country girl who thinks she is completely prepared for life in the big city!… She isn’t. This is award-nominated.

MICHELLE: This sounds fun! The cover is cute, too. Kind of has a Silver Spoon vibe.

ANNA: This does sound cute.

ASH: I am intrigued!

SEAN: Also from Seven Seas: Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon 2, Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells 2, Harukana Receive 8, How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? 7, and Tamamo-chan’s a Fox! 3.

Square Enix has a 7th volume of Hi Score Girl.

SuBLime has a 2nd volume of horror BL series MADK.

ASH: I’m so far behind on so many series, but this one is higher up on the ever-growing pile of manga to be read.

Tokyopop gives us Glass Syndrome (Glasstaion Shoukougun), a one-shot BL manga about two teens who both have tons of issues and how they get together. It ran in Kaiousha’s Gush.

MICHELLE: Another nice cover.

ANNA: Tokyopop, you still can’t trick me.

SEAN: Viz has Call of the Night 3, Fullmetal Alchemist: Fullmetal Edition 14, Komi Can’t Communicate 14, the 7th volume of Persona 5, Radiant 14, and Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle 15.

ASH: Some good selections in that list.

SEAN: Lastly, Yen Press has The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess 3, ID:Invaded #Brake-Broken 2, Love of Kill 3, Mint Chocolate 3, and Sasaki and Miyano 3.

What manga are you reading if you get transported to another world?

In the Land of Leadale, Vol. 3

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By Ceez and Tenmaso. Released in Japan as “Leadale no Daichi nite” by Famitsu Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jessica Lange.

As we get more and more into this series, I am starting to wonder if it may be more connected to Keina’s life than I had thought. I had assumed that the general horribleness of her life before getting trapped in this “game world” was basically for drama purposes, and indeed we get a flashback to the car accident that saw her permanently on life support and killed her parents here, as well as showing why she’s so much more ludicrously ovepowered than everyone else – she literally had nothing else to do but lie in the hospital and game. That said, the narrative also notes that she’d been ill her entire life, and also offhandledly says her family were somehow involved with Leadale’s production. And we also heard form some other players who got trapped in the game that its shutdown was a huge surprise, and no one could work out why. Things that make you go “Hmmm”. That said, most of this book is not concerned with that at all.

That’s not to say that the book is not concerned with the interweaving of “game world” and this world with real, actual people, as it very much is. Cayna starts to find that old “game events” are seeming to reactivate years later… only now killing all the NPCs is far less easy to shrug off. With the help of two other players, she helps to clear out one of them, but the villages that were wiped out remain very much wiped out, and Cayna ends up adopting the one survivor, a little girl. There’s clearly ominous stuff happening. That said, the other half of the book is pretty much just Cayna being Cayna. She’s creating beer and whiskey, she’s battling dark elves with ease, and she’s basically about 200 levels above everyone else. That said, social interaction is still an issue, especially now that she has to be a mom. Keina did not emotionally mature much in hospital… and it shows in Cayna.

Given we’re seeing a few more gamers who have ended up in this world (and woe betide them if they try to explain “well, see, 200 years ago” to the authorities) we get an answer to a question that was bound to crop up eventually: what about players who gamed as the other gender? Turns out the game did not let you do that… but that did not stop one player, who used an illegal mod to play as a woman. Now she’s in the game, and is having troubles. Fortunately, this book is almost entirely service-free, so the troubles are more “I talk like a brash guy in this body”, something Cayna finds amusing. We also get two more servants that Cayna calls upon (and then keeps around, since it’s unclear what happens to them when unsummoned). They’re a cat butler and cat maid, and they both hate each other a whole lot. Comedy ensues. Sometimes it’s even funny. Mostly, though, the laughs come from Cayna and her ludicrous power.

So yes, this remains a slow life series with a potentially dark, chewy center. I’m enjoying it quite a bit.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 16

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Dale DeLucia.

Look, I know the spoiler. You know the spoiler. Most readers following this series have long since figured out the spoiler, if only as they googled the name and were redirected in a spoilery way. But yeah, this review is gonna talk about Syr, so if you say to yourself “oh, the shy but also sly waitress who likes Bell!”, I’d advise not reading this till you’ve read the book. We’ve seen Syr in action in one of the spinoff books, where she and Lyu go to a casino and she absolutely destroys a group of gamblers. But we’ve never quite seen Syr like this. This is Syr’s Last Stand. In the last volume we had a festival of remembrance, and in this one, hot on its heels, we have a festival of harvest. It’s meant to be a happy, joyous occasion, and is very popular with couples. As such, when Syr asks Bell out on a date, all hell breaks loose.

Admittedly it’s hard to pretend you’re avoiding a spoiler when the cover also heavily references the spoiler. So yeah, Syr is Freya. We all had guessed this by now, especially if we knew any mythology, and the derivation of the name Syr. That said, there’s another twist to it (hinted at in the Freya spinoff that came out last year) that makes things more interesting. For a good 3/4 of this book, however, this is really a cute romcom – something the author admits they were going for. Syr is, for obvious reasons, protected by the Freya Familia, and if she’s going to be dating Bell Cranel, then by God, she will be dating the BEST Bell Cranel, leading to a hilarious 5-day training from hell trying to teach Bell how to be a sexy boyfriend. (Poor Cassandra.) At the same time, Hestia is flipping out, and she and Aiz team up to follow Bell… as do Lyu and the rest of Syr’s co-workers. There’s funny moments, there’s sweet moments, there’s touching moments.

…and then it all goes to hell. Another slight spoiler, but the end of this book absolutely sets the table for the next arc, which I suspect is going to be “Freya Familia tries to kill all of Hestia Familia over and over again”. It has nothing to do with Bell figuring out Syr is Freya – he doesn’t. It’s simply that Syr left all her emotions and love on the table, begged Bell to accept her, and he CAN’T. He loves Aiz. (This is not stated explicitly with her name, but, um, see the previous 15 books). And it’s devastating and tragic until the last five pages or so, when you realize that oh shit, no, it’s going to be “fuck it, burn it all down” for Freya as she decides to have Bell Cranel By Any Means Necessary. It’s a stunning ending, and made me appreciate the comedy in this book all the more – I doubt we’ll see it in 17.

As with the wait between 15 and 16, 17 is not yet on Yen On’s schedule. Still, I hear 17 isn’t the end of the story arc either, so if you want to wait to binge, I’d advise against it. This works well as a stand-alone showing us what happens when someone who can get anyone she wants falls hard for the boy who won’t sleep with her because it would be wrong.