Sean Gaffney

By Ao Jyumonji and Eiri Shirai. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

These days, if you have a genre that’s popular enough you’re going to get deconstructions of it. And the Japanese genre of ‘people sent to another world where they fight in RPG-like circumstances’ is hugely popular in Japan. We’ve seen the odd attempt at doing something different with this genre before (Re: Zero comes to mind), but Grimgar in particular seems to follow another very popular way of thinking: the “grim and gritty” school. I don’t know if the name was deliberately chosen to mirror the mood of the book (likely it’s coincidence), but this first volume is a lengthy look at a group of people who are forced to fight monsters together and find, that with a lot of training and sacrifice… they can still be pretty terrible at it.

We meet a group of 12 people who find themselves in a castle in fantasy world X. They appear to be modern Japanese people, but have lost their memories, knowing only their names and the basic “I have plot amnesia” things. They’re taken to a man (who is unfortunately written in “scary gay man” mode) who tells them to survive, they need to become volunteer soliders. For the moment, they’re trainees. One group immediately forms of what seems to be the top people in the group. This is not their story, though we see them later on and find they are indeed the top people in the group. Our group consists of our narrator, who is “generic protagonist” with an occasional line in snark and a tendency to have no self esteem; a cheerful happy girl who has a complex about her small breasts; a painfully shy girl (with large breasts); the leader, a smiling sensible type who screams “I won’t last the book” and indeed does not; a big awkward guy; and Ranta.

I signal Ranta out by name for a reason. Grimgar is a well-written book, with good fight scenes and a dark but compelling plotline. Its weakness is the characters, who are a bit more generic types than I’d really wanted. Ranta is a type as well, the irritating hot-headed loudmouth. The difficulty is that this is turned up to 11 – he’s easily the most irritating part of the entire book, and it’s more grating because you know he’s written this way on purpose. He makes the whole party dislike him, and it takes the arrival of another stock type, the cold beauty with a tragic past (she replaces the doomed guy I mentioned above), to make everyone accept him because well, they’re a team and teams have to get along no matter what.

The awkwardness of this cast is, of course, the selling point. You won’t find a Kirito here; this team is mocked for going out to smash up low-ranked goblins all day every day, and they’re not terribly good at doing that either. None of them arrive with any game-breaking powers. They do gain some powers by joining guilds (again, this is very RPG), but leveling up is tough and slow. It’s a “what would this sort of story be like in reality?” type of tale, and as such it does its job quite well. Of course, this makes it a bit of a slog at times as well. I am hoping that fortunes turn upward for this group in future books, but won’t get my hopes up – that would defeat the purpose a bit.

By Isuna Hasekura and Jyuu Ayakura. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Paul Starr.

All right, so I’m just a little bit late to the party here. In fact, the party has long since had everyone leave and shut the lights off, and Carol Burnett is walking around me mopping up. But when this series began here in North America, it was in the pre-Yen On days, and I wasn’t as into light novels as I am now, so I never got around to it. Then when I did show interest (particularly after seeing the author at New York Comic Con) it was more a case of “I don’t have the room for 17 volumes on my shelf”. But glory be, the whole series is due to be released digitally over the next few months, and there’s a new book coming out in May as well, so I thought “Why not?” And it’s a good thing I did, as this proved to be a very good first volume.

I knew a bit about the series before I began to read it through internet osmosis – I seem to recall the general talk about it was “come for the nekkid loli wolf girl, stay for the economic theory’. Thankfully, at least in the first volume, the nekkid loli is kept to a minimum, as after her introduction Holo finds clothes and for the most part stays in them. She is indeed a wolf girl, or to be more accurate wolf goddess of the harvest, and her ears and tail and the hiding thereof take up a bit more of the narrative’s time. The majority of the book, though, is about two things: 1) the travails of Holo and Lawrence, the merchant who picked her up at the start, trying to stop a vast economic conspiracy and also make a bit of cash doing so, and b) the banter back and forth between them as they do this. And honestly, economics is fine, but I’d say the dialogue and banter is the real win here.

The series takes place is sort of “generic middle ages X”, but thankfully is more of a genuine fantasy novel rather than all of the RPG-styled worlds we’ve seen in more recent books. I mentioned Lawrence earlier, and he’s our narrator and viewpoint character. He is seemingly rather pleasant and mild-mannered, but there is a deep awkwardness to him as well, with the odd hint of a tragic past. It’s rather cruel that the one man he looks forward to meeting at the start of the book turns out to be one of the main villains towards the end. You get the sense that Lawrence and Holo are made for each other, and there certainly seems to be a bit of ‘will they or won’t they?’ through the book. Despite being called a loli, Holo acts and speaks like you’d expect someone hundreds of years old to, and honestly looks to be about 15-16 on the cover, which for anime and manga is pretty much ‘go for it’ age.

Basically, “come for the economics, stay for the playful sarcastic banter” is my tag for this series. I look forward to catching up.

By Atori Haruno and Aikawa Yu. Released in Japan as “Sennen Meikyuu no Nana Ouji” by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-sum. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Beni Axia Conrad, Adapted by Ysabet MacFarlane.

As I continue to read more and more manga, I find myself becoming familiar with not only the differences between genres, but also the difference between specific Japanese publishers and how they work in those genres. A Jump manga and a Sunday manga are too very different beasts, and both are also different from Magazine. If I’m reading a shoujo manga from Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, I expect two to three times as much dialogue as I would if the manga was in Shueisha’s Betsuma. And sometimes you can be reading a manga and without even knowing who the publisher is, you can correctly identify it based merely on the style. Such is the case with this new Seven Seas title, which may be one of the most Comic Zero-Sum things I’ve ever seen.

This is not a bad thing, to be fair. Seven Princes knows what it wants to be, and does its job very well. It wants to be Zero-Sum doing a survival game manga. Being Zero-Sum, instead of teenagers locked in a school, we get beautiful and slightly eccentric young men locked on a fantasy world castle/dungeon combo. Our hero is the only one who isn’t famous, or so it seems at first. Ewan wakes up one day to find himself trapped in a deep pit. Luckily, he’s rescued by another man who was trapped in a different part of what turns out to be a prison. Evading deathtraps and meeting up with others, they gradually realize that they are participating in a legendary ritual to determine who will be the new Emperor. Unfortunately, that ritual seems to involve a lot of deadly puzzle games – one participant is already dead when we meet him, and two more seemingly die by the end of this first book.

I say seemingly as I have experience in this genre, both good and bad, and know that fake deaths and “they never saw the body” are common occurrences. One of the fun things about this title is that it knows its cliches, and feels free to blithely abuse them when it suits. One character is introduced to us as the one female participant, something that is so unlikely in this world of “it’s not quite BL but close enough” that several of the characters immediately think “there’s something odd about her”. And sure enough! Likewise, Ewan may say that he’s just a typical young student, and not a famous thief/detective/singer/etc. like all the others, but he not only has the shiny “we can get through this if we all work together!” attitude that most survival game leads need, but he can also apparently read ancient lost scripts with ease.

I do wish there was a bit more humor – the few attempts at it mostly revolve around the thief and detective hating each other in amusing comedy ways, but for the most part this is meant to be serious business. Old-school manga fans may recognize the artist from such works as Butterfly (never completed here as the publisher stopped doing manga) and Dark Edge (different publisher, ditto). This is only four volumes, so hopefully will have a bit more luck. Recommended to those who like dark fantasy, survival games, or hot guys getting close to each other.

By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

Yona of the Dawn has clearly been a fantasy series from the get go, but with this volume we also see it starting to take on the quality of myth. Or rather, of creating a myth, as it turns out that Yona’s red hair (something she’s always disliked) is part of a prophecy that has been bandied about. Not to mention that the priest we meet at the end of Vol. 2 turns out to be able to literally communicate with God, and also mentions a “red dragon” who will unite the land. So good thing Yona is the protagonist, then, as she certainly has her work cut out for her. Luckily, she manages to gain a few more allies than just Hak in this book.

First off, we have Yun, who I suspect was brought in by the author to fill the ‘tsukkomi’ role, but in non-meta terms, he’s got a destiny that’s bigger than just taking care of an absent-minded priest, and Yona is where he can find it. His backstory once again reminds us that this land is filled with strife, politics, and suffering, something that Yona too is gradually discovering as she realizes how much she really wasn’t aware of as the pretty princess. The other new ally is Gija (please, no romanization arguments, Japan asked for the G), who is one of the Four Dragon Warriors who wield tremendous power (as seen by his reptilian right arm), and whose ancestors have been waiting an awfully long time for Yona to show up. Being a blond second love interest sort, he and Hak naturally don’t get along, and I suspect this will be a source of amusement in the future.

This is Yona’s volume, though, and she’s really fantastic in it. She’s determined to not be useless if they get attacked by enemies again, but saying you want to learn to use a sword and bow and actually having the nerve to take a life are too very different things. Yona clearly has some skill (used, in best romantic comedy fashion, when Hak provokes her), but she’s a princess who was raised by a pacifist. Hak explicitly says that by teaching her to fight, he’s defying her late father’s order to never let her touch a weapon. Violence and strife will come to Yona, but facing them head on will not be easy. Something that she realizes as we move on.

Note that this story is not all serious murmurs about fighting and destiny. Yona and Hak may or may not be the main “will they get together” couple, but they are hilarious together, with Yona’s faces when she’s aggravated with him being particularly funny. (The start of Chapter 15 verges on magical.) And Yun, as I noted before, has a nice ability to be a grumpy snarker, having absolutely no time for Hak and Gija trying to figure out who is the best man to protect Yona. No doubt all of them will try, but I’m hoping that as the series goes on, Yona will learn more and more to protect herself. Can’t wait for the next volume.

By Chiyomaru Shikura and pako. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Adam Lensenmayer.

Of the three initial licenses by the fledgling J-Novel Club, this was the one that people had heard of. The creators are responsible for such titles as Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, and other series with highly eccentric casts that abuse the common semicolon. Now we have Occultic;Nine, which is not connected to the other series that I know of (aside from the punctuation), but does have the advantage of an anime currently airing, as well as a visual novel coming next year. The plot of this book is not quite certain yet, except that it deals with a large group of people who are somehow interested or connected to the occult. The narrative viewpoint bounces back and forth between them (with one notable exception). And as a light novel, it’s not too bad.

Our hero, if such a word can be applied to an ensemble cast, is Yuta Gamon, a teen loser who spends most of his time running a blog devoted to mocking the occult with the help of his mysterious, airheaded, and large-breasted friend Ryoka, who is not quite Mayuri from Steins;Gate but seems to fulfill much the same function. (She is the only character without a narrative viewpoint, which unfortunately makes it look like she was added simply for people to talk about her boobs.) Yuta is teeth-gratingly irritating in a way that most people who have been teenagers will likely be very familiar with, but ultimately harmless, and also seems to be getting mysterious messages on his ham radio setup. As the book goes on, we also meet a girl who tells people’s fortunes, someone who curses people via black magic, an occult reporter, a seeming detective (though honestly he could easily be faking), etc. Interspersed randomly throughout this (very randomly – the author admits in the afterword he added it after the book had been written) are the actions of a vast conspiracy doing… something.

This is very much a Volume One, promising a lot of cool things but not really delivering until the last few pages, which are easily the best part of the book, as Yuta discovers a corpse and unfortunately makes himself the prime suspect. But for the most part it’s there to show us the world these characters live in and slowly start to bring them together. I understand the anime compressed this entire first novel into one episode, which doesn’t surprise me. The characters are interesting, though. I particularly liked Miyuu, who despite her fortune telling powers is easily the most normal character in the book, and her determination is admirable. The whole thing reminds me a lot of the Durarara!! series, where you get a bunch of things thrown at you that won’t make sense till about Books 3 or 4.

The book’s main flaw, of course, is that at times it’s a bit TOO disparate, and can read sort of like waiting 200 pages for anything to actually happen. But if you enjoy a book based around mood, with a bunch of eccentric, annoying, yet ultimately sympathetic characters and an ominous undertone (what’s with the bodies in the lake?), Occultic;Nine is a good read worth your time. Though it will put Gloomy Sunday in your head (I like to think they heard the Billie Holiday version).

By Kenya Atsui and Saori Toyota. Released in Japan as “Kimi Kara Uketsugu Brave Chronicle” by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Dan Luffey.

As regular readers of my site may have noticed, I tend mostly to review things that I enjoy in some way. It’s easier to write about things I like for the most part, and with titles that I don’t like I have a tendency not to finish them, which makes things easier. But I do tend to give a lot of first volumes a try, which inevitably means running into some clinkers. And this is a new publisher, so I wanted to give them an honest shot. And I did positively review one of their other titles, so don’t have to feel too guilty. All this is a preamble for what you’ve likely suspected: Brave Chronicle is terrible.

With a title like Brave Chronicle, I was expecting something a bit more fantasy oriented, but it actually takes place at a school for students adept at magic. Our heroine is the top student at the Academy and one of the most magically gifted students in the world, to the point where she’s not only a student, she’s also the headmaster. Our hero is her childhood friend and the number two in the school, who has minimal magic power but manages to kick ass in almost every fight anyway – except, of course, for her, who he has never beaten in 999 tries. Our hero is also a pervert who enjoys going on about his little sister, who has large breasts and a petite body, something he will remind you about endlessly. That said, his little sister is also a massive superweapon that can decide wars – and now an opposing world has come to take it.

The first third of this book is the worst, as it tries to do a daily slice-of-life, which means that we get the hero going on and on about his sister’s breasts, sometimes for pages at a time – note to authors, you’re only allowed to do that if you write as well as Nisioisin, and this guy does not. Despite all the seeming incest fetishism, it is never not clear that he’s in love with the heroine (whose name is Yukihime, just in case you wanted to see something else completely unoriginal. Did I mentioned she uses ice powers? Oh, you guessed, huh?). After a while, the book settles into serious mode and we are treated to a series of endless fights, which is actually a step up as I was merely bored and not disgusted. Oh yes, and I should mention that, unlike most light novels these days, this is complete in one volume. That did allow it to pull off an ending that I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting, which should technically be praised if it didn’t leave such a bad taste in my mouth due to being carried out in the most cliched manner possible – I was genuinely disappointed the hero did not scream “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” at the sky, which would have completed the bingo card.

I try to be nice to cliched series, and I do enjoy quite a few of them. But this series was so derivative, and offered so few genuine good points, that it was a struggle to get through it, and the reward at the end was bittersweet. J-Novel Club does have some other interesting series on their site for you to try, so try them, and don’t feel too bad by giving this a miss. Absolutely dire.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

It has been well over ten years since the Haruhi Suzumiya books hit Japan, and almost exactly ten years since the animated adaptation, so it’s no big surprise that we’re beginning to find works that are clearly inspired by its ideas. Actually, much of this book sounds like it’s been pulled together from what’s popular these days. No one gets pulled into another world, but there is a girl who’s a huge fan of that genre. There’s a vampire, although she could be any other kind of supernatural creature for all the relevance it has. And of course the Japanese title itself reminds us that focusing on the phenomenon of ‘chuunibyous’ is also quite popular, and has spawned several anime. So, as a hodgepodge of things that are popular lately, as well as the usual light novel tropes that have always been popular, this should be a giant mess. Yet somehow, I quite enjoyed it.

This is one of J-Novel Club’s three debut digital titles, and I picked it to read first for a very simple reason: it’s the shortest. The premise is laid out at the start: normal high school kid Yuichi wakes up one day to find that he can see tags over people’s heads that show their ‘role’ – this starts normally with ‘big sister’, ‘office worker’, etc, but once he gets to school he runs into ‘vampire’, ‘zombie’, ‘witch’, and most ominously, ‘serial killer’. Unfortunately, this is basically the limits of Yuichi’s new power. Fortunately, he has a few tricks up his sleeve, as my earlier remark about his being a normal high school kid is a giant lie. Moreover, he has the title character, his big sister Mutsuko, who has prepared for this day her entire life, and made sure Yuichi is prepared as well.

The subtitle of this series is essentially the big reveal, and I must admit it’s quite well done. There are a few suggestions that Yuichi is not what he seems at the start – the strength equipment he uses that his new friend can’t even manage to move – but from about halfway through the book, once we gather than Yuichi IS in fact the world’s strongest, he is allowed to be as ridiculous as possible, jumping off four-story buildings, fighting oni to a standstill, and avoiding kicks to the crotch by forcing his testicles back into his body. If this sounds utterly ridiculous, it absolutely is, and only Yuichi’s blase narration really helps carry it off – to him, this is Tuesday. As for Mutsuko, this is basically her fault – imagine if Haruhi Suzumiya got a hold of Kyon at a very young age and began to train him to take on aliens, time travelers and espers with the power of MANLY STRENGTH and you’ve got the idea.

There’s nothing really subverted here – the serial killer with a lust for killing turns out to be easily distracted by Yuichi, who she can’t actually kill as he’s too good, and I suspect his harem will only grow. It’s also clearly written to be a longer series with the possibility of an anime – we don’t really find out anything about 3/4 of the class and their quirks, or Yuichi’s YOUNGER sister, who he shares a room with and doesn’t think that’s unusual at all. I’d only recommend this to light novels fans with an open mind. But if you are one, this is light, breezy, enjoyable fun, and I liked the characters. Surprisingly recommended.

By Kyo Shirodaira and Chashiba Katase. Released in Japan as “Kyokou Suiri” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Magazine R. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Alethea & Athena Nibley.

I admit somewhat shamefacedly that I haven’t really read any of this author’s prior works in North America, even though he’s put out quite a bit. Supernatural detectives seem to be a running theme, and both Spiral (out from Yen Press) and Record of a Fallen Vampire (Viz, though the digital reprint is from Yen) were fairly popular. Now we have his newest series, In/Spectre, based on a novel. If I was to describe its plot in a one or two sentence fashion, you likely would not be impressed. A young girl with a connection to the supernatural meets a young man with a tragic past who also has a connection with same. If they team up, they can fight against yokai who have gotten out of hand. We’ve seen this sort of thing before many times. Luckily, a manga is not just about its plot. It’s about characterization, dialogue, and art. And in those respects, In/Spectre hits it out of the park on the very first pitch.

Kotoko is our heroine, and the main reason I enjoyed this as much as I did. She’s a 17-year-old girl who, a few years back, made a deal with the yokai to be a sort of conduit for them in exchange for losing a leg and an eye. (Amazingly, the manga does not give her a fetishey eyepatch the way literally any other author would, but gives her a perfectly serviceable prosthetic – same with the leg, the cane is mostly to pacify her parents.) While at the hospital for her exams, she meets Kuro, a young man who’s there with his girlfriend Saki, and falls in love at first sight. Of course, he has a girlfriend. A couple of years later, she meets him again, only now he’s broken up, and she immediately takes the initiative. Kotoko’s brash, pushy charm is the main reason to read this – she’s a hoot, whether it’s proposing to Kuro within five seconds of meeting him, using him in order to pacify an out of control yokai (which doesn’t work), or cheerfully admitting that getting hit with a steel beam was nothing compared to the pain of losing her virginity, Kotoko is a brat in the best way.

I haven’t mentioned Kuro much, and to be honest he’s the weakest part of the book, being a stoic type who’s still brooding about his breakup at the start. The other reason I haven’t mentioned him is that halfway through the book takes an interesting right turn and time skips again a couple years, where we see Kuro’s ex-girlfriend Saki, now a police officer, dealing with the vengeful spirit of an ex-idol who was killed by a falling I-Beam, and now walks around the town with no face attacking people with the same beam. Saki too has not taken the breakup well, and curses her own human frailties – she’s still a bit terrified of what Kuro is, but realizes that she was in the wrong. She runs into Kotoko as well, and I suspect will end up being the “straight woman” in this series – certainly she does not react well when Kotoko admits she’s now dating Kuro.

This sort of series is hard to review, because so much of it depends on the words, and I don’t just want to quote dialogue at you. The art is good, too – I don’t think the artist has done any other series, but they can sell both comedic and eerie quite well. I really want to read more immediately, a nice change of pace from most Volume 1s, where you’re waiting for the series to find its feet. None of that here – Kotoko sacrificed a leg so the series could get on its feet right away. Highly recommended (unless you dislike brats, as Kotoko is absolutely a brat.)

By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan as two separate volumes by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

This was the first series to be released after the end of the amazingly popular Fruits Basket, and everyone was on tenterhooks to see what it was going to be like, both here and in Japan. Of course, for various reasons it wasn’t actually released here till 2016, a good five years after it ended in Japan, so a bit of the bloom is off the rose. Still, it’s hard not to feel a bit of affection and excitement for a new Takaya title. After reading this first volume, I get the sense that she had a better idea of where she was going with this – there’s a lot of backstory hints dropped here that the author is content to simply drop and then leave alone for a while. I suspect it will reward a reread. In the meantime, we have the adventures of a determined girl who always seems cheery but may be hiding a deep sadness, and the boy she runs into one day.

I admit I did find it hard not to fall into the trap of “this is character X and Y from Fruits Basket mixed together!” at times. Sakuya does have a Tohru-esque sheen to her, though a lot of that is simply a similar “I will be happy and determined” attitude. I’m also thinking of Hijiri, who I will warn in advance is my favorite character. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but let’s face it, she’s Hanajima and Shigure mixed together, and there’s no way I’m not going to love that. A mask of sweetness hiding a deeply manipulative side but still basically a good person. We also get the male best friend with a crush that is clearly doomed (blond, of course, as the clear winning guy has darker hair – you win again, shoujo cliches). And Kana, Sakuya’s guardian who seems to be a deliberate step away from a Shigure sort – from what the story tells us, he’s a struggling artist, and many question why he can even take care of Sakuya at all.

Then there’s the male lead Chihiro, who is easily the most fascinating character in this first volume. And I will admit, not always in a good way. We first met him after he invited himself into Sakuya’s house by pretending to be her boyfriend, something that seems completely out of the blue. Later, when she meets him again (she sees him on a train that she just misses, and proceeds to jump off the tracks and run after it till she hits the next stop, which may be the most Takaya thing ever), it feels a lot more unstable and dangerous, and frankly my first thought was to tell Sakuya to stay the hell away from him. Naturally, this is when she realizes she’s fallen in love. The second half of the book, where he (inevitably) shows up as a New Transfer Student, is thus filled with incredible awkwardness, fake smiles and Sakuya freaking out – but doing her best!

Basically, Twinkle Stars is exactly what you want in a new Takaya series. If you’ve read her other work, there’s a lot here that’s familiar – not just the characterizations, but the plot beats and emotional responses. But that’s actually great, as she’s so good at that. Twinkle Stars is like getting a brand new blanket that’s as warm and cozy as your last one. Settle down with it.