By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.
It occurred to me as I was reading this volume, this lacks one of the main parts of “summoned to another world” books, which is the summoning. I was thrown off by the god at the start of the series, who actually does summon the class to a different world, presumably to save it, but the world itself is not involved with the summoning, and (while we see some small evidence that past heroes may have also been summoned), there’s no sense that anyone is used to new people suddenly showing up all at once. As a result, try to imagine what the people in the capital city must be thinking when they see Haruka and twenty gorgeous young women, all with black hair and black eyes, show up and save the day almost instantaneously. Seriously, this 413-page book only takes up one week of real time in the book. They’re all absolute monsters. It is, frankly, amazing that more people just give in and go along with it… though given their situation, maybe it’s not so surprising.
Despite various attempts to try to negotiate, war is becoming inevitable. The king’s brother is there to try to work out a compromise: the first prince has said he will spare the frontier if they give up Haruka. Literally everyone except the king’s brother knows this is a trap, but Haruka goes along with it anyway, because it’s just easier to trigger the trap and then massacre everyone. Yeah, there’s a lot of death in this book, this isn’t the manga. Having fixed that problem (and killed one prince), everyone then arrives at the capital, where the king is dying, the second prince is allied with evil merchants, and there’s an orphanage filled with kids who would make Oliver Twist look like a plump spoiled brat. This lights a righteous fire under all the main cast, who proceed to turn into villains in order to save the civilians who are being ground down by the real enemy… capitalism.
These books are starting to struggle a bit with the “wacky” side of things. Don’t get me wrong, Haruka is still damn near incomprehensible and incredibly annoying. And there are still an incredibly large number of pages devoted to Haruka making underwear for all his female classmates, which involves using his “magic hands” to grope them into unconsciousness (with their consent – the underwear is JUST THAT GOOD). But there’s no sugarcoating how awful everything is this arc. The majority of the nobility are cartoon villains, the merchants are greedy scum, and while we haven’t met the church yet (next book), they’re implied to be worse than all of the others. The orphanage is played for maximum mawkishness, except when you see things like the girls all finding the nobles most responsible for it and using status effects like “Pure Pain” on them. And even saving the capital doesn’t fix things, as in the meantime the church’s forces have gone to destroy Omui.
The series, for once, ends with a genuine cliffhanger, as we wonder if Haruka vs. 30,000 troops will finally be what gets him killed. The girls all worry this as well, which is why they’re racing there as well. As always, once you dig past the nonsense, Maria-sama Ga Miteru and Mary Poppins references, and endless descriptions of tits, there’s a whole lot to sink your teeth into. And not in the mean girls way.
