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Observation Records of My Wife: The Misadventures of a Self-Proclaimed Villainess, Vol. 4

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By Shiki and Wan Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Jishō Akuyaku Reijō na Tsuma no Kansatsu Kiroku” by Regina Books. Released in North America by Hanashi Media. Translated by Ethan Holms.

I will admit, this is the first volume in the series that I wasn’t that wild about. It’s still great whenever Cecil is being Cecil or Bertia is being Bertia, but I get the sense the author thought of this as a two-book arc, and was determined to keep it that way despite the fact that the second book doesn’t have nearly the interest that the first one does. The first book in the arc had a “you’ll never marry my daughter!” dad and a shut-in mom, a deadly and attractive combination. This second book has a family of mostly airheads, and also has a girl who irrationally hates Kuro. Yes, the irrational hatred is the actual plot, and it does turn out to have a reason, but it makes her annoying and easy to dislike. I admit that I was counting pages towards the end there. Fortunately, the book is still narrated by Cecil, which automatically raises it up.

Last time we met Kuro’s family, this time we meet Zeno’s. His mother is a ditz… as are his four sisters, who don’t believe he actually has a girl who likes him, so kidnap him immediately and try to get him to marry the girl they approve of – the niece of the King of Light, Light Sparrow. She’s been sickly, especially lately. She also seems to really like Zeno when she meets him… but she takes an immediate, visceral dislike of Kuro, saying that she can sense she’s evil. This goes badly. Bertia tries to handle this by showing off how cute Kuro really is, which does not work at all. Cecil tries to figure out what is making Light Sparrow sick and why she relapsed, and this goes better. Finally, they return home to a big surprise.

There were a few things I did really enjoy. The revelation of what’s wrong with Light Sparrow ties back into much earlier in the series, and while it’s a bit of a handwave solution, I appreciated how it was handled on the human end, with Cecil, despite wanting to simply ignore it, giving in to Bertia’s kindness. Speaking of things typing back to plotlines I had actually completely forgotten about, one of the minor issues in and earlier book (Bertia’s maid has a “weak presence”, which causes people to ignore her) is also given a solution stemming from the spirit world, and I did appreciate the maid’s resolute “nope” to the solution being offered. Good for her. And then there’s the ending, which is pretty telegraphed, and not entirely unexpected. I did appreciate Cecil, on hearing the news, realizing he now has TWO people to love unconditionally. Cecil is, at best, lacking empathy, so it’s nice to see he’s not going the route of, say, the lead couple in I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again!.

If you want to skip this book and start with the next one: Bertia wants to do Halloween, and Cecil will be making it more of a harvest festival with costumes. Also, she’s pregnant. This was OK.

Pick of the Week: You Know What It Is

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KATE: As a musicologist who happens to like manga, I whole-heartedly endorse Crescent Moon Marching and Girl Meets Rock—the former because I played tenor drum in my high school marching band, and the latter because I teach Rock History. As I’ve learned from both gigs, playing in a band of any kind means drama. I’m here for all of it: tears, rivalries, romances, and rehearsals.

MICHELLE: I am absolutely interested in Crescent Moon Marching, but for this one week of each year, it’s just gotta be Kaze Hikaru, for me.

ANNA: I will not pass up the chance to celebrate a new volume of Kaze Hikaru!

ASH: Marching band manga??? Marching band manga?!! As soon as I learned about it, I wanted to read Crescent Moon Marching; I’m very excited that its time has come. I loved being in marching band in high school and college (usually playing mellophone) and I still enjoy watching performances immensely, so I suspect I’ll appreciate this series, too.

SEAN: I mean, yes, it’s Kaze Hikaru, the Excel Saga of the 2020s, but if I make my pick what I’m most interested in, it’s definitely Girl Meets Rock!.

Taking My Reincarnation One Step at a Time: No One Told Me There Would Be Monsters!, Vol. 10

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By KAYA and Naru. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shōjo wa Mazu Ippo kara Hajimetai: Mamono ga Iru toka Kiitenai!” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amy Osteraas.

Each volume further a writer gets into a series, the more difficult it gets to write an ending that wraps everything up in a nice, neat bow and resolves all the hanging plot and character points. And since that’s the case, it’s always glorious to see a series that does it. This final volume of Good on Wolves (the series’ unofficial nickname among its fans here) is everything I wanted to see. The series returns to its roots, acknowledges how far it’s come, and settles back down after spending the previous volumes roaming all over the map. There’s also a proposal here, though this series is always going to be fairly mild about romance. The big emotional high for this story wasn’t Allen saying to Sara that they should get married and build a house, but rather the mountain wolves asking everyone to trust them and fighting together with the cast to fend off cockatrices. Good doggos to the end, even as scary wolves.

Sara and her friends are in the capital, living their best life. But they hear that things are a little rough in Rosa right now. They were building a paved road from the city to the Dark Mountain, but work stopped halfway. What’s more, the mayor apparently looks haggard. Who’s the mayor? Why Ted, of course! Despite this, Sara wants to go back to Rosa. She wants to visit the cabin where she started in this world, and she’s made her peace with Ted and his jerk antics. So the whole crew go up there, only to find… things are better than expected? Ted is exhausting himself, but that’s more his personality than anything else. He even has a fiancee! The road project is stalled mostly as they’re out of magic stones. Fortunately, when Sara’s around, monsters are sure to follow, and now there’s a huge number of Cockatrices making life difficult for everyone.

Much of this book, like the previous one, is showing off how Sara has matured and become an adult, much to the surprise of some (she’ll always be short and look pretty young). Her teaching is first rate, and she even helps Ted with his romantic relationship (which is also relatively free of drama). The only dramatic moment is when there’s a crisis with several hunters needing supreme potions, a “either you get all better or it kills you” sort of potion. Sara’s been lucky to this point, but one of the hunters doesn’t survive. That said, Sara briefly castigates herself but recovers quickly. She’s basically a doctor through most of this, when she’s not using her barriers to do virtually anything. If there’s one minor nit I have, it’s that Allen feels a bit left out until the end of the book – I’d like to have seen more with just the two of them.

This is another series that I’ve always loved, going from a small insular mountain (that we don’t even realize is a dangerous dungeon till much later in the series) then expanding outwards from a refugee camp to a city to a bigger city and finally to the capital… then back to the mountain in the end. Bye, Sara. Enjoy your career, your married life, and your many, many pet wolves.

Starting on Hard Mode: God Levels, Got Problems, Vol. 2

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By Hanmenkyoushi and ririnra. Released in Japan as “Level Count Stop kara Hajimaru, Kamisama-teki Isekai Life: Saikyou Status ni Tenseishita node Suki ni Ikimasu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jessica Speed.

I usually refer to this series, when I refer to it at all, by its main title before the colon, Starting on Hard Mode. That said, after reading this second volume, the subtitle is definitely standing up and making sure that it’s counted. Merlin really wants to be a standard OP isekai mooch, going out, killing monsters, then coming back and watching the trio of young women he’s picked up fight over him without actually realizing that’s what they’re doing. The thing is, though, that’s not why God really brought him here. He’s got ludicrous powers for a reason, and that reason also means that he can’t simply try to give everyone else the credit. For one thing, he’s still trying to deal with the prejudice in this world (though here we find that’s mostly an urban problem). More importantly, though, he’s simply not the sort of person who can stand back and let disaster strike just because he needs to hide who he is.

Merlin, Sophia, Sonia, and Noise have been going monster hunting around the city, but there really haven’t been very many monsters around lately. Elsewhere, we see various demons talking about an attempt to resurrect the Demon King, and what would be required in order to make it happen. At the same time, a new girl has shown up in the city, and she seems to know who Merlin is. She also has guards around her, and is very bad at hiding her identity. She’s Auriel, the fourth princess of this country, as well as the country’s Saint. She’s an outgoing, teasing young woman who starts in right away on trying to hit on Merlin – she doesn’t get anywhere, but he’s at least a bit quicker to notice it than with the others – and also makes it clear she’s happy to be a part of any harem they have going on. But is that really her true self? And when these plots all come together, will Merlin be able to stay just another adventurer?

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this is standard isekai stuff, and I rolled my eyes at the cheesecake color page of Aurelia designed to lure in the average LN reader who wants sex. (There is no sex.) But I think this is a step up from the first book. I particularly liked the relationship between Sonia and Aurelia. Sonia doesn’t dislike Aurelia, per se, but she knows that her entire persona is false, and so is wary of her. As for Aurelia, she’s a standard light novel type – no one ever saw me as anything but a tool, so I have turned into a doll rather than a human – but because Sonia sees a lot of Aurelia’s self-sacrificing nature in herself – let’s remember this is the girl who wanted to die so that her sister could move on with her life a book ago – Sonia is willing to help her as a friend, which includes taking the bullet. Something that horrifies Aurelia, but also forces her to get stronger and hopefully move on from her past (and her awful family, who we may meet in Book 3?).

So yeah, still not a must-read, but I found this pretty solid. And it’s Drecom, so you know it won’t be 17+ volumes.

The Bladesmith’s Enchanted Weapons, Vol. 5

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By Kazuma Ogiwara and CARIMARICA. Released in Japan as “Isekai Toushou no Maken Seisaku Gurashi” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ryan Burris.

While there are still bouts of humor in this series, it has not escaped my attention that each volume seems to be darker than the last, and this one was particularly dark. Dead adventurers, dead women and children, bandits everywhere, lots of justified hatred of nobles, and the realization that the city that our heroes live in really does have a lot of issues, and they’re desperately trying to force it to become a place that people might actually want to go. Which, frankly, it isn’t at the moment. The cast is also pretty static – we’ve met potential new characters, and one of them even returns in this book, but for the most part once we get to know them they leave the city. Hell, even Claudia threatens to take Lutz and go somewhere more welcoming. Though I suspect a lot of that is that she’s tired of Lutz throwing himself into deadly situations.

We open on a party of adventurers running from a zombie, and when one of them trips, the others… run away. She’s saved by Lutz, who happened to be in the dungeon and is also the main character, but she can’t rejoin that party. Fortunately, she finds another party… and then the exact same thing happens, only she is the one who runs while her new party are killed by a flame demon. She’s a mess. This flame demon has also massacred a village of carpenters Lutz worked with, and their village leader, Kevin, wants revenge. He’s a mess. And then there’s Djoser, head of the knights, such as they are, who is dealing with a bout of self-hatred, not at all helped by coming across bandits butchering everyone except an old merchant. He’s a mess. As for Lutz? He’s fine.

Well, OK, he’s not ALL fine. His beloved axe gets destroyed, but this allows him to make an even better katana with the remains. His main worry is that he keeps worrying Claudia, who loves Lutz a lot and very much does not want to keep being the good wifey who waits for her man to come home and worries he never will. She gets only one really good scene here, but it’s a pip, as she points out exactly how valuable she and Lutz are to the city and how much they’re starting to rely on him magically solving all their problems. We’re starting to see the Count trying to do something about it – creating a knight unit that not made of of noble rapists will help, though notably, even then they have to create a SECOND knight unit and leave the dissolute first one, as they all have connections. Better roads would help, but the bandit problem is not going away, and since the bandits just seems to be “those damn nobles”, it may take a more complicated fix than any of our leads can do. There’s good worldbuilding here, but the world is hard.

This remains one of my favorite new light novel titles, but it can be very grim. There are no easy solutions.

Manga the Week of 8/5/26

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SEAN: August comes, as it must to all men and manga.

ASH: Must it, really?

SEAN: Ablaze Manga has a 6th and final volume of Centaurs.

Airship has a print debut. Space Orc: Barbarian Raider of the Stars, Aiming for the Queen! (Space Orc: Banzoku no Senshi wa Yoake no Ten wo Kake Joou wo Nerau) is pretty much what it sounds like. Can a guy make a name for himself enough to marry the Queen, even though he’s an orc?

ASH: At the very least, he’s going to give it a go.

SEAN: Also in print: 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! Short Story Collection, Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling 14, and Reincarnated As a Sword 19.

ASH: So much reincarnation these days!

SEAN: And for early digital we see Classroom of the Elite: Year 3 2 and Modern Villainess: It’s Not Easy Building a Corporate Empire Before the Crash 7.

Drawn & Quarterly has the 4th The Legend of Kamui omnibus.

ASH: Absolutely here for this one! I’m loving the series.

SEAN: Ghost Ship gives us The Cuckolding Wizard’s Adventure 3 and Virgin Ventures: The Hilarious Hijinks of Erotic Amateurs 3.

Graphix debuts Crescent Moon Marching (Mikazuki March), a seinen manga from Manga Action. This is hardcover and in full color. Do you like band manga but wish they were more dramatic and serious? This is for you.

MICHELLE: It might be for me!

ASH: Same! I’ve been looking forward to this one.

ANNA: Sounds interesting!

SEAN: J-Novel Club’s new light novels include Ascendance of a Bookworm Fanbook 8, Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers 20, Hell Mode 12, The Isle of Paramounts: Reborn into a Slow Life Among the Strongest in the World 4, and Return of the Corpse King: Reining in My Cringe Secret Society 2.

For manga they give us All Eyes on Nekoyashiki-kun! Notice Me, Not My Characters 2 and Mercedes and the Waning Moon: The Dungeoneering Feats of a Discarded Vampire Aristocrat 5.

Kodansha Manga has, in print, Love Out on a Limb 3, MF Ghost 4, Marrying the Dark Knight (For Her Money) 2, My Noisy Roommate: The Roof Over My Head Comes with Monsters and a Hottie 5, Secondhand Sisters 2, Stella Must Die 2, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Trinity in Tempest 11, Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun 21, and Wind Breaker 22.

And digitally we get Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You 14 (the final volume), Otherworldly Munchkin: Let’s Speedrun the Dungeon with Only 1 HP! 14, and Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister 22 (the final volume).

Nakama Press gives us Infini-T Force 9.

One Peace Books has the 2nd volume of My New Devil Wife.

Seven Seas opens with some danmei. Little Mushroom is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi series about a mushroom posing as a man and his tortured relationship with an assassin. It says new translation and illustrations, so someone put this out before, but Seven Seas now has it.

MICHELLE: Oh, another Peach Flower House rescue. (They also had Golden Terrace, originally.) I’ve heard very good things about this.

ASH: Likewise! I’m intensely curious.

SEAN: There’s also the third and final volume of The Villain’s White Halo.

In “Chinese novel but not BL”, we get Hidden Love. A 13-year-old falls for her brother’s college roommate, but nothing happens, presumably as she’s 13. Years later, she’s in college and he’s a teacher. Can a different taboo romance work better?

ASH: Oh, my.

SEAN: The first manga debut is Girl Meets Rock! (Futsuu no Keion-bu). A Shonen Jump + series, this appears to be the K-On! of the 2020s.

ASH: I do enjoy a good music manga.

Magic Repo Man: Dumped by My Party, I’ll Cash In With a Cute Support Fairy to Become the Strongest! (Kashita Maryoku wa “Revolving Barai” de Kyousei Choushuu: Youzumi to Party Tsuihousareta Ore wa, Kawaii Support Yousei to Issho ni Toritateta Maryoku wo Unyoushite Saikyou wo Mezasu) is, well, look at the title. It runs in Comic Meteor. No, the LN isn’t licensed.

Also from Seven Seas: BOSS, BXTCH, BABY 3, Checkmate 4, Everything for Demon King Evelogia 2, Himegasaki Sakurako Is a Hot Mess 5, His Little Amber 2 (the final volume), I Won’t Let Mistress Suck My Blood 3, Idol x Idol Story 6, Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout 10, Only I Know the World Is Ending and Getting Killed by Rampaging Beasts Only Makes Me Stronger 6, Rozen Maiden Collector’s Edition 6, Sacrifice of My Manly Soul 4 (the final volume), and Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Body Swap in the Maiden Court 9.

Square Enix Books has a 10th print volume of The Apothecary Diaries light novel.

ASH: Excellent.

SEAN: Square Enix Manga debuts The Princess Groom (Belle Poupée no Super Darling Konyaku: “Konomi ja Nai” to Iwareta Ningyohime, Gaman wo Yametara Ouji ga Deredere ni Natta. Jitsu ni Ui!). As you can tell by the Japanese title, it’s based on an as-yet-unlicensed light novel. A meek, waifish young woman regularly uses a magic ring to transform into a hot, confident guy. Alas, her fiancé isn’t into her… till he finds out she does this. Then he is. (No, it’s not BL, he’s more into her domming him.) This runs in Manga Up!.

ASH: I’ll admit to being intrigued.

ANNA: I mean I guess it is a little different!

SEAN: Steamship has the 5th volume of The Trapped Former Villainess Wants to Escape from the Sadistic Prince.

Two Tokyopop debuts. Spicy Milk Candy is, try to contain your surprise, a BL one-shot that ran in from RED. Two guys in high school have a sweet, loving relationship… till it turns out they’re really into S&M.

Walking in Your Tracks (Boku ga Aruku Kimi no Kiseki) is a new BL series that runs in Freyja Comics. A wheelchair-using writer pushes everyone who tries to help him away, but his new caregiver knows just what to do.

MICHELLE: Hm.

SEAN: Also from Tokyopop: My New Wife’s Fake Smile 4 and On-the-Job Training 2.

Two Viz debuts. Daydream Darling (Yume ka Utsutsu ka) is the latest from Io Sakisaka, and it runs in Betsuma. A shy girl avoids her classmates and prefers to talk to the handsome upperclassman she knows from the library. Then her secret is revealed…

MICHELLE: Not that I’ve ever managed to finish an Io Sakisaka series, but this does sound appealing.

ANNA: I have finished an Io Sakisaka series! Curious about this!

SEAN: The Marshal King is the latest from Boichi, and it runs in Shonen Jump +. It’s a steampunk Western drawn by Boichi, that should tell you everything you need to know.

ASH: It does say a lot.

ANNA: Is steampunk back????

SEAN: Also from Viz: Black Clover 37, Blue Box 21, The Bugle Call: Song of War 8, Colette Decides to Die 8, D.Gray-man 29 (first volume since 2023), Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai 7, The Elusive Samurai 21, Ichi the Witch 4, Kagurabachi 8, Kaiju No. 8: Relax 3, Kaze Hikaru 34, and Shinobi Undercover 2.

MICHELLE: Annual Kaze Hikaru celebration!

ASH: Huzzah!

ANNA: Yay!!!

SEAN: Always nice to see the annual Kaze Hikaru, on schedule to end in North America in 2037. What else are you getting?

The Dorky NPC Mercenary Knows His Place, Vol. 5

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By Toryuu and hamm. Released in Japan as “Kimo Ota Mob Yōhei wa, Mi no Hodo o Wakimaeru” by Overlap Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Josh DM.

Last time I mentioned that even if we saw the occasional good noble, we always had tons of evil nobles to go around. That also applies to mercenaries and military. John does meet the occasional good person, and gets along with them. But his power of being the main character means that assholes tend to flock to him, because this series has an agenda and that agenda is “stop saying you’re going to tell your mom”. Every terrible noble in this book seems to have one go-to out, which is “I am the child of an important person and if you don’t do everything I say, I will tell on you and your life will be ruined”. The sad thing is this usually works, as it’s very easy to punch down in the world John lives in. Fortunately, in this volume we also see a few who see how well that works and try to do it WITHOUT the actual family connections. They just lie. It doesn’t go well.

Despite taking up so much of the cover that she starts to obscure the title, the Empress only gets a side story at the ed of the book, possibly to justify the art. For the most part, though, this book functions like the other one does. John takes a job, does the job, sometimes has to have a cool space battle, dumb arrogant assholes hate him, smart people who don’t judge by appearances are impressed with him, then he goes home and buys up otaku stuff. Two things stand out in this book: first, after a near miss where his dad almost ends up in debt again, John goes to visit his family, who are mostly what you’d expect. The other is that starting from the 6th book, things may take a different turn. The anti-imperialist pushback has been getting louder every book, it’s being helped along by enemy agents, and now we’re finally arriving at war.

There was an amusing yet also educational part of the book, reminding me a bit of the “People’s Front of Judea” part of Life of Brian, where John and Gonzales discuss the different anti-imperial factions and how they all have slightly different aims but also all have the same “the Empress must go” endgame. The book also does “having your cake and eating it too” better than most – as with other entries in the series, the art is very much showing you how many women orbit John’s life, how many of them have huge breasts, and how often they like to shower or bathe. The art is here to draw in readers. Then they get there, though, they find a world where any woman who tries to do her job ends up harassed by endless guys asking for sex wherever they go. Even teaming up with other women may not help, as this means having to deal with women who also fall under the ‘asshole’ umbrella. The Empire may be a poor way of running a world, but I have no confidence any of the other factions would run it any better, and they’d likely be worse. It’s tough to be a woman in this series.

All this plus a SURPRISE REVELATION, which I will leave unspoiled. Will John be drawn into war? Will he be forced to have an emotion? Will he realize how much Fialka wants to jump his bones? We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy your not-safe-for-public-transit volume.

Betrothed to My Sister’s Ex, Vol. 3

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By Tobirano and Mai Murasaki. Released in Japan as “Zutaboro Reijou wa Ane no Moto Konyakusha ni Dekiai Sareru” by M Novels f. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Rymane Tsouria. Adapted by Zubonjin.

Generally speaking, it can be hard to do a happily ever after for a series unless you end it. If the series is a success, you’ll need to continue it, and the best way to do this is conflict. For the first two volumes the conflict basically wrote itself. Marie hated herself so much that she had almost no will of her own, and Anastasia was faking her own death and wracked with guilt about it. There was a lot going on, but by the end of the second volume things seemed to be wrapping up… except there are, um, eight more volumes in Japan. As such, don’t be surprised when this volume does not in fact have a wedding, and that the man who we thought was a comedy royal turns out to be the one in the family with the least number of issues.

Things are going pretty well. Marie has come to accept her place enough that she starts imagining actually decorating her room… after literally being told to do so. Anastasia is still irritated every time the third prince shows up, but it’s far more of a tsundere romance anger than it was in the second book. And we also get Mio’s backstory, which is heartwarming (her relationship with Kyros’ mother), suspenseful (her battle with the queen), and hilarious (the identity of her real parents). Unfortunately, they are still only engaged, because for some reason their wedding has not been approved. While Mio investigates what’s going on here, Luifon is forced to attend a royal ball, and we discover the reason why the marriage isn’t approved yet – and it’s not a good one.

As it turns out, the drama and suspense I thought would be at the end of the book is completely steamrollered. This is because the princess, who’s introduced to us as not only casually racist but also willing to get rid of Marie by any means necessary, is instead an immature brat who folds like a card table when presented with the awesomeness that is Marie. It also shows that she’s not really a terrible person at heart, just sheltered and learning bad habits and ideas. It also means we get to see Marie dressed as a man, which justifies its color page completely. That said, my favorite scene was a rather serious one, where Marie is shown the marriage bed in their castle. Kyros has avoided showing it to her. It only has a lock on the outside, and is clearly designed more as a prison for the wife/mother to pop out babies than anything else. But the reason he avoided showing her (it can easily be altered) is that the Marie of Book 1 and 2 would have accepted that fate without arguing. This is a Marie who has learned she can be happy. Which is great.

That said… still no wedding, as we have more royal annoyances to deal with. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the third prince is in love with a former baron’s daughter, now a commoner, who is disguised as a man. So yeah, there’s room for at least a couple more volumes. Great stuff.

Too Many Losing Heroines!, Vol. 8

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By Takibi Amamori and Imigimuru. Released in Japan as “Make Heroine ga Ōsugiru!” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Matthew Jackson. Adapted by Hayame.

So yeah, Seven Seas has decided to put off the short story collection till the end of the year, so we are in fact getting the 8th book. Which feels like a pivotal one in many ways, ways which I should not talk about till after the picture to avoid too many spoilers. So what can I talk about? Well, Basori is on the cover, so as you may have guessed this is her focus book. She’s painfully earnest, somewhat painfully naive, and wears her heart on her sleeve so much it can be seen from space. This makes her a good match not only with Nukumizu, who despite his veneer of ‘loser guy’ will help any girl who reaches out to him, but also Shikiya, who wants to support Basori as much as she can but, well, also wants to tease and grope her, so it doesn’t go as well. Naturally, there’s one place that Basori seems almost destined to be, and she’s already there: student council.

It’s time to elect a new student council president, and Basori wants Nukumizu’s help. Nukumizu, who has read light novels and knows this will end with him being vice president, which he doesn’t want, tries to refuse at first, but Basori is a cute girl, and also has a bribe he can’t resist, so he’ll try to help as much as he can without committing to anything. Elsewhere, it’s sports festival time coming up. Lemon is running, of course, and we also get to see if she will quality for Nationals. (Since this isn’t a Lemon-focused book and therefore has no drama around her, you can guess the answer.) Chika shows off what a good sister she is while also getting really angry at Nukumizu’s continued obliviousness. Riko is still far too crafty. Kaju is still far too into her brother. And Anna’s eating. Situation normal.

This is a very good book. Basori is a likeable girl, so of course we have to dress her up in sexy cosplay for her big speech. The speeches themselves are well done in a romcom sort of way, though I was surprised at the result of the election. The title “Losing Heroines” refers only to their romantic life, for the most part, and doesn’t necessarily apply to everything in their life. (Likewise, winning heroines may not be all sunshine and roses – the more we see of Chihaya the more like a horror movie villain she becomes.) But the highlight is absolutely the end of the book, where Basori works up the courage to confess to Nukumizu in a way that he cannot misunderstand or brush off. And naturally he has a complete nervous breakdown, and has to resort to “give me time to think about it” and “can’t we just be friends for now?”. When you see him screaming at himself for not saying yes and getting a girlfriend, it’s like he’s starting to get why all the girls call him “enemy of women” and say “that right there, Nukumizu”, with the “is why you’ll never get a girlfriend” implied.

I will be very interested to see if this goes anywhere or if we just reset to default. Houkobaru is the cover girl for Book 9… but first, for real this time, short story volume. And a .5 volume. Which aren’t the same thing? Ah well, gonna be a while, then.

Pick of the Week: Maverick Picks

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SEAN: I mean, FISHGOD. Because my god, look at that summary.

MICHELLE: Hm. It really is hard to beat that summary. If I’m honest, I’m most excited by a new volume of The Ancient Magus’ Bride, though, as it presents a good opportunity to get caught up again.

ASH: Manga Mavericks has been licensing some really interesting things; I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve read so far. While FISHGOD definitely has me curious, it’s Horon of the Closed Country that I’ll be reading first.

ANNA: FISHGOD does sound amazing, but I’m going to select Liste Rouge because I’m always curious about shoujo fantasy.