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In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 8

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By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Sometimes I wonder if the author of this series is even aware of the disquieting implications of what he writes. At times it looks like he is. The start of this volume has Touya discovering, at last, the Library of Babylon, with its ridiculous number of ancient scripts. Leen, who is over the moon about this, proposes to Touya on the spot. Touya is rather nonplussed by this, as is the reader, because in the last seven volumes we’ve seen nothing that puts Leen on the same level as the other girls in love with Touya. Indeed, later on the rest of the fiancees confront her and express doubts as well. It’s nice to see the author realized he didn’t really do enough foreshadowing. Sadly, the entire situation is resolved in about three paragraphs, after which she’s given a pass. So maybe the author is not as aware as I’d like.

That said, Leen is now a fiancee, which means she gets the main bonus of Touya turning into a raging villain whenever anyone threatens to rape her, something which happens a lot more in this series than I’d like. Again, because Touya is so bland of a protagonist, the fact that he’s casually cursing evil mooks with curses that are brutally horrific gives the reader a giant sense of disconnect. We also get more examples of his ridiculous power here, though that’s downplayed by the occasional bout of stupidity he has, like “oh, right, I really should give my kingdom laws”, or “maybe I shouldn’t have gone off somewhere with my new fiancee and not told any of the others.” (This also allows Leen to be blushy and embarrassed, which honestly seems grotesquely out of character for her.)

The plot, as with most Smartphone books, is divided into three. First we get the discovery of the library and its bookaholic maintainer, as well as Leen’s proposal. Next, young dragons are attacking cities, and it’s up to Touya and company to teach them a lesson. Finally, there’s a new dungeon that’s been discovered, leading Touya to do some dungeon crawling, something he really hasn’t done in his series, as opposed to most isekai titles like this. This leads to the discovery of a slaver ring, which Touya needs to break up. Oh, and we also have the Storehouse and its dojikko maintainer. Side stories include Leen needing to get permission from the fairies to get married, which mostly involves her upset kohai, as well as Regina Babylon, who does a lot in this series despite being dead, tricking Touya and company into playing an embarrassing real-life board game, which is mostly an excuse for fanservice. It also allows Touya to briefly have a libido, something he only seems to gain in these side stories.

Again, Isekai Smartphone is one of those series you’ll enjoy if you’ve enjoyed previous volumes, and after briefly making me think it would turn it up a notch has settled back down into “not good but entertaining”. Which is fine, I like being entertained, but don’t think I don’t notice the major characterization issues on display here.

Manga the Week of 5/16/18

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SEAN: If all goes well, I will be posting this Manga the Week of from a hotel room in Toronto! The wonders of modern all-leather technology! But let’s see what’s out next week.

Dark Horse gives us a 6th omnibus of I Am A Hero.

ASH: I thought I was over zombies, but I Am A Hero continues to be a great read.

SEAN: Fantagraphics has Okinawa, a title that explores the history of the island and its military occupation. It’s likely to be fairly grim, but absolutely worth your time. It’s also about 550 pages, so good value for money.

ASH: I’m always ready for more manga from Fantagraphics! I also find the history of Okinawa to be particularly interesting.

ANNA: Interesting, I might look into this for my library.

SEAN: Ghost Ship has a 4th 2-in-1 omnibus of To-Love-Ru.

J-Novel Club has put The Magic in This Other World is Too Far Behind! on the same once a month schedule as Rokujouma, meaning we get the 2nd volume next week.

Kodansha, print-wise, has a 2nd volume of the Attack on Titan Choose Your Own Adventure book, a 5th Kiss Me at the Stroke of Midnight, and a 4th Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty. More superdeformed shoujo that I seem to like more than other folks!

MICHELLE: I’ve read a couple volumes of Kiss Me at the Stroke of Midnight so far and I get why someone might find the superdeformity amusing, but to me it’s just so uncute! I’ve never been a big SD fan, though. I vividly remember watching Fushigi Yuugi for the first time and being, like, “What is this crap?!” :)

SEAN: Kodansha digital debuts The Wizard and His Fairy, an Aria series whose plot is basically its title, and is also pretty short, this being the first of two volumes.

MICHELLE: It looks pretty!

ANNA: Sounds cute!

SEAN: Kodansha digital also has new Altair: A Record of Battles (8), Chihayafuru (11), Kasane (12), Love’s Reach (8), and Perfect World (2). I’m definitely looking forward to more Perfect World, the first volume was very good.

MICHELLE: I need to catch up on Perfect World. Also happy about more Chihayafuru, of course!

ANNA: I so need to catch up on Chihayafuru!

SEAN: One Peace has an 8th manga volume of The Rise of the Shield Hero.

Seven Seas has two debuts next week. The first is Crisis Girls, a shonen title from Kodansha’s Shonen Magazine Edge. Like The Wizard and the Fairy, this one’s just two volumes, and this is the first. It seems to involve monsters and girls, though apparently not monster girls.

ASH: Okay, I’ll admit, a necromancer dressing in bright pink is kind of delightful.

SEAN: Hungry for You: Endo Yasuko Stalks the Night is the other debut, and it’s about (as you may have gathered) a vampire attending high school and her glasses-wearing emergency food (who is sadly not named Menchi). It’s very silly for the most part, and runs in Shonen Gahosha’s Young Comic, where it may be the one title in the magazine that’s not porn. It does have fanservice, though.

MICHELLE: Now I’m going to have Menchi’s mournful song in my head.

SEAN: Other Seven Seas releases include a print version of the 2nd Arifureta novel, a print version of the 6th Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash novel (both digital J-Novel titles), a 2nd Juana and the Dragonewt’s Seven Kingdoms, and the 6th (shudders in loathing) Magical Girl Site.

Vertical has a 6th volume of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

And Viz rounds out our list. They debut the RWBY Manga Anthology, a collection of shorts by various artists about the “western anime” show.

We also have a 4th Children of the Whales, a 22nd Dorohedoro, a 7th Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt, and a 10th Ultraman. I am still so happy that Dorohedoro has run as long as it has.

ASH: Yes! Dorohedoro is the best!

Are you getting these in print? Digitally? Or via the new manga headjack, now on sale at all good stores?

The Asterisk War: The Triumphal Homecoming Battle

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By Yuu Miyazaki and okiura. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.

New semester, new characters, new translator, it’s all new on the Asterisk War front. That said, I would not call this the start of a new arc, really. This book seems to be entirely concerned with putting pieces in place to set up the next few books. Sometimes this works well – the villain of the book is suitably arrogant and snotty, and you will enjoy his defeat – and sometimes it feels like it’s been shoehorned in – Orphelia essentially drops in to reveal who she is and her connection to Julis before going away for the rest of the book. Everyone’s schemes seem to have one think in common, though, which is to stop Claudia winning the next section of the tournament. This is because of her wish, which we are told several times we’re going to hear but never do. And certainly our main five characters would make quite a team if they can all work together, so the bad guys have good reason to worry.

We’ve moved a few months along after the battle of the last three books, and I am very happy o see we won’t have to deal with wacky classroom comedy like a lot of other magical school series. Instead Julis invites everyone to her home country, which is the ever popular “tiny country somewhere in Central Europe” that fantasy authors seem to love, so that she can visit the orphanage she saved by winning the tournament and also catch up with her brother the King. Of course, Julis lacks self-awareness (something she shares with Ayato at times), so is not sure why there’s suddenly a giant parade in her honor, or a party set up to show her off. She’s insanely popular now. Also, the country and various organizations seem to be shipping her with Ayato, which should go well as the author is as well, despite all the fanservicey harem illustrations. Unfortunately, there’s also a group out to kill her, and they’ve sent an assassin who can create magical beasts. Oh yes, and Julis’ old childhood friend shows up. Sadly, she’s evil now.

As I’ve said before (possibly in every single review), no one reads Asterisk War for the plot twists. Everything develops the war you think it is going to develop. But the book also exhibits a basic level of competence that makes me quite happy to keep reading it, and the girls are all harem ‘types’ without quite being boring cliches. I am looking forward to the main cast teaming up with Claudia, if only as I find Claudia’s powers and backstory the most interesting of them. Everyone gets something cool to do in the final battle, and there’s some decent discussion of politics. And oh yes, after Ayato asid his wish was for his sister to be found last time… his sister is found. Sadly, that doesn’t really do him much good, abut at least he knows her circumstances now.

This takes us to the end of the Asterisk War anime adaptation, so new volumes should be new content. I am aware that the anime was unpopular, but I’ve never had an issue with the books. Perhaps it reads better in prose. (More likely it’s because I’ve never read Chivalry of a Failed Knight.) I’d still recommend Asterisk War to anyone who likes magical fighting school series, it is a nice light snack of a novel.

Hungry for You: Endo Yasuko Stalks the Night, Vol. 1

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By Flowerchild. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Comic. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Christine Dashiell. Adapted by Casey Lucas.

Mever let it be said that the author isn’t putting all her cards on the table here. The cover, which features our titular heroine carrying a blood bag stand, boxes of tomatoes, drinking tomato juice, with with garlic streaming behind her… yeah, this is a vampire manga. And a very silly vampire manga – indeed, the selling point is the humor, rather than the vampirism, though there is the occasional semi-serious element. Mostly what we see here is Endo Yasuko (the vampire) becoming friends with (somewhat by force) Mikaoka Shizue, her self-proclaimed emergency rations. (Given this is a Shonen Gahosha title, I have to wonder if the Excel Saga allusion is deliberate or not.) There has been a string of murders of young women at their school… but is Yasuko really responsible? And perhaps most importantly: is this series actually yuri, or just suggestive and fanservicey?

There’s actually more going on here than I expected with a premise like “comedic vampire girl’. It’s not as slice-of-life as you’d think. As the book goes on, Shizue tries to subtly figure out what really happened with the murders of the three girls, and also see how Yasuko actually deals with her victims. She herself is a victim (mostly willingly) a few times, but it’s clear Yasuko is holding herself back. There’s also a few new characters introduced to help expand things – the overly bitter student who has an ax to grind uses her daddy’s money to hire a vampire hunter from Texas of all places. Vampire hunter is also a teen girl, and in perhaps the most surprising move of the volume starts off as being completely unable to speak Japanese but by the end of the book is almost fluent in it – she is a funny foreigner, but it’s less because of her mangled Japanese and more because of her growing obsession with manzai humor.

This series runs in Young Comic, which is not QUITE as salacious and sex-filled as its sister magazine Young King but comes close. As such, I was rather surprised that there wasn’t more fanservice – this is definitely a Seven Seas title, rather than their Ghost Ship line. There’s the occasional emphasis on Yasuko’s large breasts, and Yasuko and Shizue share a bedroom but nothing really happens. Honestly, this is really somewhat pure. It becomes fairly clear by the end of the book that Yasuko likely ISN’T responsible for the murder of the three girls, though it’s not made clear who is, and Yasuko is going to have a lot of trouble proving her innocence, especially since the police are now sniffing around. There’s also Itami Mitsuri, who seems to be a typical Gal but one or two scenes suggest she may also have supernatural origins. That said, right now she seems to be harassing the heroine more through social media than anything else.

This is a cute, funny title, though I’m not sure where it’s going to be going. If you like vampires and are looking for a less serious take on the genre, you may want to give it a try.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 10

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By Satoshi Wagahara and 029. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

It’s never a good sign when you can start to see the author and editor’s plotting and scheming as you’re reading a book. I’m not sure which took priority here – if the author decided that he’d had enough of the Enta Isla plot and wanted to end it fast with this volume, or if an editor convinced him to do the same – but there’s no doubt about it, this volume is rushed as hell. That’s not to say there aren’t good scenes or ongoing deep characterization – Emi remains a highlight, and Maou’s use of pizza delivery scooters as a weapon may be one of the funniest bits in the series. But when you take what should have been one of the more dramatic scenes of the book and turn it into a one-page summary by the involved parties after the fact, it’s hard not to be disappointed. Someone at some point said “This isn’t working, let’s solve it quickly and get back to McRonald’s where this series belongs”.

We pick up right from where we left off last time. Emi and Ashiya are being forced to fight to the death thanks to Olba’s scheming, and Suzuno and Maou are trying to stop it. Unfortunately, Maou is still without his demonic powers, so he gets left behind to babysit Alciel. The keyword here is ‘breakneck’, as events happen very fast, allowing Maou to get to where he’s needed and solve what’s happened to him. We get a lot of discussion about what the Yesod fragments really are, and it turns out that they are not really a binary ‘good/evil’ at all – no surprise there, as part of the main plot of this series is that the humans, demons and angels are all basically very similar rather than higher or lower beings. The whole shebang is resolved by a) Maou beating everyone up once he’s back to full power, and b) a deus ex machina that’s a bit ridiculous, so I won’t spoil it here. And Crestia Bell’s righteous religious fury is always fun to see.

Again, the best part of this book was Emi, even though she ends the book at her lowest ebb. She’s reunited with her father, but after being away from work for over a month she’s pretty much fired, and thus unlikely to keep her swank apartment. Rika’s suggestion of working at McRonald’s and moving to Maou’s apartment complex may sound like the author talking instead of her, but it honestly comes as a relief. Now that Emi is no longer trying to kill Maou whenever she sees him, and in fact realizing (slowly) she has feelings for him, it makes far more sense for her to be involved in the action more. So as a setup for future books, I’m very pleased. Unfortunately, as a wrapup to this arc in particular, this book is really not that great a success. I still love the series, but I’m happy to see it moving back to Japan – as is everyone involved, I suspect.

Bookshelf Briefs 5/7/18

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As Miss Beelzebub Likes, Vol. 1 | By Matoba | Yen Press – Sometimes you just need to roll with the adorable. This slice-of-demonic-life manga stars Beelzebub, who is a short, busty girl who is excellent at her job but otherwise a complete airhead, and Mullin, her straight-arrow assistant who yearns for her to stop walking around naked or getting distracted. These two clearly like each other, and there are sweet and funny romantic moments mixed throughout. The rest of the cast is more variable (I could have done without Belphegor’s need to pee when she gets nervous, which is all the time), but this is relatively cute and harmless, though the nudity limits its audience to otaku. Also, how can you resist a title that has words like ‘flufficity’ in it? – Sean Gaffney

Erased, Vol. 4 | By Kei Sanbe | Yen Press – While there’s technically one more volume of Erased, the main series ends with the fourth omnibus. At this point, Satoru has lived through his fifth-grade year three times as he tries to stop a string of serial killings. Although he largely succeeds, the third time leaves him in a coma which he only recovers from fifteen years later. The murderer was never arrested and has taken a particular interest in Satoru. For his part, Satoru is still determined to bring the killer to justice. A showdown between them is inevitable. Occasionally I felt that Erased would have been even better as a novel–the visuals used to make dramatic plot reveals work sometimes seemed like cheating (or maybe Sanbe just didn’t have the artistic chops to pull them off in a completely convincing way yet)–but the manga’s story was still wonderfully engaging. As a whole, Erased is a very satisfying series. – Ash Brown

Juana and the Dragonewt’s Seven Kingdoms, Vol. 2 | By Kiyohisa Tanaka | Seven Seas – This is not a long-running series (it ends with its third volume), so it’s very content to simply barrel along with its adventure plot. The characters are very relateable, despite being dragonewts—indeed, that’s the point, as we see Nid’s resolve and also their ‘vamp’ friend Zoila’s efforts to rescue her own friend from the evil circus. These are understandable people. And the presence of Juana in their narrative, alternating as a ball of sunshine and a bolt of energy, is a great thing. We also get some hints of issues with Nid’s family, which I’m sure will be cleared up next time, as well as whether Juana is here to stay or not. For those who like fantasy adventures, this is a great buy. – Sean Gaffney

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 2 | By Aka Akasaka | Viz Media – Even as it moves into Weekly Young Jump proper with this volume, Kaguya-sama maintains its basic amusing premise with aplomb. Miyuki and Kaguya continue to attempt to mentally manipulate each other into doing anything that could be considered as a gesture of love, despite the fact that when it comes to matters of the heart (and indeed social interaction in general), they’re both such dorks. Chika, the seemingly bubbleheaded secretary of the Student Council remains my favorite character, providing excellent balance between the two leads’ overbearingness. And there are, as you might expect, one or two really sweet moments in this as well. I’m happy to see this drag out over several volumes. – Sean Gaffney

Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, Vol. 29 | By Karuho Shiina | Viz Media – OK, folks, we can breathe out, at least for now. Much as I felt Yano and Pin was a great romantic pairing in my heart, my head was going “No, no, don’t do that.” And so we get a confession here, and a rejection. That said, graduation is coming up, and I’m wondering if a flash-forward to the future may still run with it. Graduation and college plans are on most people’s minds here, especially Sawako and Kazehaya, who are also reflecting back on their relationship. As is the manga in general, reminding us of its origins with “Sadako” and having the girl who gave her the nickname apologize. And that valedictorian speech is just amazing. I am so going to miss this when it ends next volume. – Sean Gaffney

Mermaid Boys, Vol. 1 | By Yomi Sarachi | Yen Press – Very loosely based on The Little Mermaid, Sarachi’s manga Mermaid Boys features Prince Naru, a merman who falls in love at first sight with Nami, a human girl. He makes a bargain with a sorcerer allowing him to transform into a human for a chance to win her affections, but if he fails, he’ll turn into sea foam. Most of the similarities between the two stories end there. I like the premise of Mermaid Boys, and the end of the first volume introduces additional intrigue, but I would probably enjoy it more if I actually liked Naru better. The series’ humor can be pretty hit-or-miss, too. However, I did like just about every other character, especially Nami who doesn’t put up with Naru’s crap. I also appreciate that her personality is completely different from what Naru had assumed, putting him in a rather awkward situation in regards to his deal. – Ash Brown

One Piece, Vol. 86 | By Eiichiro Oda | VIZ Media – This is shaping up to be my favorite arc in a very long while! It’s a lot of fun seeing the Straw Hats (at least temporarily) team up with Bege in order to take down Big Mom. We know what the plan is supposed to be, and when things inevitably go awry, waiting on our heroes to ensure certain pivotal moments still transpire is very exciting. I continue to be happy that Brook is getting important things to do in this arc, and taking Big Mom out would feel like such a big achievement and turning point for the series, particularly as Brook was able to copy a vitally important ponegliff last volume. Of course, she’s gotta have a sad backstory—well, only kind of sad since she’s been unhinged since childhood—and we’ve gotta end on a cliffhanger. It’s a really cool one, though! – Michelle Smith

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 24 | By Izumi Tsubaki | Viz Media – First off, let’s face it, the true identity of ‘Inuzuka’ is so obvious that I think its obviousness is the joke. That said, there are certainly some surprises here, mostly in regards to Mafuyu’s new teacher. I thought he was just going to be a simple villain, and he’s certainly an antagonist, but he also gets caught up in what seems to be the running motif of this entire series—loss of memories. Mafuyu has memory issues (seemingly due to head trauma as a child), and so does Hayasaka. Momochi’s entire plotline involved memory erasure. The concept of memories are very important to Tsubaki. That said, rest assured, this series remains absolutely hilarious—I laughed out loud half a dozen times this volume. – Sean Gaffney

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 24 | By Izumi Tsubaki | VIZ Media – Last volume was the start of Mafuyu’s final year in high school, and by the end of this volume, we’re already at summer break. Miyabi’s troublesome little sister has forced Saeki to resign, and for some reason he’s guarding the bancho at a nearby school, where he runs into Mafuyu’s new homeroom teacher, Maki, putting up surveillance cameras. Why? Who knows. But to find out more about Maki, Mafuyu and friends travel to her hometown over the summer, where there are elaborate lies to hide her bancho past from Hayasaka as well as a thoroughly random watergun fight with some delinquents from West High. Honestly, I don’t even really attempt to follow the plot, and I don’t even laugh at the humor. There’s just something about this series that keeps me reading. – Michelle Smith

Kenka Bancho Otome, Vol 1

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Kenka Bancho Otome by Chie Shimada

Kenka Bancho Otome has many elements that I like present in a single manga. There is a reverse harem scenario in which a girl has to dress as a boy! It is an adaptation of an otome game, and I enjoy the occasional otome game (still playing Ninja Shadow). Also, there is punching and juvenile delinquency involved, and I do greatly appreciate shoujo manga heroines with the ability to perform acts of physical strength.

One thing I found absolutely hilarious was the way the set-up for the whole manga was taken care of in about 5 panels. Hinako, an orphan, is about to start her high school career at an all girls school, when she brushes against a boy who fakes a violent fall. The mysterious boy’s manservant tells her that he has broken his arm, and Hinako is forced to attend his school entrance ceremony in his place. Conveniently, the “injured” boy is Hinako’s doppleganger. She finds herself dressed as a boy, attending an all boys school for juvenile delinquents. Hinako is cosplaying as Hikaru Onigashima, the son of a yakuza boss, whose family obligations require him to become the boss of the school by beating up everyone around him. I sort of wish the rest of the manga took place at such a breakneck speed, but I’m sure that would not be practical to execute.

This being an adaptation of an otome game, handsome boys of different types are introduced in short succession. There’s the mysterious dark-haired uppperclassman with a secret shared past with Hinako, a sporty exuberant boy who blushes all the time, a silent boy with hidden depths, and a flamboyant rock star. I can’t remember their names because the characters are not really all that memorable, but that’s not really the point! Kenka Bancho Otome steps through many standard shoujo plot points with a breezy charm and attractive character designs. It did make me wish that the game was available on android, because I totally would have played it after reading the manga. On that level, I think the manga is a success. It was fun to read, mainly because I’m always up for punching and reverse harem manga. On the other hand, any otome game adaptation isn’t going to have the emotional depth of a manga like Hana Kimi or the hilarity of a series like Oresama Teacher. So Kenka Bancho Otome is nice and diverting, when someone might be in the need of a pleasant distraction, which is a mood I find myself in most of the time.

Pick of the Week: Brides, Kings and Tigers

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SEAN: While I’d argue that The Bride Was a Boy is the most important title this week, and Requiem of the Rose King probably the continuing series of the week, I have been waiting for the Toradora! novels for so long that there’s no question that it is my pick of the week. Put a Taiga in your tank!

KATE: I agree with Sean: The Bride Was a Boy should be on everyone’s reading list, and it’s my top pick for the week. For continuing series, though, I gotta rep for Shuzo Oshimi’s Happiness, one of the most compelling horror series I’ve read in ages. The sixth volume was a masterclass in when to tell the story just through pictures, and when a few words really add value. The sixth ended on a hell of a cliffhanger, so I’m glad volume seven arrives this week.

MICHELLE: Definitely put me down for The Bride Was a Boy, as well. However, what my heart most wants just now is another serving of Sweetness & Lightning .

ASH: As previously mentioned, The Bride Was a Boy is one of my most anticipated releases of the year, so it’s the obvious pick of the week for me! But as everyone else has pointed out, there are some really great ongoing series being released this week, too.

ANNA: The Bride Was a Boy sounds like the standout release this week, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to mention Requiem of the Rose King which can always be relied upon for plenty of surreal kingmaking drama.

MJ: I gotta join in with Anna here. I love Requiem of the Rose King too much to pass up the chance to speak its name loudly to the universe. It’s my pick by default.

One Piece, Vol. 86

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By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Food has always played an important role in One Piece, from Luffy’s voracious appetite to Sanji’s chef skills. And in this arc we’ve seen the dangers of food as well in a kingdom where everything is edible. But I don’t think we’ve ever quite gotten as terrifying as Big Mom and her backstory, one of the most truly unnerving and creepy moments in the entire series, especially because it’s implied – we don’t quite see it, as we’re seeing things from Charlotte Linlin’s point of view. Big Mom is certainly the villain of this arc, but I’m not sure we’ve seen a villain quite as psychologically damaged from a very young age as she’s been, and it makes her ravenous appetite far less of a joke than it had previously seemed (and it was always meant to be disturbing). Kudos to Oda for getting really, really dark here.

Elsewhere in the volume, it’s becoming more apparently that Jimbei actually IS going to be a new crewmember, provided he manages to survive the upcoming battle without a tragic sacrifice. This is actually rather interesting, as he’s the first semi-serious crewmember to be added since Nico Robin. Jimbei’s really cool here, standing up to Big Mom and refusing to cower, and I’m actually looking forward to seeing what he brings to the crew. Admittedly, the gender imbalance of the crew is starting to show itself a bit as well. Maybe we can get Vivi back? It’s certainly not going to be Charlotte Pudding, who despite her best efforts to be super evil, and her genuine irritation at Sanji’s goofy pervert persona, is backsliding into being a good person. I’m not sure how happy I’ll be with this, we’ll have to see.

As for Luffy, I have to hand it to him, that was a very clever (and funny) way to crash the wedding, and shows that he’s starting to strategize rather than just burst in fists akimbo – or rather, he still bursts in but works strategy into it. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite as planned (big surprise there), and it looks as if we’re settling in for the long haul, introducing several of the Charlotte family to no doubt battle our heroes one by one and show off their quirks… sorry, Devil Fruit Powers. I have to say I won’t cry if Capone ends up dying (though it’s always hard to have actual named characters die in One Piece), given that his plan to take out Big Mom relied on basic mental cruelty. I was also amused at the Straw Hat Crew (even Nami!) all sleeping like the dead before the big event, because, as Jimbei points out, they’ve been running flat out for days before this.

I suspect the next couple of volumes are going to be pure chaotic fighting, though hopefully it won’t go quite as long as Dressrosa. Still, this was a stronger volume of Once Piece than we’ve seen lately, and I look forward to seeing how that chaos plays out. Definitely recommended for fans.

Also, the Grand Line has a Pleasure District? How adult!

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 2

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By Fuse and Mitz Vah. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken” by Micromagazine Publishing. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

Here I am, back with a book that I found deeply frustrating with occasional bursts of promise in its first volume. I have now read the second volume, and the promise is starting to bear fruit – I was more interested in the worldbuilding this time around when it wasn’t trapped in statland, and the occasional moments in the book that are dramatic action scenes or dialogue are decently well told. The problem is that the deeply frustrating parts of the book are still there and still deeply frustrating – in fact I found them even more frustrating because the rest of the book had improved around them. Our slime hero is still a very boring, matter of fact hero whose chief interesting bit is that he really seems to underestimate how amazingly overpowered he is. And he still goes on about stats. On and on and on. I am not a gamer, and I honestly don’t care if your Flame Throw stat has evolved into Flame Hurl when you level up. Spider So What did this too, but that heroine has personality to carry me through it.

We begin with our slime helping his goblin followers build their village, which has now become about the size of a town. They run into some ogres, who are attacking the goblins on the basis of mistaken identity, something that Rimuru tries to correct but to no avail. Fortunately he’s able to defeat them all fairly handily, to the point where they too want to follow him. After naming them (which knocks him out – you’d think he’d learn) they become Ogre Mages, and are various degrees of fantasy types – the noble leader, the smooth ninja spy guy, the cute princess, and (oddly enough) the sexy secretary, who even gets a business suit but unfortunately may not have the temperament for it. And it’s probably a good thing he gained new allies, as he discovers than an army of 200,000 orcs is coming down and destroying everything in its path. Can Rimuru and his allies, along with some lizardmen and a dryad or two, stop the creation of a new demon lord?

Again, the bits of the book that are not discussing RPG stats are better this time around. Even Rimuru is more interesting, though I wish he had a personality that would evolve beyond “well, huh. That’s a thing.” The ogres are a more interesting secondary cast than the goblins from the first book, particularly Shion (who is a bomb waiting to go off, I suspect) and Soei, the cool ninja. The lizardmen also are complex, and two of the major villains of this arc get to have nuance and be more than just the typical Japanese “Mwah ha ha!” isekai villain. But… I’m sorry, there are large chunks of this book that are boring as hell. It’s a very lengthy book, probably close to 300 pages in print, and if you cut out Rimuru wanking on about his powers and levelups it would be 1/3 of that size and a much, much better book.

Still, it’s improved enough that I will be giving it a third volume, though I will likely skim the stats as I did here. If you like isekais and don’t mind RPG nerdery, Reincarnated as a Slime should appeal to you.