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Lovesick Ellie, Vols. 1-3

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By Fujimomo | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics

I admit that I was initially attracted to Lovesick Ellie because of the covers, which are adorable. My favorite is the third, because it perfectly captures Ohmi-kun’s personality.

So, imagine you’re an awkward boy who doesn’t express himself well, only you’ve been born exceedingly handsome. You’re placed on a pedestal, and instead of getting to play a tree in the school play, the role of the prince is thrust upon you. At kindergarten graduation you’re completely confused when the girls ambush you for souvenirs and end up in tears. In middle school, you end up alienating your best friend who grows envious of your good fortune and disappointing people when you let your true personality show. That’s the plight facing Akira Ohmi, and when he gets to high school he decides to adopt a princely facade to go along with his looks so that he can keep his distance and avoid hurting anyone else.

Eriko Ichimura is a plain girl whom nobody notices. (Yes, this is one of those Dessert manga where the friendless girl attracts the notice of the most popular boy in school.) In lieu of real relationships, Eriko entertains herself by writing fantasies about Ohmi-kun on an anonymous Twitter account under the name Lovesick Ellie. One day, she accidentally catches a glimpse of the real Ohmi-kun. Shocked, she leaves her cellphone behind, enabling Ohmi to read her tweets about him. Rather than be mad, he thinks they’re hilarious. In exchange for her keeping his secret, he offers to fulfill her fantasies, then laughs when she’s, like, “Okay!” In the end, he decides to trust her.

After this encounter, they gradually come to know each other. Ohmi is derisive toward the other girls who’ve fallen for the false persona he’s created, but Eriko is different. Not only is she not disappointed by his true personality, she continues to lust after him openly. Ultimately, this is a story about really being seen and loved for your true self. Nobody noticed Eriko until Ohmi did, and while everyone noticed him, they never saw the real him.

As they navigate their new relationship, there are various firsts, and a lot of blushing, and some misunderstandings, and some mean girls who disapprove of Ohmi dating someone (though they mistakenly think he’s dating Sara, the friend Eriko eventually acquires). None of this is new shoujo manga territory, but the characters are refreshing. Ohmi is seriously endearing, especially once his bratty attitude subsides and he allows himself to be sweet and vulnerable. He’s apologetic for the things he gets wrong, and encourages Eriko not to give up on him. For her part, Eriko is kind of a spaz, but shoujo heroines are not typically this horny, so that’s a unique aspect, for sure. It certainly makes for some snerkworthy declarations, like when she proclaims, “I like you sexually!”

So far, I really like this series a lot, and I look forward to continuing it.

Lovesick Ellie is ongoing in Japan. Its sixth volume comes out there on March 13th, which is the same day the fourth will be available in English.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 7

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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.

This s another volume of Isekai Smartphone, with all that that entails; the work is almost review-proof, as no one would be reading Vol. 7 of this series without knowing exactly what it’s like. The main cast continues to have the depth of tissue, but I think depth might actually hurt the series more than it helps. No one wants to see Touya angst and brood about what he is becoming. Is he god? Is he man? Who cares? He can build the Great Wall of China, or its fantasy equivalent, in six days. (One presumes that on the seventh day, he rested.) He can also tell us about his little known piano lesson backstory, which allows him to build a piano (grand, of course) so that he can bring out Sakura’s hidden singing talent. No one reads Smartphone to see Touya be dull. Well, I mean, he is fundamentally dull, but you know what I mean. He doesn’t do dull things. Smartphone is rarely boring in that respect.

There’s one new character, but for the most part what we get in this book are characters we briefly saw previously returning for a more expanded role, starting with Hilde, the knight that Touya saved in the previous book. She’s since fallen head over heels for him, and upon hearing of his more recent exploits (more on that later) goes to see if she can be his knight… and his bride. Of course, then she meets Yae, who is also a fantastic swordswoman and already married to Touya, and realizes that there’s no way she can be anything but a carbon copy. (She gets her “shy tomboy” personality more from Elze.) Fortunately, who Touya loves is not really his own decision, mostly as he’s so kind and easygoing to everyone. And so his “Bride Council” decide that she’s acceptable. And so she’s bride #7. Two more slots! That said, Pam, the Amazon woman also from a previous book, will not be getting into the harem. She doesn’t love Touya, the one big requirement. She just wants his babies.

We also get the Goddess of Love, who has come down from heaven supposedly to look for an errant God, but mostly to mess with Touya’s love life. She declares that she’s his older sister Karen, and the rest of the cast, who Touya still hasn’t told anything about his past, accept it relatively easily. She’s the classic “slightly immature big sister” type, happily dishing out advice (some of which is actually good!) and also dishing dirt, as she’s fully aware of Touya’s life on Earth before he was killed. We also get his *other* older sister, the Goddess of Swords, who we hadn’t met before but who seems to fit in quite well. She’s great at tactics and combat analysis, but less so at other socialization. As for Touya himself, it’s brought up that he’s becoming a God himself, something he tries not to think about too much. Given the occasional flashes of rage he gets whenever someone hurts one of his fiancees, I’d be worried if I weren’t sure the author was absolutely not going to go there.

As for the plot, the book is essentially divided into three. The first part deals with a massive invasion by the Phrase, far bigger than anything we’d seen before. Fortunately, Touya now has a bunch of Gundams that he can use in the battles, and a large quantity of people trained to use them. He also has Ende, who leaps into his own Gundam clone faster than you can say Kaworu Nagisa. Ende may not do much other than exposit and run, but I’m still amused by him. That said, the Phrase are essentially just bugs, as Touya himself says. We need a more obvious villain, because what’s Smartphone without the bad guys being OVER THE TOP EEEEEEEVIL! And so we get the Nation of Yulong, which is a stand-in for a Nation here on Earth that should be obvious. The word “bashing” applies liberally here, as the Yulong Nation prove to be scummy in every possible way. The rest of the book is more sedate, as the second part is Hilde’s Bride Introduction, and the third has a tournament arc, as Touya won’t sire Pam’s children but will help her tribe win a competition.

The plot may be getting away from the author a bit – we met no new Gynoids and got no new parts of Babylon in this book, and Leen was totally absent as well. Still, it’s enough Smartphone to tide us over for now. The series is ridiculously plastic and shallow, but I honestly love it just for those very qualities. It’s the light novel equivalent of eating a bag of Skittles.

Again!!, Vol. 1

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There are no second chances in life, but there are in manga — think A Distant Neighborhood, Erased, and orange. The latest entry in the second-chance sweepstakes is Again!!, a dramedy about Imamura Kinichirou, a loner who tumbles down a flight on stairs at his high school graduation and wakes up on the first day of freshman year. Doomed to repeat the worst three years of his life, Imamura impulsively signs up for the school’s ouendan, but quickly runs afoul of prickly captain Yoshiko Usami, whose dedication to the struggling club proves more deterrent than draw for would-be members.

Imamura isn’t the only time-traveler; joining him on his temporal odyssey is Akira Fujieda, a perky classmate who also tumbles down a flight of stairs at graduation. Unlike Imamura, Akira greets this development with enthusiasm, but her fond memories of high school make her too quick to assume that everything will unfold the same way twice: she propositions her not-yet-boyfriend too boldly (he turns her down) and dismisses a would-be friend’s taste in music. (“It’s too bad Cara Mana broke up so soon,” Akira declares. “It didn’t take me long to get sick of them, though, since all their songs sort of sound the same.”) Crushed by the double rejection, Akira becomes Imamura’s reluctant ally in the quest to restore the ouendan to its former glory.

Whether you cotton to Again!! depends on how you react to the principal characters. I found Usami’s fierce commitment to tradition exhausting; she bellows, belittles, complains, accuses, and sobs, but seems fundamentally unable to have a normal conversation. Her bluster is meant to suggest her sincerity and vulnerability, I think, but has the opposite effect, reducing her to a one-note character. More convincing is Imamura, who decides that a do-over isn’t as terrible as he’d imagined. (I particularly enjoyed his nonchalant turn at the board in his math class; his classmates’ reaction to his display of mathematical acumen is priceless.) Imamura even flirts with the possibility of a social life: when the girls’ cheer squad mobilizes against Usami, for example, Imamura conspires with Akira and Reo, a pretty classmate, to undermine the cheerleaders’ plan.

Akira, too, is a pleasant surprise, a busybody who’s suddenly relegated to the margins of freshman life. Though her sense of the school’s pecking order remains unchanged, she can’t resist the opportunity to advise the once-lowly Imamura on how best to manipulate the cheerleading squad — it’s her chance to demonstrate her expertise, and perhaps to reclaim her former Queen Bee status by engineering a major social coup. As one might expect, Akira gets the sauciest lines, but she also learns the hardest lesson of the three principal characters: serendipity plays as big a role in popularity as personality and looks.

Mitsurou Kubo’s art plays a vital role in helping us understand Imamura and Akira’s predicament. In the first two chapters, Kubo does an excellent job of distinguishing past from present with subtle details: Imamura’s mom, for example, is a little plumper, while Akira is shorter and less physically developed. (Akira realizes something is amiss when she realizes that her breasts are smaller.) Equally impressive is the care with which Kubo reconstructs the same sequence of events that precede the time jump, showing us Imamura’s memories of the day and then Akira’s. Here again, it’s the little details — a snippet of conversation, a minor change in hairstyle — that convey whose perspective is represented, and how that character’s personality influences what we’re seeing and hearing.

Kubo’s facial drawings show the same degree of meticulousness as her handling of the time travel sequences. Her reaction shots do more than just capture a character’s immediate response to a new development; they convey the emotions and experiences that underlie that reaction. Consider this split-screen image of Imamura:

This panel appears at the end of chapter one, as Imamura stands at a temporal and figurative crossroads: he can change his future by joining the ouendan, or recede into the background and be a loner once again. Imamura’s furrowed, sweaty brow and crestfallen expression capture his sense of helplessness; he has the look of someone who’s actively reliving a terrible experience moment by moment, contemplating the real possibility that nothing will change the second time around.

It’s this level of nuance that makes Again!! worth reading, even when the plot mechanics are creaky and the characters too strident. Watching Imamura forge new connections on his own terms is both funny and poignant, a reminder that we always have the potential to change our destiny, even when it seems preordained. I’m curious to see how Imamura and Akira grow and change, and how their behavior influences the future. Count me in for volume two.

AGAIN!!, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY MITSUROU KUBO • TRANSLATED BY ROSE PADGETT • KODANSHA COMICS • 208 pp. • RATED TEEN (13+)

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 1

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By Aka Akasaka. Released in Japan as “Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai〜Tensei-tachi no Renai Zunō-sen〜” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Young Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Emi Louie-Nishikawa. Adapted by Annette Roman.

If you have ever stared at a couple on stage, screen, or the page and screamed “Oh my God, just kiss already!”, then this is the manga for you. In fact, one could argue that’s the entire premise. The literal title of the series is “Kaguya-sama Wants to Be Confessed To: The Geniuses’ War between Love and Brains”. That’s quite a mouthful, you can see why it got condensed. It runs in Weekly Young Jump, a magazine usually known (at least over here) for more “upscale” series such as Real, Golden Kamuy, and Tokyo Ghoul. This got branded with the Shonen Jump titles, though, and it’s a good decision, as at heart this is a high school comedy, and would not be out of place among the Nisekois and Sket Dances of the world. As for why you should read it? Well, it’s really entertaining and funny. Reason enough for anyone.

Our heroine is Kaguya Shinomiya, a rich heiress who is also vice president of the student council at Shuchiin Academy. Our hero is Miyuki Shirogane, who’s not rich but who’s at the academy due to his intelligence. He’s the President. Together, they are both seemingly perfect… and you know what that means in a comedy manga. Yup, they’re both perfect messes. The entire school already thinks they’re a couple. They aren’t, but that’s entirely due to pride – we find in the first chapter that both consider “whoever confesses first is the loser” to be the order of the day. As a result, the manga, at least in this early volume, amounts to a series of pranks, as both Kaguya and Miyuki attempt to be the one to force the other to confess their love… at which point, of course, they will accept with a smirk on their face. (Indeed, Miyuki imagining Kaguya’s sneering victory smirk as she towers over him gives us some of the funniest images of the book.)

It helps that, even though they’re both prideful as hell, these are both nice kids at heart. Kaguya is the very definition of a sheltered princess, and even things like going to the movies baffle her. Miyuki is seemingly a bit more together, but his paranoid imaginings about what Kaguya’s real plan is trip him up constantly (it doesn’t help that half the time his paranoia is justified.) The only other regular in this first book is Chika, who is nice and seemingly completely oblivious to the affection war between Kaguya and Miyuki. I like her, particularly as I suspect even if she knew about it she’d act exactly the same. She’s Kaguya’s childhood friend, though Kaguya is so poker-faced and bad at socialization that you’d never know it, as the author admits.

The author states that it’s not guaranteed that the two of them will get together in the end, which I think is ridiculous, but it’s certainly guaranteed they won’t be getting together anytime soon, as this series is eight volumes and counting in Japan. Still, I’m certainly happy to keep reading about these two perfect dorks and their battle to one-up each other, and I’m hoping that we get a few heartwarming moments along the way. For now, though, the comedy is the reason to get this.

Nekomonogatari: Cat Tale (White)

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By NISIOISIN. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc. Translated by Ko Ransom.

This is the first volume of the Monogatari Series not to be narrated from the POV of Koyomi Araragi, and it makes a difference, although not as much as you might expect. Tsubasa Hanekawa is our narrator, and therefore the narrative is every bit as analytical and over-verbose as ever (given the actual author of the works, this is likely unavoidable). But there’s a certain sleaziness we’ve gotten used to with Araragi that is mostly absent here, despite Senjogahara’s best efforts to keep it around. We also get to see Hanekawa come to some critical realizations about herself. If Tsubasa Cat was about the reader seeing how messed up Hanekawa is, and Nekomonogatari Black was about Araragi seeing it, then this book is the finale, as Hanekawa has to finally realize what she’s really like and take steps to change it. And given that there’s a part of Hanekawa that wants to just sit back and let the world burn – quite literally – this is a tall order.

Despite the absence of Araragi’s narrative from the volume (indeed, Araragi himself doesn’t even show up until the climax), there are many familiar things going on here. There is a certain metatextual fourth wall breaking throughout, from Hachikuji cheerfully telling the reader that the next book will be about her (true, though also false – see the Kabukimonogatari review in 2 months) to Hanekawa noticing that there are missing chapters as the book goes on. There’s also a large amount of funny banter, mainly due to the burgeoning friendship of Hanekawa and Senjogahara. Senjogahara has become far more open since the series began, something Hanekawa herself observes, and almost takes on Araragi’s role here, flirting with Hanekawa constantly and at one point showering together with her. (One senses Nisioisin is now writing this knowing there will be an anime.) There’s also some unintentionally dark humor, such as Hanekawa blithely deciding to sleep in the abandoned cram school with cardboard boxes for bedding – her matter-of-fact narration of this is painful and hysterical.

The main thrust of the book is a new aberration, a large Tiger that is seemingly burning to the ground places Hanekawa has just slept – first the house she lives in with her “parents”, then the cram school itself. In reality, things are a bit more complicated, and it should not surprise any regular readers of the series to know that this aberration is more about Hanekawa’s repressed emotions – in this case, her envy of what it means to have a happy family. Deciding to stop pushing all of her negative emotions onto aberrations and simply deal with them instead is admirable, but it has to come at a cost, and in this case it’s finally confessing to, and getting rejected by, Araragi, which allows her to cry for possibly the first time in her entire life. This is the final volume of Hanekawa’s main story arc, and it’s a very good ending, even if she’s not leaving the main story just yet.

For anime fans, there are a lot of reasons to get this book. The uncut version of longer monologues provides greater depth of feeling – Hanekawa is allowed to outright state that her parents are abusive, and she also admits to herself that she’s fallen for Senjogahara too, but of course simply cannot get in the way of her relationship with Araragi. (OT3 fans will be both happy and sad, I expect.) And of course there is the usual good reason to get the books, which is to wallow in Nisioisin’s idiosyncratic prose, which may come from Hanekawa’s POV but is still present and correct. If you like Monogatari in general and Tsubasa Hanekawa in particular, this volume is essential.

Manga the Week of 3/14/18

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SEAN: Remember when the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the month were smaller? (lol)

ASH: Ha!

SEAN: Bookwalker has a 3rd volume of post-war baking adventures with The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress.

Cross Infinite World’s webnovel licenses are not normally on my radar, but I will admit to curiosity about their latest shoujo novel, Obsessions of an Otome Gamer.

Dark Horse gives us a 5th omnibus of Blade of the Immortal.

ASH: Some of the individual volumes have gone out of print and can be difficult to find, so the omnibus edition is a great way to collect the series now.

SEAN: J-Novel Club has a debut next week. The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar. When the cover shows a smug Japanese teen sitting on a throne surrounded by women at his feet, you know what you’re in for.

MICHELLE: Pass.

SEAN: Kodansha Digital also has a debut next week. Starving Anonymous (Shokuryou Jinrui) is a post-apocalypse survival sort of series that runs in various Young Magazine spinoffs. It’s by the author of My Wife is Wakamatsu-san and Fort of Apocalypse. Expect it to be more like the latter.

There’s also new digital volumes for Aoba-kun’s Confessions (5), Grand Blue Dreaming (7), GTO Paradise Lost (6) (where has this been?), Kokkoku: Moment by Moment (6), Lovesick Ellie (4) and Tsuredure Children (8).

MICHELLE: I finally started Lovesick Ellie. It’s kind of refreshing to have a heroine so openly lustful.

SEAN: Print-wise, Genshiken 2nd Season finally comes to a close with its 12th volume. As a sequel it wasn’t as good as the original, but I’ll still stick around to the end.

ASH: I need to catch up with it, but there are elements in the series that I really appreciate.

SEAN: There’s also, in print, Land of the Lustrous 5, The Seven Deadly Sins 25, To Your Eternity 3, and UQ Holder 13.

ASH: Both Land of the Lustrous and To Your Eternity are beautiful and devastating works, though each in their own way.

SEAN: One Peace has a 7th volume of Kuma Miko.

Seven Seas debuts the Arifureta manga, which from what I understand is not quiet as well received as the novel, but should please those of you who prefer that format.

They also have Devilman vs. Hades 1, which seems like it might be workplace violence judging from the title.

ASH: I’m certainly curious about this Devilman and Mazinger Z spinoff!

SEAN: Lastly, there’s Sorry for My Familiar (Uchi no Tsukaima ga Sumimasen), a good! Afternoon series (so yes, Seven Seas can license Kodansha too) about a demon girl and her middle-aged man. The man is the familiar.

Seven Seas also has a 4th Girl from the Other Side (yay!) and a 13th Monster Musume (whee).

MICHELLE: Yay for Girl from the Other Side.

ASH: Girl from the Other Side remains one of my favorite series currently being released; it’s tremendous.

ANNA: I haven’t read the 3rd volume of this yet, but I am excited for another!

SEAN: SuBLime has a 7th volume of Blue Morning.

MICHELLE: Ooh, I didn’t know this was coming out. I enjoy Blue Morning.

ASH: The series is so good!

SEAN: Vertical gives us more Gundam Wing with a 5th volume.

Viz has a 3rd volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a 26th Rin-Ne, and a 2nd Splatoon.

And Yen Press gives us a 15th Barakamon and a 9th Prison School omnibus. Don’t get them mixed up.

MICHELLE: I probably say every time that I will eventually read Barakamon, but it’s still true. I even moved volume one to a different stack recently!

SEAN: So what will you be picking up?

Voices of a Distant Star

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By Makoto Shinkai and Mizu Sahara. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Vertical Comics. Translated by Melissa Tanaka.

Of the various horrifying secrets I have, “has never seen a Makoto Shinkai anime” surely must rank among the largest. But it’s true. I’ve gradually stopped watching a lot of anime anyway, and what I do watch does not tend to fall into the introspective mode that Shinkai does so well. So, just like your name and The Garden of Words, I am coming into reading Voices of a Distant Star as someone unfamiliar with the original anime. Indeed, I never read the manga when it came out from Tokyopop back in 2006. But now I have read it and, as with most things Shinkai has been in charge of, I’m glad I did. The plot is slight, and the characters fairly easy to understand. but that’s because it’s going for a feeling that most of us know only too well, even if it’s couching it in the language of science fiction and time dilation.

We open on two middle school friends who clearly want to be more than friends. There’s just one problem. One of them has been chosen to go into space to help fight aliens, meaning they’ll be separated. But that’s OK – they have email! Unfortunately, this is a more realistic version of space travel, meaning that as time passes and the interstellar distances get longer, the communication gets leagues more difficult. Can their budding love stand the test of both time and space? Now, of course, what makes this even more interesting is that the pilot who’s been recruited is the girl, Mikako, and it’s her friend Noboru who’s staying behind on Earth, trying to live the live that she wanted to live and figure out what he wants to do next. Mikako gets a lot more to do, meeting fellow pilots, then losing them just as quickly, and also discovering the crushing loneliness that comes from a mission like this. Is this another Shinkai title with a bittersweet ending?

Well, no, it gets to be more sweet than bitter, though as you might expect the emphasis is on the ambiguity. In fact, from what I understand the manga actually made things clearer and more explicit (the manga seems to have expanded things a lot from the original anime, which was quite short). This is a one-volume manga, and it’s just the right length to let readers feel the ache of the story it’s telling without wallowing too much in it. The emotions are what we’re here for, adn they’re excellent. Noboru’s most stoic endurance cracking near the end, and Mikako’s love seemingly growing stronger the farther away from him she gets. I will admit that I wasn’t thrilled with the alien invasion subplot, which felt more like an excuse to put some action – any action – in a story that could just as easily have been about Mikako on a space exploration flight.

This is a quiet, emotionally devastating but ultimately uplifting story, and you really like the two kids even when they’re questioning themselves and their own feelings. It’s well worth the read.

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 2

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The first volume of The Promised Neverland was a masterclass in how to launch a series: the plotting was intricate but the brisk pacing and well-timed twists prevented an exposition-heavy story from sagging under the weight of its own ambition. Of necessity, volume two unfurls at a slower clip than the first, as the principal trio of Emma, Ray, and Norman work through the logistics of escaping Gracefield Manor, weighing the pros and cons of each element in their intricate plan. Kaiu Shirai also expands the cast to include other stakeholders, dedicating several chapters to Krone, Mother’s new subordinate, and Don and Gilda, two high-achieving students who haven’t yet learned the true purpose of Gracefield Manor.

These character moments are one of the great strengths of volume two. Krone, for example, turns out to be more resourceful than we might have guessed from her brief introduction in volume one; Shirai and Posuka Demizu use a woodland game of tag to reveal Krone’s formidable strength, speed, and cunning, establishing her as yet another major obstacle to escape. In other passages, Shirai peels away the outer layers of her principal characters, complicating the reader’s understanding of who they are, what motivates them to escape, and with whom their true allegiance lies — a necessary corrective to the first volume, which portrayed Emma, Ray, and Norman as just a little too smart, too capable, and too thoughtful to fully register as twelve-year-olds.

Volume two hits an occasional speed bump when characters discuss the escape plan. One overly deliberate scene, for example, finds Roy and Norman in full Scooby Doo mode, explaining how they figured out there was a mole among the residents. And volume two’s physical depiction of Krone is, frankly, uncomfortable, as some of her facial features have been exaggerated in ways that recall the iconography of blackface minstrelsy. Despite these lapses, The Promised Neverland remains suspenseful thanks, in no small part, to Demizu’s brief but horrific dream sequences; these suggestive images — a swirl of bodies, teeth, and monstrous eyes — provide a potent reminder of what’s at stake if the kids don’t escape Mother’s clutches.

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 2
Story by Kaiu Shirai, Art by Posuka Demizu
Translated by Satsuki Yamashita
VIZ Media; 192 pp.
Rated T, for Teen

Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? On The Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 5

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka? Gaiden – Sword Oratoria” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Liv Sommerlot.

Jealousy tends to be pervasive in the DanMachi series. Some of it stems from people being jealous of Bell’s power and the time he took to achieve it – Aiz falls into this category best. But sometimes it’s simply “I am in love with this person and have not confessed but am simply pining for them, and how DARE they look at that other person and not me?”. It’s very common, very ugly, and very realistic. That said, authors who write it into their series almost always expect readers to be amused by the antics of the jealous person, and in reality I tend to find that the reader ends up thoroughly pissed off instead. I’m not just talking about others here – Hestia’s jealousy of anyone coming near Bell is one of her biggest faults, and I don’t like the author hammering on it. The same applies to Lefiya in this side series. Unfortunately, this volume has few fights and a lot of jealousy.

Most of this 5th volume of Sword Oratoria aligns with the 5th volume of the main series, meaning we’re on the 18th Floor and having a rest. Loki’s team is coming back from their attempt on the 59th floor from the last book; Bell and company are coming down from their own disastrous mission. Aiz takes something of a backseat here, though there is some interesting discussion of her background and possible origins now that the Loki team can use Bell as a walking Wikipedia, as he’s read and memorized the most detailed and unexpurgated version of the myths and legends they all know. There’s also an amusing reminder that most of the elves we’ve dealt with in this series are not your typical sort, and that the proud, haughty elf is meant to be the norm. And of course we get the “backside” to all the DanMachi scenes from Book 5, including Hestia’s arrival (though the Loki cast leaves before the rest of that book happens.)

But most of what the reader will focus on is Lefiya’s insane jealousy of Bell, which goes up to eleven in this book and also gets them into big trouble when she chases after him in such a rage that they both get lost in the middle of the vast floor forest. These scenes are meant to show Lefiya that Bell is not the evil lothario she might expect him to be – inde3ed, like Aiz, she’s started to boggle in disbelief at how skilled he has gotten in such a short time. They also do work together well when pressured to, and Lefiya is able to forego her jealousy in a crisis. Still, I’m going to be honest, Lefiya’s obsession with Aiz is bad for her character. I thin k the author knows this, which is why she’s playing up Lefiya’s relationship with Filvis as well, which is far healthier and more grounded in mutual admiration and respect.

I think this is overall a volume with more positives than negatives, and of course there is also development of Sword Oratoria’s main plot with the Evils. If you are a Danmachi reader who dislikes “girl is jealous of other girls getting along with her crush” stories, though, be advised this volume wallows in it.

Pick of the Week: We Got the Beat

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MICHELLE: There’s a lot that I’m getting this week. Ace of the Diamond, Haikyu!!, One-Punch Man… But, honestly, this week’s pick was preordained because one of my favorite series only comes out twice a year: Skip Beat!, I choose you!

KATE: I’m suffering from a manga hangover at the moment, since last week was EPIC. Is it OK to plug Again!! and Silver Spoon a second time? ‘Cuz there’s nothing coming out this week that makes me as happy of either of those debuts.

SEAN: My pick this week goes to a title I know nothing about except really good word of mouth. There was much happiness when Kaguya-sama: Love Is War was licensed, and I am excited to see why.

ASH: Like Kate, I’m still thrilled about last week’s debuts. I’m looking forward to catching up on some ongoing series this week, though, such as Frau Faust and Haikyu!!.

ANNA: Last week was great and this week is pretty good too! Like Michelle, I’m always thrilled when there is a new Skip Beat volume, so that is my pick!