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

In general, I try to give light novels full reviews on my site, as I’m sure regular readers have noticed. In fact, it’s almost become a light novel review site with manga interruptions. Most of the time this is very easy, as the average light novel has about 3-4 manga volumes worth of content, and so it’s easy to find things to say. Sometimes, though, you need to reach. Not because a title is poor – believe me, I have things to say about titles I don’t like. But sometimes there’s just not a lot of “there” there, if you know what I mean. I enjoyed the second volume of Asterisk War just as much as the first. It’s an easy read with likeable characters and cool action. And it is setting up future plotlines and investing in depth of backstory. Despite all this, however, the series FEELS very slight.

There’s a new cast member as well, and she gets the cover. She is, of course, a very obvious “harem manga” type, as are all the girls in this so far. This is the shy, polite girl who’s to repressed and reserved to really stand on her own but is finally able to do so with the help of our hero. And it also helps that Kirin is absolutely deadly with a sword – in fact, she’s so good she doesn’t even use a lightsaber… erm, excuse me, Orga Lux… but instead uses a katana. And she still manages to mop the floor with everyone, including our hero. Unfortunately, she’s also from an abusive family AND has a tragic past. Needless to say, she fits right in here. Oh yes, and in case you were worried, he manages to beat her by the end of the book. No fears, the guy is still the best in the series.

We also meet several other characters who are introduced in order to use as antagonists in future volumes. We get the childlike yet manipulative mad scientist girl and her more stoic partner. We also see the class presidents of almost all the other schools (one is out touring her new album and can’t join them), which helps to show off how each of the schools differ from each other, and also to emphasize why, if you’re interesting in following a standard light novel protagonist, Claudia’s school is clearly the one to choose. Claudia continues to be one of the best parts of the book – I always enjoy manipulative ojou-types who don’t bother to hide they’re doing it, and I’m sure if this series ever crossed over with Irregular at Magic High School that she and Mayumi would be polite at each other in the best way.

So it’s a good series. You’ll enjoy reading it. It just lacks that certain oomph that puts it over the top that other light novel series have. But I’d certainly recommend it as a read – probably on a beach for vacation, it’s about that type of a series.

By Akane Shimizu | Published by Kodansha Comics

Cells at Work! has a quirky premise, one that’s fun to describe to people in one’s life whom one may wish to bewilder.

Essentially, the setting is the interior of the human body and the characters are anthropomorphized versions of blood cells, lymphocytes, and other types of cells that work together to keep things running smoothly. None of the characters has an actual name—the pair of protagonists refers to each other as Red Blood Cell and White Blood Cell—and there’s not much of a plot.

Instead, the first volume is composed of episodic chapters showing how the body defends itself against various threats, including bacteria, viruses, and allergens. Along the way, information is relayed to the reader and almost immediately one starts learning things. For example, before I read this I didn’t even know the terms neutrophil and macrophage, but now I could easily talk about their functions, and that’s because I’ve got a vivid visual reminder. Also, Shimizu comes up with some clever ways to depict bodily functions. I was particularly fond of the concept of a sneeze as a missile onto which pesky germs are loaded for expulsion.

Cells at Work! runs in a shounen magazine, and I imagine its intent is to amuse and educate young readers. That said, it did take me a bit of time to accept that there weren’t going to be any story or character developments. That might change, but for now it just doesn’t seem to be that sort of manga, and that’s okay, too. It’s fun enough that I’ll keep reading!

Cells at Work! is ongoing in Japan, where it is up to four volumes. Kodansha Comics will release the second volume in English next week.

By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel.

This is, as the prologue suggests, not so much the second part of a 2-arc set as it is “what was going on behind the scenes” for Book One. Various questions we had are answered, various characters who seemed to arrive and vanish for no reason now get a fully fleshed-out backstory. And we discover the true identity of the Rail Tracer, whose presence alone makes this book much, much more brutal and gore-filled than the previous two. Last time we had some horrible violence, but a lot of it was “come across the bloody remains of corpses”, and in this book we see why they came to be that way. And whereas in The Rolling Bootlegs Ennis was the one with the hero’s journey, and in the first Grand Punk Railroad it was Jacuzzi, this book’s most fascinating character is one who doesn’t really make any journey at all, because he’s already ten times better than everyone else. Yes, let’s talk about Claire.

It’s a shame that the cover art for this volume is so bad, but it makes Claire look almost like a cardboard cutout of a human, and after following him though half the book, that’s not really an unapt description. He’s the dark mirror to Ladd – and given that Ladd is a psychopath who murders for fun, that’s really saying something. Claire talks a lot towards the end of the book about solipsism, the idea that he is the most important thing in the world, and that since he can’t imagine what it would be like to either die or lose a battle, he never will. And he doesn’t. He’s not a hero – make no mistake about it, Claire is a nasty piece of work, and makes his living as a killer for hire – but at the same time he’s saving the day here, taking out the black suits and the white suits, falling in love with one girl while cheerfully admitting if she rejects him he’ll go after the other girl he also sort of fell for, and generally making your jaw drop as you go “cooool!”. Oh, except perhaps when he’s torturing Czeslaw.

Of all the characters introduced in this volume, Czes is probably the most tragic. The idea that in among all the people in 1711 who gained immortality was a young boy is chilling enough on his own, but then to spend years being roundly physically, emotionally and mentally abused by one of his fellow immortals is the icing on the cake, and Narita really does milk it for all it’s worth. He’s not subtle, either – when Czes is trying to make a deal with Ladd to have the other passengers on the train killed off, it explicitly mentions that he’s channeling the very man who abused him. The scenes with Czeslaw and Claire are there, I think, to remind you not to see Claire as too awesome or wonderful – they’re utterly dreadful. Still, the whole thing does lead to Czes managing to find hope in trusting other people, even if it means he has to put his life in their hands. First Isaac and Miria, who are of course all-loving and think nothing of falling off a train just to protect Czes – and then Maiza, who is the reason he’s there today, and possibly the most dangerous immortal of all, but around whom Czes can finally be the child that even after 200 years he still is to a large degree.

It is, of course, not all about guys murdering other guys, though you so get a lot of that. There are some amazing female characters here who get a chance to shine. We met Chané in Book 2, but here we see what’s driving her – a love for her father, who may be a terrorist but still shows her more love than any of the other black suits. We also finally confirm that she’s mute, which also allows her character to be more visually expressive than a ‘type’ like her would otherwise be. And of course we get Claire falling for her – it’s not clear if they’ll ever meet up (as Claire says, “meet me in Manhattan” is horribly vague), but it would be nice. As for Rachel, she’s the seemingly “normal” character here, even though she can nimbly crawl across the bottom of trains and save the day by rescuing everyone from the terrorists. She’s normal as she has the most normal reaction to everything going on within the train – sheer terror. Even Isaac and Miria, when presented with a pile of corpses last time, felt like they’d seen this sort of thing before. Rachel, on the other hand, is us, and her heartfelt plea to Claire towards the end of the book to sacrifice herself to stop all the other killing is wonderful, and it’s the one thing the anime cut that is deeply missed. Lastly, there’s Lua Klein, who is… still something of a cipher, but given a bit of internal monologue and a chat with the Grey Magician (also cut from the anime, mostly as he does very little other than stitch people up and give advice), we can empathize with her life choices and why she and Ladd really are deeply in love with each other.

I’ve gone on more than usual, but that’s because there’s simply so much to talk about. This is a short book – possibly the shortest in the series – and yet it’s rich in its development. Those who are fans of the series will enjoy picking out little bits and pieces that we’ve seen before, or setups for the next book. And it also has Isaac and Miria deciding the best present to cheer up Ennis is a young boy to be her little brother. Baccano! is as chaotic as ever, but also richly rewarding. Just… be prepared for a lot of blood. A *lot* of blood.

By Shinobu Ohtaka. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

I haven’t actually given Magi a full review since its first volume; I love it to bits, but for the most part I could articulate those bits into a 150-word brief pretty well. This volume of Magi, which wraps up one arc and sets the stage for the rest of the series, though, requires more verbiage. For one thing, it solidifies more than anything else who the real hero of this story is. The first volume had Aladdin on the cover, and for the most part the mangaka made a good effort to keep Aladdin, Alibaba and Morgiana as a power trio lead. But in the end, Alibaba’s journey is the most profound and important, and this volume features both his highs and lows as he discovers what’s happened to Balbadd.

There’s also some romantic hints, and they may actually stick. For the most part, the first few volumes of the series didn’t really bother with romance beyond Aladdin loving the ladies in his own amusing way, and Alibaba occasionally being an idiot. The idiot part is highlighted again here, as he brags about having a girlfriend that he doesn’t have in order to make himself look impressive. Leaving aside the romance for a moment, this is exactly what makes the tension of Alibaba’s character so great. He spends much of the volume wondering why people like and respect him, thinking that he really hasn’t achieved anything, and even, yes, having people hook up in front of him, reminding him that he’s still basically a clueless virgin. Luckily, he has an even more clueless virgin with a crush on him, though Morgiana admits that she’s so not in touch with any of her emotions that she can’t really deal with it right now. This has the potential to be cute.

Less cute is Alibaba’s return to Balbadd, as we see exactly what a conquered country looks like. His visit to his former Fog Troop friends, who are getting by but suffering nonetheless, is chilling, and reminds you again of the dangers of right-wing totalitarian tactics (I wish this weren’t so relevant today). His visit to Koen and Komei Ren, who inform him that “agreements” have nothing upon power and brute force, is topped only by the fact that they want him to join them – again, it’s difficult at times to register how important Alibaba is because we always see things filtered through his poor self-image. People knows what’s up. As for what his response will be, I can guess, but that’s what the cliffhanger brings.

Of course, Aladdin is not totally forgotten here, and this brings up what may be the other major plot point to come, which is Sinbad. Sinbad so far has been portrayed as the “good guy” side of the power is everything coin, as opposed to the Koen kingdoms. That said, Aladdin has chosen Alibaba, not Sinbad. And we’re informed by Yunan that both Sinbad *and* Alibaba are classic examples of King’s Vessels – they draw people to them and history changes as a result. (In real life, this is called the “Great Man” theory, and thankfully does not have magic to back it up.) As for Sinbad, he’s the best at drawing people to him and getting what he wants – but is that really a good thing? What’s separating Sinbad from being a tyrant other than his good disposition?

There’s so much going on here, and like the best shonen series you want to read the next volume immediately. Thankfully, Magi is still bimonthly, so we only have to wait a little bit to see what happens next. Brilliant stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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