babel

By Kuji Furumiya and Haruyuki Morisawa. Released in Japan as “Babel III: Torikago Yori Izuru Youki” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Amelia Imogen.

The final volume of this series delves deeply into the question of what drives humanity to succeed. In the past of this world, humanity was pushed to the brink, and feared powerful witches. These days there are no more witches, and things are relatively peaceful. But will humans make the same mistakes they made before, just because they don’t remember what it’s like to life in fear and thus innovate? If you’re nodding along to this, congratulations, you agree with the villain of this book. If you’re staring and wondering what the hell this teenage history logic is, you’re a lot more like Shizuku, who has to try to deal with this while also finding a way to return home and also deal with the fact that – as we’ve occasionally noticed since the very first book when she looked at that forbidden tome – there’s something a bit off with her. Fortunately, she has Erik by her side this time, as opposed to written out by the author.

Shizuku continues to work on her language learning aids, but there’s a new problem. Some of the kids at the castle, after hanging around the older children, regain the innate language abilities. Does this mean the thesis that she and Erik have been so carefully working on is completely wrong? That said, she has other things to worry about. She’s apparently staying up for hours at night reading the blue-covered book she has, though she never remembers doing this. A neighboring country invites her there as they want that book, and are… well, not willing to kill her, but willing to hide her body if she gets killed by something else. Worst of all, a witch has appeared and recreated a very familiar witch’s tower (well, familiar if you read Unnamed Memory), and wants people to challenge it. And she’s also going around slaughtering women and stealing their souls. That’s bad.

I have to admit, I enjoyed this series more for the plot and worldbuilding than the characterization. Shizuku and Erik’s relationship can best be described as “kinda nice”. She and Ortea (and, for that matter, she and Lars) had a much more interesting back and forth. I also note that she only says “I love you” to Ortea in this book. But no, dull love prevails. Ah well. This also sort of gives away that she does not return to Japan, though if any reader is surprised by that they must not read many series like this. The best part of the book is what is actually up with Shizuku, and how they manage to use it to save the day. That said, while I would not call her behavior suicide ideation, we do get a lot of “I must sacrifice myself to save everyone” and she jumps off a very high building – again – with worse consequences this time. You can see why Lars finds her frustrating.

There’s a sequel to Unnamed Memory that is apparently also a sequel to this, but I’ve no idea if it will be licensed given the UM anime was a dud over here. Fans of the author will enjoy this.

By Kuji Furumiya and Haruyuki Morisawa. Released in Japan as “Babel III: Torikago Yori Izuru Youki” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Amelia Imogen.

So, first of all, I want to note that I *loved* this volume. It’s not only my favorite volume of Babel so far, but it may actually be my favorite book by Furumiya I’ve read so far. That said… boy, this is absolutely exhausting to read. As always with this author, it’s a brick – the digital version comes in at 463 pages – and much of it, especially in the back half, is a series of “is this going to end badly with Shizuku dead?” mini-cliffhangers. More to the point, while the start of the volume does indeed continue the themes of the previous one, showing Shizuku trying to explain how teaching language can be a good way to solve the current crisis – it rapidly derails into Shizuku doing what she does best, which is speaking to those in power and smacking them down. With Lars that mostly just led to a lot of arguments. With Princess Ortea, it leads to revolution.

We pick up from the cliffhanger of the previous book: Shizuku is being kidnapped and brought to another country by the evil mage Niké, with Erik’s life being threatened till she gives in. (As a result, Erik is almost entirely absent from this volume.) When she gets there, she discovers that mages have been conducting cruel experiments on children to solve the language issue, and Shizuku is there to try to solve it with her own solution, education. The one she has to impress is the cruel and capricious Princess Ortea, who has been running much of the nation behind the scenes and has a tendency to have people who displease her executed. As the book goes on, Shizuku becomes Ortea’s aide, and gradually comes to realize that there’s a lot more going on here than an evil princess and her worried brother the King. Is the answer overthrowing the monarchy? Yup.

For the most part, I adored this, though I could do without the curse above Shizuku’s womb that’s even more agonizing because she’s a virgin. The only thing more annoying than having superpowers that only work because someone is a virgin is having suffering that is even worse because someone is a virgin. That said, the best part of the book is talking about how you cannot erase your past actions, even if they’re atrocities (especially if they are), but you can try to atone for them and move forward, especially if you care more about the country than about power. Honestly, I kind of wonder if the final book will end with Lars and Ortea marrying, as while they get on even worse than Lars and Shizuku, I could see it working – they’re very similar. As for the lack of Erik, fear not, we do get a romance of sorts, as evil mage Niké turns out to not be all that evil really, and also gradually falling in love with Shizuku, despite her bad habit of getting kidnapped and shot at and stabbed and having painful womb curses put on her. Shizuku needs a break, let’s be honest. Anyway, needless to say he gets nowhere, but he does get in a kiss before she leaves, which is the one thing in the book that reads like a cliched anime moment.

The next book is the final one in the series. After Book 1, I was fairly sure that she would not be returning to Japan, but now I’m not so sure. Will Shizuku have to give up and settle down here? And can she solve the Babel crisis before she returns? A terrific series.

By Kuji Furumiya and Haruyuki Morisawa. Released in Japan as “Babel II: Mahou Taikoku Kara no Danzai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Amelia Imogen Mason.

Being transported to another world is, in many ways, far more difficult than being reincarnated. For one thing, if you’re reincarnated you at least grew up learning basic things like how to walk, talk, etc. in the same way as everyone else in your fantasy world. Whereas the average isekai’d Japanese person is thrown into a town and expected to immediately be able to cope with the Adventurer’s Guild and what exactly mana is. Usually the book simply decides not to bother to deal with it at all, but occasionally you get a handwave that this is a different language, and the handwave usually involves asking whoever is responsible for transporting them to this world (god, usually) to give them the ability to understand everyone. And thank goodness for that, right? As such, it’s only right at the end of this volume, almost halfway through the series itself, that Shizuka realizes, to her horror, what that actually means. And that the title of this series may have more actual impact than expected.

The book is largely divided into two stories, one small and one large. In the first story, Erik and Shizuku, after briefly helping a girl with tremendous magical power who’s spent her life at the top of a tower and her new fiancee, who is named Oscar, find themselves caught up in a revenge wedding ceremony from hell… one where Shizuku is being forced to play the bride. After this, they finally arrive at the Kingdom of Farsas and meet its royal family. (Who are NOT the aforementioned Oscar and young girl, lest readers of Unnamed Memory who haven’t read this get confused.) Unfortunately, the king takes one look at Shizuku and immediately tries to murder her. Apparently there are outsiders who are trying to infiltrate the country, and he decides the best way to make sure Shizuku isn’t one is to kill her and see if she shows her true colors. This test may sound familiar to those who know the history of witches…

Despite the fact that “Shizuku is kidnapped/brainwashed/etc.” being the plot of almost this entire book in one way or another, I greatly enjoyed this volume. Shizuku has the usual self-hatred that so many other light novel protagonists have, but we’re given reasons for it as we go along, and she also doesn’t let it turn her mopey. Some of the best scenes in the book are of her and the king, who reluctantly decides not to kill her right now, snarking back and forth at each other. As with the first book (and let’s face it, it’s the theme of the series), the inability to communicate and get concepts across is what drives this. Shizuku is not able to prove a negative, so everyone views her with suspicion. Erik insists on being guilty, and his own confession means that’s going to happen even when it’s not the entire truth. This all leads up to the revelation at the end, which rocks Shizuku’s world, and possibly makes her return to Japan father away than ever before.

All this and a nasty cliffhanger. Definitely recommended for fans of isekais that don’t use the usual “RPG” tropes, and essential reading for Unnamed Memory fans.

By Kuji Furumiya and Haruyuki Morisawa. Released in Japan as “Babel I: Shoujo wa Kotoba no Tabi ni Deru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Amelia Imogen Mason.

I will admit this review is slightly harder now that the Spring Anime season is al;most over. “From the creator of Unnamed Memory, the hot new anime, a semi-sequel!” would be a much bigger deal if the anime had not been a lifeless mediocre adaptation determined to get through the story as fast as possible. Which is a problem when you have an author that writes books as long as Furumiya does. This one is 460 pages, a good 300 pages longer than the average KonoSuba. It doesn’t lend itself well to a speedrun. So, I will amend: if you enjoyed READING Unnamed Memory, and also enjoyed the author’s series A Pale Moon Reverie, this is more of the same, with good character writing and some exciting action scenes. And yes, it is a sequel, but it takes place 300 years after the first series, and you don’t need to have read it to get a lot out of it.

Shizuku is a young college student dealing with a massive case of middle child syndrome when one day she is confronted with a mysterious hole in space, which transports her to another world. She is lucky to survive landing in the middle of a desert, and ends up in a town that is clearly nothing like the Japan she knows. Fortunately, she comes across a stoic but kind mage, Erik, who promises to help her try to find a way back home, if she will teach him about her mystery books. As, while Shizuku can speak the same language as everyone else in this world, that does not extend to reading or writing, so she just has her college textbooks, which are in Japanese. And English, and German, which she’s also studying. Can she get home without getting involved in plot stuff? And can she learn to read and write from the handsome but remote young man with a mystery past?

Shizuku is easily my favorite part of the book, yet another heroine with massively low self-esteem who doesn’t understand how fantastic she is. Her older sister had extroversion and charm, her younger sister had focus and anger, and Shizuku seems to have seen herself as someone who wasn’t really much of anything, floating through life. That said, she’s able to stand up to a lot of situations in this book that would give most people the screaming heebie jeebies. The isekai part of this book (which was rewritten and expanded from a version that came out in 2016) is new to this author, whose Unnamed Memory was known for avoiding the standard light novel cliche. But it’s handled well here – Shizuku only has her college freshman education, which means that she struggles to explain things she learned through cultural osmosis, and she will not be inventing mayonnaise anytime soon. That said, the fact that she isn’t of this world allows her to save the day at the end of this book, and I expect this to continue.

This has already ended in Japan, and so we know there’s 3 more books, no doubt as big as this one. I’m here for them. I really love this author.