fushi no kami

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jade Willis.

I would like to take this point to mock those reviewers who suggested that this was not going to end up with Ash having more than one wife. If I could quote one of those foolish reviews, one… let me check my notes here… Sean Gaffney, he said in the review of the sixth volume “I’m pretty sure this is not a polycule sort of book.” And yet here we are, and the outcome of the 7th book is so little in doubt that I’m even spoiling it in this opening paragraph. There are no more battles with demons or werewolves here, and the only new ridiculous tech is the finished airplane at last. No, this entire book is about politics, about the fact that Ash and the frontier territories have gotten far too powerful for the royal family’s comfort, and how they can get Alicia away from the royal family and back to her rightful place next to Ash and Maika. The cover art tells you how this turns out.

After the events of the previous book, refugees are flowing into Sacula, and everyone has their hands full trying to find ways to not have them dying in the streets or turning into bandits to stay alive. Towards that end, they have asked for help from the central territories and the royal family. Unfortunately, the king is ambivalent and also weak, and the crown prince is completely hostile. Fortunately they have Alicia, who gets the help of the Church to send much needed supplies. Unfortunately, she’s proving far too popular, so much so that even though she doesn’t want the throne, some nobles want her to take it anyway. As a result, she’s locked away in the palace. Ash is going to have to find a way to rescue her.

I find it amusing, given how Ash has gone out of his way to avoid taking credit for the many things that he’s spearheaded over the years, that the solution to his problems here is to cash in on all those things, admit they WERE all his doing, and get royal recognition (which essentially comes with an “I get whatever I ask for” coupon). As for the two wives thing, it’s pretty clear from the start that Maika is absolutely fine with this, and as a matter of fact might be more annoyed if Ash didn’t make that the solution. She and Alicia have been close ever since Alicia’s days as “Arthur”, and I can definitely see the two of them teaming up on him in the future. We don’t get a wedding, because in the end it’s the civilization that’s more important than the romance – the real climax of the book is the working plane, not Alicia declaring she loves Ash.

This is the final volume in the series, and a quick epilogue puts a definitive capper on things. It’s just about the right length, and I enjoyed this far more than I was expecting. Please enjoy this ridiculous boy becoming a ridiculous man.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

The last volume of Fushi no Kami finally resolved the burgeoning romance that’s been in this series since the first volume, as Ash and Maika are now old enough, at least in Ash’s opinion, so that he can’t get away with “she’s too young for me to be attracted to”. As such, they are now engaged, though not yet married, and apparently haven’t really consummated anything, despite Maika’s murmurings about wanting a baby. That said, fear not, romance is still in the air, as beta couple Reina and Hermes are still working on it… mostly because they’re essentially carbon copies of Maika and Ash, which is amusing but also lazy writing to an extent. And of course there is “foreign spymaster” Seire, who is clearly still very interested in Ash, not to mention Princess Alicia, aka Arthur. That said, everyone had better get on Maika’s good side if they want to get anywhere, and even so, I’m pretty sure this is not a polycule sort of book.

Ask and Maika may be engaged, but that’s not the plot of the series, the Industrial Revolution is. As such, we see the attempts at making a gas-powered engine (which sadly blow up), a steam engine (more successful), and other instances. Unfortunately, their little city has gone up in the world a bit too much, and the nearby areas have leaders who are Very Unhappy. Thus they’re seeing more bandits than usual, more refugees than usual, and, when all else fails, a full-blown invasion, supported by a few very familiar traitors who have always been jerks in previous books so it’s no surprise to see them being the bad guys here. That said, our good guys have Ash and Maika, who between them are good enough to stop any human plotting. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, we get what every city fears – a demon invasion. We’ve seen Ash beat a werewolf beast before, can he beat over 200?

This remains a good series provided you accept all of its faults. Ash’s narration is always trying its hardest to pretend that he is just this ordinary dull normal guy, and sometimes it succeeds more than the author intends. Maika’s attachment to Ash and desire to protect him is funny much of the time, but when she has to be reminded not to murder people it’s a bit less fun. And, as noted, Reina and Hermes’ not-relationship is less interesting to me precisely because we’ve seen this sort of thing before. An attempt is made to give them a rival to draw them closer together, but he’s such a horrible person in every way that the big surprise at the end of the book was that he was NOT in fact a spy working for the bad guys… and I’m still not 100% convinced. On the bright side, the worldbuilding and fight scenes are still fun, and the humor can be very good.

This will probably always fall under the definition of “solid” rather than “good”, but sometimes solid is all you need.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

By and large fushi no Kami has been a worldbuilding novel. We’re here to see Ash and company drag the kingdom into the modern era, and we do get a bit of that here, particularly with the development of anesthetic. That said, there has also been an undercurrent of romance to the whole series. Ash has several girls in love with him, and up until this point has pretty much deliberately ignored it. Good news for fans who were hoping for resolution of this plotline, we definitely get it here, as Maika, with the help of almost everyone else in the cast, makes her move. Of course, Ash is unlikely to simply say “sure”, so stronger measures might be needed. And what of Arthur, who is the romantic runner-up in this scenario? Well, she remains a romantic runner-up, I’m afraid. Fushi no Kami does not seem all that interested in polyamory. Fortunately, Maika is awesome enough for five wives.

There is a certain amount of predictability in this volume, to be fair. Once we learn the story of how Maika’s parents got married, the rest of the book writes itself. That said, there is one big surprise, which is Ash casually admitting his feelings for Maika. Ash is a great protagonist, but he also has a tendency to default to ‘blank slate’, both when he talks to others and in his own narrative voice. As such, hearing him casually state that he loves Maika out loud is startling. That said, if you look at most of his actions in the past it makes sense, and his biggest reason to avoid it (they were both kids) is no longer an issue, as both are of marrying age in this fantasy world. That said, his response of “but I’ll never get married because I’d always put my dream over any spouse” is also very Ash. He wants his beloved to be happy.

As for Maika, we know enough about her to know she is not going to mope around after Ash rejects her. Especially not when she learns how her parents got married, and figures she can simply repeat history. Especially if it involves being a cool sword fighter! We’ve seen Maika’s training in the blade throughout the series, and no one has ever really been able to even come close to defeating her. Unfortunately, that applies here as well – despite a couple of attempts to insert drama into the story, with one opponent stating that he’ll be using lethal blows – there is a general lack of tension in her fights the entire way through. That said, it leads up to the best part of the book, where, after Ash says he can’t marry her because his dreams come first, she explains she’ll simply insert herself in between them, as long as it takes. Plus it’s not as if his dreams aren’t hers as well, she just doesn’t have the pat life to draw upon.

There is a decided lack of romantic fallout with Arthur, though that could simply be because she and Maika are best friends. Or it could carry over into Book 6. Which is not out in Japan, so for now we are left with a very nice love confession.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

Last time I asked for Ash to have a few failures under his belt, and we do get a bit of that here, showing that he can’t do ANYTHING he puts his mind to. Food preservation is still a big problem, and the wonders of canned food will have to wait for more advanced techniques. There’s more good news: by now, everyone has gotten so used to Ash being the greatest thing since sliced bread that they’ve started to stop talking about it, which means less page count devoted to everyone praising him to the skies. That said, there’s a larger failure towards the back half of the book, as he chooses to try to save a village on its last legs, mostly due to sentimentality, and finds that while rebuilding civilization may start with a village, the village is not necessarily of one mind, and that humans tend to be lazy, cowardly and devious creatures. Fortunately, the next generation shows more promise.

On the cover are Renge, the maid who took a significant role in Book 3, and gets a much larger one here, and Suiren, her friend from a neighboring village. They had a falling out a couple years ago about the fate of Suiren’s village – the poor harvests have hit it particularly badly, but they’re too stubborn to give up or move. Now it’s a couple of years later, and things are even worse. Still, Renge is diligent, steadfast, and kindhearted, and wants to help them even though she’s been rebuffed. And Suiren is feeling regretful, and also the pangs of starvation, so is willing to accept the help. Everything is in place for Ash to test his new fertilizer experiments, and things seem to go swimmingly – until Suiren’s father, the actual village chief (who had been “ill” before) reappears to screw everything up.

For the most part, Ash is in “bad cop” mode throughout a lot of this book, and it’s not hard to see why. While he is resolved to help Suiren’s village because of Renge’s pleas, the village has not done a great job of even the minimal farming requirements. Even after he teaches them the right methods, some are better at them than others – and the ones who do poorly get less food. And when they’re proud of themselves for achieving results using the fertilizer… he points out everything they did wrong. It’s a brutal teaching method, and one that Maika and the others who’ve been around him just shrug off. Some, like Suiren, grow to be better, stronger people under these circumstances… and some, like her father, end up arrested and having their village taken away. Lesson learned: do what Ash says. Of course, this lesson does not apply to Ash himself, who tells the soldiers not to go to far trying to take down some treant monsters and then promptly goes too far. He is “do as I say, not as I do” in triplicate.

We’ve caught up with Japan, as the 5th volume of the book is not due out there till the end of July. So we leave Ash and Maika for a time. (He’s still not recognizing anyone is in love with him, and we can definitely add Renge to that list – though fortunately NOT Suiren.) Till then, let’s enjoy the fact that by now everyone has grown so used to Ash’s maniacal ideas that they take them in stride. Mostly.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

It’s rare that you suspect that an author feels that his series has too many readers, but that seems to be the case with Fushi no Kami, which is really going to be pushing the limits of reader tolerance here in just how much the cast can praise every single thing Ash does. It really is ridiculous, and that’s not even counting Maika and Arthur, who are in love with Ash, or the maid that he gains in this book, who clearly is also falling in love with Ash. Now, to be fair, in their eyes Ash is this weird combination of Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, and God, so I suppose it is perfectly reasonable in some ways. Adn yes, Ash is trying to bring back many of the ancient civilization’s conveniences, as well as ruthlessly fending off assassination attempts. Still, I would love it if in future books he gets a complete failure or two under his belt.

We start off with Ash finding a new outlet for his creativity, and this time he isn’t alone. Fellow study group friend Hermes turns out to have an obsession with planes, and has built a model that is being made fun of by the local bullies. Naturally, Ash is over the moon about this, and decides to help him build, if not a full-sized passenger plane, at least a working model. Ash is also getting rewarded, as he gets a medal for taking out the demon monster in the previous book… which promptly gets stolen, leading a vengeful Maika to do some investigating. In the most serious story in the book, some spies have been snooping around from the capital city, and they are looking for a girl. Given this is happening at the same time as Ash’s class is doing survival training, he has to protect said girl while also drawing away the spies turned assassins who have been ordered to kill her. Which… sounds like a fairly sedate book for Ash, given the previous two.

Frustratingly, we still don’t quite get all of Arthur’s backstory here, but we get enough to know why they have to unfortunately return to the capital, though I’m sure we’ll be seeing them again in the future. Much is made near the end of their rivalry with Maika, and I agree they share wonderful moments of closeness, but let’s face it, Maika is going to be married to Ash eventually, he just doesn’t know it yet. I would not necessarily call her a yandere, as she doesn’t really fit the criteria, but she’s certainly obsessed with Ash to the point where it’s almost disturbing, and moves heaven and earth to make sure that he stays by her side for future books. The book’s chapter titles all deal with planes, which makes it a bit frustrating that we only get proper plane building in the first section – I hope they return to this again. More to the point, the cast have now graduated and are essentially adults… how much more can Ash actually pull off now?

As noted, these books require a lot of patience in terms of the cast calling Ash the greatest thing since sliced bread. There’s also what amounts to a torture scene about 3/4 through the book, and the fact that Ash does not realize what he’s doing does not really make it any less (deliberately) creepy. That said, Fushi no Kami remains resolutely readable, which is one of the best qualities in a book.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

Not to spoil or anything, but around 4/5 of the way through this second volume, a demon monster shows up. It startled me, as the entire book before this had essentially been ‘let’s learn how to make fertilizer’ and ‘tomatoes are awesome!’. What I said when reviewing the first book goes double for this one: it’s a slow life book where the slow life is running at top speed. Indeed, the inability of anyone to stop Ash and his ideas becomes a running gag. But then ‘rebuilding civilization’ is in the title, and it can’t be denied that Ash’s ideas are very good. So the demon monster, just like the bear from the first book, is there to give Ash a chance to be a more typical hero, one that can fight against huge antagonists rather than simply be an intellectual. It’s a good fight, too. That said, I think I like Ash casually tipping over all preconceptions of what society is like a bit better than stabbing a creature through the eye.

Ash and Maika have arrived at the nearest city to continue their educations. It’s not the grandest city in the world… Ash is unimpressed. But it’s certainly got more books than his village had, and maybe here he can learn to make better fertilizer. His roommate is Arthur, a noble who is actually a girl disguising herself as a boy. Ash, sensing tragic backstory, doesn’t let on he’s guessed this and merely gives Arthur space every morning and evening. They’re theoretically there to learn reading adn writing, but both know how already, so instead Maika works on her martial arts and swordsmanship, and Ash works on overthrowing all common sense. He makes liquid soap… which turns out to be illegal, but eh. Semantics. He grows delicious tomatoes… which everyone thinks are poisonous, and he has to research why. Can he drag this city kicking and screaming into the modern world? And can Maika ever get through to Ash that she’s in love with him?

As with the first volume, the POV here alternates between Ash and various other characters to show both things happening when he’s not around/unconscious, or to show how others react to his eccentricities. Maika is the most interesting of these, as it’s become clear that her love for Ash is burgeoning on obsession, as she talks about making sure she’s worthy to stand at his side. Honestly, there’s a very messianic quality about Ash in general, not helped by the author’s afterwords supposedly being written years later showing us Fushi no Kami as a “history textbook”. The other main character introduced here is Arthur, and I was rather surprised that we only got a few hints of their rather unhappy life to date, and don’t get into the reason for the disguise. Arthur is mostly miserable, meaning their fake smiles piss Maika off, and seeing the three of them bond is the heartwarming part of the book.

Ash may not have magic swords or fireballs, but in his own way he’s just as OP as other isekai heroes. How much you enjoy this book might depend on how much you can tolerate everyone worshiping the ground he walks on. That said, it’s a very readable book, and you never feel bored, even when discussing things like “I need seaweed in order to take the next step in my plan”.

By Mizuumi Amakawa and Mai Okuma. Released in Japan as “Fushi no Kami: Henkyou kara Hajimeru Bunmei Saiseiki” by Overlap. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Maurice Alesch.

I always enjoy it when I’m pleasantly surprised by a new license. The description of this did not seem promising – it read like “what about Ascendance of a Bookworm, only with a young boy?”. It also gets off to a bit of a slow start, though I will admit I was immediately taken in with the discussion of ancient writing types. As it goes along and picks up speed, though, this becomes excellent, with a young protagonist who has knowledge from a past life, manages to do wonderful things and save his village, and yet never feels overpowered at all. It helps that this lacks all the usual tropes of the genre – there are no dungeons, or guilds, and Ash has no magical powers or swords. Heck, even his knowledge from a former life isn’t all that helpful much of the time, as he’s not a botanist or chemist. But for this backwards village filled with exhausted farmers, he’s a breath of fresh air.

Ash has been reincarnated into this world, and retains his memories, but for the most part he’s spent the previous eight years pretending to be happy and content while being anything but. When we first meet him, he’s just had a major revelation, and bolts to the local church to beg to be able to read books – and also to be taught to read. It won’t be easy. The priest has been exiled and mostly given up. The village chief’s daughter dislikes those fake smiles of his. They’re all dirt poor. And there are mentions of demons out of the forest, though we never see one in this first volume. Fortunately, once he gets going, Ash proves absolutely impossible to stop, be it discovering aloe, learning about hunting and gathering, accidentally romancing the aforementioned chief’s daughter, and even fighting off a giant bear. But most of all: making life in the village better.

This book is not really slow enough to be a “slow life” title, but it has a bit of the same vibe. Ash may have memories of a previous life, but we never really hear all that much about it apart from a mention of nanotechnology in medical use… which is obviously not happening here. More to the point, with the exception of his romantic impulses, Ash feels like a kid more than a reincarnated adult (I’m looking at you, By the Grace of the Gods). The book is about 2/3 his POV, and the other third various people in his life, particularly Maika, who goes from the aloof chief’s daughter to being head over heels in love. (Ash sees her as a child, I think, which explains why he does not get the very obvious signs she is throwing at him.) All of the things Ash does improve life… somewhat. Things are a bit better. The highlight is the lack of deaths over the winter, a first for this remote village. It’s the sort of book that makes you smile.

It’s also not staying in the village – the ending indicates that Ash and Maika are going to the nearest city for the next volume, and I assume things will move onward and upward from there. In the meantime, this is recommended for fans of isekai who hate the usual RPG tropes that usually go with them.