in another world with household spells

By Rika and HIROKAZU. Released in Japan as “Isekai ni Kita kedo, Seikatsu Mahou shika Tsukaemasen” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

There is a Looney Tunes cartoon called The Big Snooze, and at one point Elmer Fudd is running through a hollow log and Bugs Bunny positions it so he runs out of it off a cliff into midair. Elmer realizes what has happened, stares at the viewer, and turns into a lollipop with a hunter’s cap, with the word ‘SUCKER’ written on the lollipop. He then quickly scrambles from midair back to the log to run through it. Bugs merely flips the log 180 degrees so that this happens again. Elmer then turns into a ‘SUCKER’ again, and runs back to try a third time. This time he tests it first, discovers there’s ground, and runs back to get a head start… at which point Bugs flips the log again. The reason I mention all this is that Patience Granger is the Elmer Fudd of this scenario. She spends the entire book not wanting to do things and then ending up doing them anyway just because everyone’s just too assertive for her.

Patience is very, very busy this school year. She’s already doing a double track with home ec and civil service, but there’s also a lot of magic/alchemy related stuff she wants to do, as her goal is to make money so that her family can stop being so poor and she can provide for her adorable brothers. (Yes, the shotacon thing has not gone away, I’m ignoring it.) Unfortunately, Princess Margaret’s girl posse all hate her, Prince Keith can’t say anything to her without sticking his foot in his mouth, the alchemy club is trying really really hard to get her to join, the music club is asking her to write an opera, and the entire curriculum has changed to become far more practical, much to the horror of noble ladies who find they will have to sew their own ballgowns. And then there’s the Knight Club, whose new president is taking this a bit too far, and this may lead to the end of the club…

Much to my relief, despite hints in the 2nd book, no one is going dungeon crawling just yet. Indeed, this is a very school-oriented book, though I suspect the author has a bit of a grudge against mandatory education, as Patience (who has her past memories and also OP magic that everyone underestimates) ends up essentially passing most of her classes for the year in the first week. This allows her to meet the alchemists, who are generally regarded as weird creeps, and not without reason, but they also help her to create lamps with dimmer switches, and possibly even washing machines in the future. That said, when Margaret and Keith say Patience is painfully naive, they’re not wrong. She’s blind to Keith’s crush on her, as well as several other characters who are ready to propose. (Also, Patience, who is supposed to be far shorter than her peers, is 149 cm, which is… average for an 11-year-old girl?) Basically, Patience might want to take a bit less herbology and magic circles and a bit more “how noble society functions”.

This was VERY nerd-heavy and education-heavy, but assuming you don’t mind either, it’s a good read. Also, author, just because you have Patience realize she’s being a sucker doesn’t make it less true.

By Rika and HIROKAZU. Released in Japan as “Isekai ni Kita kedo, Seikatsu Mahou shika Tsukaemasen” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

I try to give authors the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes it’s a little easier to tell that their hot new series is not “I have a brilliant idea for a story that just won’t go away” and more “what’s hot and trending that I can whip up fast?”. The first volume of this already had a noble girl at a magical academy where she’s more OP than most everyone around her, but was mostly content to stay in that lane. While this second volume also hangs around in that genre, there are signs that it wants to branch out. The moment that Patience asked who those people were and was told they were from The Adventurer’s Guild, I groaned a bit. Then there was monster hunting. Did you know monster meat is delicious, milady? Would you like me to pass it to you? That said, while that may impact future volumes, here we’re just content to do genre-related things like inventing sea salt and pound cake.

Patience is spending a large chunk of her summer with Princess Margaret and the royal family, mostly as the Queen has figured out that Patience is the only one who can actually motivate Princess Margaret. She gets to see the sea, and as I noted before, she and Prince Richard come up with ways to get sea salt, which will stop the kingdom being so dependent on rock salt. After this it’s back to school, and coming up with more songs that she has “written” for everyone to play, as well as fending off Albert, who is not into 11-year-olds but wants her creativity around him his whole life. She’s also trying to figure out what happened with her father losing his job, and near the end of the book, we finally get that answer, and it proves to be the best part of the book as well.

I find it amusing that while the series frames Patience’s dad as being the one noble willing to stand up for the common man, even to the point of sacrificing nearly everything, in reality he’s kind of weedy and pathetic, and you get the sense that a lot of his arguments with his sisters are less “they are horrible and overbearing” and more about him being non-confrontational to a ridiculous degree. Now, they are confrontational and overbearing, but mostly for Patience that proves to be a good thing. She also proves to be a fantastic teacher, as when blackmailed into teaching her cousin, who has many issues with studying, she’s able to find ways to get him interested, identify the problem, and set him up for future success. No wonder everyone wants her, Right now she’s still a lady’s maid, but in future…

She’s off to “college” in the next volume, and I expect, given the foreshadowing, this series to branch out a bit. Hopefully no dungeon diving. This remains “pretty good”.

By Rika and HIROKAZU. Released in Japan as “Isekai ni Kita kedo, Seikatsu Mahou shika Tsukaemasen” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

This is the definition of “Fine, I guess”. It doesn’t really do anything wrong, apart from one thing I’ll mention later. The heroine is a classic “I just want a quiet life where I can earn money to help my family” type who does not realize that every single thing that she does draws a tremendous amount of attention to herself. She’s seriously OP, but not in a flashy way. She doesn’t invent mayonnaise, but she does pretend that Mozart and Bach compositions are her own. There’s a royal family, but they’re pretty nice, and the prince her age clearly has a crush on her that is coming out as “you’d better watch your step!”. But there is nothing here to make someone who has read large amounts of “woman is reincarnated as a noble girl and attends a magic academy” books want to add another one to the pile. It feels like the bulk of the book was written to keep up with the trends.

One day Kaoru Aoyama is working her office job and living in her apartment, the next she wakes up as Patience Granger, a ten-year-old noble girl. She wasn’t even hit by a truck! Patience is, unfortunately, recovering from near death. In fact, it appears the real Patience DID die, and now Kaoru is in her body, with a sort of soul of the real Patience insider her yelling when she does things that are not appropriate for nobility. Unfortunately, their family is flat broke, as her father was fired from his royal position for reasons that we never actually find out in this volume. Fortunately, after recovering, she’s taken to the church and told she has “household spells” for magic, one of the most common types. That’s fine with her, though, and like so many other protagonists in these books, she experiments without knowing what not to do and winds up really overpowered.

First off, I understand that it’s in the original, and that there’s not really a Western alternative, but man, when the heroine talks about being a shotacon all the time, I don’t care if she insists “but not in a pervy way!”, it reads wrong and makes you like her less. There has be be a way around the word. Patience’s main trait, besides being oblivious to her own misguided attempts to not stand out, is her adoration of her two cute younger brothers, as well as the kids her own age, who her 25-year-old self sees as cute little ‘uns. If you can get past that steep hurdle… I did like her relationship with the first ;princess, who she is clearly rehabilitating. It’s implied that her late mother and the Queen had some history, and everyone and their brother talks about how their family is supposed to be filled with genius scholars, so there’s clearly a lot of backstory still to dole out. As for romance… she’s ten. Let’s table that for a while.

I’ll read the next volume of this – I do want to see what’s up with her otherwise nebbish dad. But for those who have to much to read already, there’s no reason to add this as well.