kuma kuma kuma bear

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by RFD.

This is a long-running series – 21 volumes plus a .5 or two – and it’s been interesting watching the series evolve. While its tendency to have a cast of adorable kids doing adorable things has remained constant throughout, as has Yuna being hideously overpowered but also seeming to hate herself more than a bit, there are several things that we used to see that we don’t see quite as much anymore, notably that this series can be very dark. There has been murder, sexual assault, abuse of countless women and children, etc. in the early books. Once the books started getting really popular, that seemed to be dialed back a bit, with less of “let’s go rescue the people locked in the basement” and more “let’s watch Yuna build a bear bakery”. This volume, though, gets back to the OG a little bit, as we meet a noble girl who has quite a tragic backstory, and unfortunately the tragedy is still impacting her present. Fortunately for her, Yuna is still hideously overpowered… wait, is she?

Noa is headed to the town of Yufaria, there to see her sister Shia compete at a matchup between the Crimonian school and the Yufarian. Yuna is going there as bodyguard, but has been asked to tone it down – no bear suit – and has acquiesced, though she still wears her bear paws and shoes. Unfortunately, a noble girl, Seleiyu, spots them and is horrified at Noa walking around without protection. Yuna, with her pitifully puny body and weak, flabby arms, could not possibly be able to protect this important girl. (Yuna’s reaction to this, which is more “sigh…” than anything else, is appreciated.) After Yuna proves that even without a bear suit she can still take out teenage girls, no matter how talented they are, they proceed to cheer Shia on in the competition. Unfortunately, Seleiyu seems to have a secret weighing her down… and does not think she has much longer to live.

So yes, the tragedy is back for this book, and I appreciated that the book stays true to its roots, as the bad guy is not only incredibly evil but also truly petty and deluded. We’re not getting any shades of grey in THIS series. We also definitely have another applicant for the role of Yuna’s wife, though there’s a pretty high wall of “I don’t really know what romance is” to climb. The author seemed at first to be ambivalent to the yuri they almost accidentally created, but especially after the anime has leaned into it more (see the previous SS volume for Yuna’s opinion on her own anime). Seleiyu over the course of the book goes from “who does this girl think she is trying to protect Lady Noir?” to “If you were a boy I think I could fall in love… actually, even if you are a girl…”. Yuna, needless to say, ignores this – hell, just accepting that someone thinks she’s pretty in a dress is a huge hurdle.

We’re caught up with Japan – no Vol. 22 on the horizon – so it may be a while before we see Yuna. For now, enjoy our new cast member with a one-sided crush – and she’s Yuna’s own age this time!

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by RFD.

I have frequently whined about having to review a lot of these .5 short story collections, mostly as they tend to feature things like bookstore exclusives that out of necessity cannot have any effect on the plot. But in something like Kuma Bear, a series that is so dependent on Yuna’s POV that any scrap we get from other characters is most welcome. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned about Yuna throughout this series, it’s that she – still! – hates herself. Every time she talks about her physical appearance it’s to talk about how short, flat, and plain she is, and every time she does anything for others she plays it off as being self-serving or nothing special. But when you see Yuna in the eyes of other characters, she’s described as “slim, pretty and feminine”, and everyone and their brother talks about how kind and nice she is. Honestly, this world warps to that kindness – which is why the darkness of the past is – mostly – not seen anymore.

I say mostly because this volume, for the first two-third or so, adapts the bookstore-exclusive stories from Vol. 10-16, which means it has the beach trip to Mileela, including in the party the women from Mileela who were abducted by bandits. Neaf in particular was raped and had her family murdered, and they HAVE to discuss it here, but it’s elided to “something terrible happened”, as they’re always talking about it to kids. After these stories we get five more written just for the volume, which honestly have the same feel as the stories we’d just read. The last quarter of the book is the most unique, as it has Yuna, Fina and Noa watching the first season of the Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear anime.

Believe it or not, the last section is by far the most interesting and rewarding. If you’ve ever been to the Archive Of Our Own fanfiction site, you may be familiar with a genre called “Reaction Fic” or “Characters Watch the Show”, and this is essentially an official version of that. That said, the best of those fanfics analyze the source and are able to give new fresh takes, and that’s what we see here. I’m sure it’s not canon, but here we see Yuna’s past in Japan and her isekai’d status revealed to Fina and Noa, and Yuna narrating that she regards having to learn to cook and clean for herself because her parents were never around as “cherished memories”, as they let her live on her own here. That’s horrible! She also sees Noa’s optimism and positiveness about herself and thinks that she should learn from Noa as she’s so negative. I agree so much. Lastly, they also watch the anime original parts, including the final episode, which Yuna herself describes as “like a yuri anime”. They’re not beating the allegations.

So this was more rewarding than I expected, and at 400 pages or so it’s good bang for your buck. It’s not all moe cuteness. Just… mostly.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

I admit that I am sort of ready to give up? Not on Kuma Bear, mind you, it continues to be fine, if somewhat obsessed with its ongoing parade of children adoring Yuna. But look, this site gradually morphed into a thing where I only review light novels on it a few years back, and the one thing that’s been hardest for me to learn is that not all light novels need to have a full review. This especially goes for the slow-life ones that end up going on forever and ever, like this or Smartphone. And as readers have figured out, there are only so many ways I can say “boy, Yuna sure hates people praising her” or “gosh, this series loves to tease yuri fans while pointing out how not gay everyone is”. (Actually, this volume seems to be leaning more towards everyone staying single forever – the series’ almost complete lack of men doesn’t help.) But let’s roll up our sleeves, because I did see one thing this time I can talk about.

After the battle against the orochi in the Land of Wa, we get the traditional post-arc cooldown. Yuna is gifted a mansion to reward her for her efforts in saving the country, and the mansion being filled with hot springs leads to to actually accept the reward for once. She then grabs Fina, Shuri and Luimin and brings them over there for a lakeside barbecue as well as going around the shops, eating Wanese food and dressing up in kimonos – all things Yuna is strangely familiar with given she’s not supposed to be from Wa. On returning home, she decides to write a new volume of the children’s book series, and spends the rest of her time giving out souvenirs and candy. But there’s a competition in a country Yuna hasn’t been to yet, and Shia’s part of it, so Yuna and Noa go to cheer her on.

There were two interesting points this time around. First, Yuna’s love of natto, and the fact that the natives of Wa were baffled that she knew about it, almost caused her to give away her otherworldly origins. Yuna’s backstory, to everyone but Yuna and the reader, is wrapped in mystery, and she wants to keep it that way, partly because I think she doesn’t want to remember it very often. We do see her wish that she could invent Coke and anime so she could go back to being a shut-in, but I think Yuna’s grown past that now. The other interesting thing is the fourth picture book, where Yuna continues to rewrite her own reality to make it more palatable. Not only is she a literal bear in this series, but she also smooths things out and makes them more narratively easy to understand. The author has already been doing this with the novels themselves – it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a whiff of the sexual assault that plagued the earlier books. Yuna is not quite a self-insert, but the line is vague.

I’m not sure what will happen next, but I do know that what we’re getting next is another short story collection. Till then, this continues to be for fans who hope that when they grow up Fina and Yuna will marry. Keep hope alive, I guess.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Sigh. So not only does this volume retread a lot of ground I talked about last time when I was reviewing Kuma Bear (Yuna is a big softie but hates when people call attention to it), it’s also a huge battle volume, which means that 2/3 of it is made up of fights that I also can’t really review very well. It is nice to see Yuna having to think about various ways to try to defeat the fire orochi head, whose strengths actually block Yuna to a degree, and seeing her try some stuff that, back in Vol. 2 or so, was an immediate win move end up doing nothing whatsoever. She’s having to think on her feet and be clever, even though a lot of this is just “I can do things everyone else can’t because of the bear costume”. And we get a flashback showing how the orochi was first sealed, which is interesting if you’re invested in the fox spirit. Which… I wasn’t really. So yeah, still struggling.

Sorry, cover art fans, but Yuna spends barely any time in the white side of the suit this book – this is powerful, punching things Yuna through and through. Everyone realizes that the orochi’s seals are breaking, especially now that Mumulute shows up and it starts to really try to break its binding. The answer is to just fight and actually defeat it this time, but the orochi has four heads and its huge body, and even Yuna can’t duplicate herself. So Shinobu and Kagari also get involved, and unfortunately Shinobu is injured and has to be sent to the penalty box (the penalty box being Yuna’s home, where Fina is called over to nursemaid her). As for Sakura and Luimin, two of the latest girls to revolve around Yuna’s “10-year-old girls seem to dog me” orbit, well, they can at least try to stop it waking up for as long as possible. Still, in the end, it takes a bear. A bear who really, really does not want a reward.

So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Yuna hates being praised and deflects attempts to credit her for anything, saying she just wants to live a life where she’s not viewed as the hero. That’s getting increasingly difficult, and it doesn’t help that Kagari (who, by the end of this book, is also in the body of a little girl – The Author’s Barely Disguised Fetish is always the weakest part of this series) is doing the same thing. On the bright side, I did enjoy seeing Luimin and Sakura bond immediately, to the point where they vow to travel the world together once they grow up, and it might even eventually be yuri if I thought the author was ever going to do anything of the sort, which I don’t. And we got to see Fina pouting and hitting Yuna with her fists like an anime cliche. That was cute.

We’re only a little behind Japan now, which has Vols. 20 and 20.5 out. Next time should see the start of a new arc, and no doubt new things for me to complain about. But I’ll read it. Yuna is as Yuna does.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Well, I got my wish. Sort of. Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, like My Next Life As a Villainess, has a problem. It has cultivated a large yuri audience it absolutely does not want, but it cannot afford to piss that audience off too much as they’re one of the big reasons that it’s a success. It doesn’t help that Yuna has accumulated a “harem” of underage girls, which yes is the main draw of the series (the moe aesthetic, I mean), but also makes the yuri a bit creepy. Still, here at least we do have Yuna straight up saying that she isn’t interested in men. Unfortunately, she says it to a girl her own age who has expressed attraction to her, and Yuna’s response is “just because I’m not interested in men doesn’t mean I’m interested in you”. Honestly, as with many other series of this type, Yuna seems to be fairly asexual in general. But hey, a bone thrown to the fans. Now back to beating people up with magic bear powers.

As everyone predicted, Yuna’s discovery from the cliffhanger to 17 ends up being the Land of Wa that the author has threatened us with for so long. She heads over there on her bears, and finds it pretty much is just Japan in a vaguely fantasy setting. And I do mean vaguely. She can buy tatami mats, stay at a hotel with futons and a hot spring, and get artisanal candy shaped like animals (the bears have sold out, for some reason). Then she goes to the adventurer’s guild, there’s a quest to take out a dangerous predator that no one wants to take except her… and a very suspicious ninja girl named (try to contain your shock) Shinobu, who insists on accompanying her. Is there some secret plot going on? And does it involve trying desperately to break Yuna out of her shell of “whatever, I don’t care, I’m headed back”?

I was reminded the other day of a series I dropped .like a hot potato a while back, Wandering Witch. It has quite a bit in common with Kuma Bear, in that it stars talented people who try not to get involved in things but end up doing so anyway, and who have a large element of selfishness to their personality. For Yuna, though, this is mostly a front. When she finds out what’s happening to the country, and that it’s been predicted by the country’s prophet, she’s still fairly apathetic. But when she finds the prophet is a 10-year-old girl whose parents have died… naturally, she decides to help. Yuna rarely thinks about her parents much anymore, but there is a definite subtext of “kids need to be allowed to be kids, even when they are orphans and have to grow up fast, no one deserves the childhood I had”. She is a surrogate big sister to every girl she meets, and she will move heaven and earth for them. And then deny she did anything special.

This is a multi-part arc, so I assume next time will have lots of fighting. Till then, enjoy another review where I overanalyze a title that really doesn’t deserve it.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

We all have things we’d like to read in our favorite series. Usually they’re things that aren’t going to happen until near the end, such as a romantic couple getting together. It could also be the climax of a series of subplots that is building far too slowly and meticulously. And I have these desires about Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, only I suspect that I’m never going to get what I want. I want to meet Yuna’s parents. I want to flash back to her life in Japan before this one. I know that her parents are going to be absolutely the worst – they are, after all, the ones who, after Yuna offered them a ton of money to get out of her life, took the money and got out of her life. But they’ve still clearly affected Yuna deeply, and I think a lot of her current attitude towards almost everyone in Crimonia and other areas is due to this. It can’t all be “LOL, she’s a NEET”, after all. Parental neglect is important too.

Still in the dwarf village, Yuna decides to go watch the trials and (naturally) ends up taking the trial herself, as she accidentally arrived about 8-9 hours too early. Unfortunately for the dwarves, the trials basically are designed to match the level of the person taking them, which means Yuna’s is insanely difficult – and also mentally wearing, as she’s forced into combat situations that are poor matches for her, then forced to face herself (see the cover art), and finally forced to rescue Fina from a deathtrap, something which causes her to flip out a bit. After doing this and getting the pots and pans she came there for, she returns to Crimonia – with Lilyka, who’s basically being told to stop being tsundere and go get her man, something she finds easier said than done. The rest of the book is basically “Yuna does cute things”, at least till the end, when she’s on the floating island and sees a remote ship. Are we finally getting to fantasy Japan?

As always, the most interesting scenes in the book are the ones where Yuna is thrown off her game. Facing a version of herself is less interesting, though I was amused at her realization that it’s annoying to fight someone who does this. More interesting was the last battle. I suspected that it wasn’t the real Fina (somethng which is later confirmed), but Yuna doesn’t know that, and seeing her caught in the old “water slowly filling a tank” trap causes her to completely panic – which is, of course, the point of the trials, which remind the person taking them that remaining cool in battle is what you need to do, even if your loved ones are in danger. Yuna here basically admits she sees Fina as her younger sister, which is fine by me, as Fina’s still ten. I do wish Yuna would stop insisting she’s not gay every volume, but that’s a separate issue, and it’s not unique to this author.

If you enjoy picking through “cute bears doing overpowered things” series to find the nugget or two of depth, this sure is that.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Every few volumes, the series needs to have Yuna go somewhere she’s never been before, partly because otherwise the series would get even more boring than it already tends to be (sorry, Yuna, I really don’t care about you making omelettes from giant eggs), but also so that the audience can remember that a girl walking around in a bear onesie is not normal and does, in fact, make people think Yuna is either a child or deeply weird. They’re not wrong on the second part, but the bear suit is, of course, absolutely essential for Yuna – and she can’t actually explain why. Some folks have seen obliquely that when Yuna is not in the suit (such as the beach scenes two books ago) she’s super weak, but I don’t think they’ve connected it to “the bear stuff gives her all her power”. Honestly, if this series ever ends, that may be the final boss. Someone who steals her bear suit/gear and forces her to rely on others.

After a few introductory chapters like “let’s make pressed flowers” or “let’s make ice cream”, Yuna decides to do something she’d been meaning to do for a while: go visit the dwarves’ village. She takes Fina, because shed get lonely otherwise, and ends up picking up Luimin from the elves’ village as well. (Elves and dwarves get along fine here, confusing Yuna, who is used to fantasy cliches.) While there, they also meet Jade’s party, who are there because Toya is finally going to get his mithril sword… or at least, he would be if the blacksmith didn’t reject him for not being good enough. As for Yuna, she’s busy buying pots and pans for everyone she knows, as well as talking with the mentor of the dwarf blacksmiths she knows, who is currently refusing to make swords.

It is interesting sometimes to imagine the audience for this series. It’s filled with cute girls, so you’d think that “guys who like to see cute girls” would be the #1. That said, the book really does like to hammer home how useless the guys in it are. Yuna sometimes forgets that Fina also has a stepdad in addition to her mom. Toya is basically a punching bag for everyone else in the cast until right at the end of the volume, and his story is still going to have to wait for the next book to get resolved. Is the book for yuri fans? The author is definitely writing in more yuri tease, with both Shia and Fina indicating they’d be very happy being Yuna’s bride. Unfortunately, like a lot of yuri tease series, Yuna is always there to say things like “but I don’t like girls that way” or “that’s not happening”. Is the book fans fans of grumpy 15-year-old girls in a bear suit who constantly worry about her flat chest? That seems most likely.

This book ends in the middle of the dwarf plot, so I’d expect the next book to resolve it. Till then, this sure was a volume of Kuma Bear.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Spoiler for my last review: she shrugged everything off. Yes, this author loves to play in the psychological trauma kiddie pool but knows which side his bread is buttered on, so instead of dealing with the possible dissociative idea of Yuna and “Miss Bear” being two distinct people, they have decided instead to just have Yuna feel vaguely uncomfortable about it for a bit and then get distracted by a giant floating island. This is one of the lighter and fluffier books in the series, which is unfortunate for me in that normally I’d have far less to write about, but there’s a bit more this time. The author has seen this series’ yuri fandom, and has decided they do not like it. In this volume, despite being propositioned by a girl her own age and having a mother offer her daughter up to Yuna for marriage, Yuna insists a) girl’s can’t get married, and b) she’s never getting married anyway. So if you had “ace Yuna” on your bingo card, congrats!

So yes, identity crisis is quickly forgotten, as the worst Yuna has to deal with in this book is the fact that she’s being forced to wear a different swimsuit every day to please the designer. She does various beach activities with the kids in this one, such as making a water slide, creating ice cream, or shooting off fireworks (without sound, alas). But the big news is the mysterious island, forbidden to go near, that appears and disappears randomly and has appeared once more. Yuna wants to explore that island, and unfortunately due to her lack of stealth Fina, Shuri, and Shia are along or the ride. The island ends up having historical interest, but also being a bit of a spoiler. Let’s just say there are monsters, and Yuna is tented as much as she ever is in this series (which is to say, not much). Then the vacation is over and it’s time to take everyone home.

I have to admit, taking Fina and Shuri to the island surprised me – Yuna is usually a bit more sensible than that. I get why they were taken along, as they totally would have tattled otherwise, and the goal here was to avoid having the “explore the island” secret come out. And yes, Yuna can just throw everyone into her basement via a bear door to play cards, so there’s no actual danger. But still… wait, why the hell am I complaining? This is a series where common sense is useless and you just have to accept we’re in the author’s strange mentality. This is also why Yuna is praised to the skies for giving all the 4-5-year-old orphan kids jobs with a paycheck, and vows to have more child labor in future. Yes, yes, fantasy world, orphans starve otherwise, but come on. At least she doesn’t buy any slaves. We have not quite reached that low point.

So yes, bear series is still “itself”, and aside from infuriating those who ship Yuna with… well, anyone… this is a typical volume in it. When do we get to go to “the land of Wa” anyway?

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

No series has quite managed to make me eat my words quite as much as Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, a group of books that is about an overpowered shut-in who wanders the land defeating powerful monsters and acquiring a string of little girls to follow her around and hero worship her. The start of the series balanced out the “cute girl doing OP things” vibe with some truly dark and weird plot points, with young girls being abducted, raped and killed, or Yuna having to repatriate a group of women whose families were murdered and who were *also* raped. To no one’s surprise, as this series got an anime, almost all of this was thrown out the window in favor of “let’s watch Yuna finance a bakery” and similar things. But it still occasionally dips its toe in darkness. Last time I was grumpy about Yuna’s pathological avoidance of praise being treated like a quirk of her personality rather than a genuine problem. In this new volume, it’s clear the author knows that, and is sending us to dark places again.

It doesn’t really seem that way at first. The majority of the book is Yuna coming back home after her trip to the land of giant scorpions. She presents a “Mission Accomplished” to the King, then relaxes in her bear house, only just remembering to tell Fina and the others that she’s back. She then prepares for the massive vacation to Mileela, which by the time it starts has about fifty people going (mostly the orphanage who are Yuna’s main child labor force… let’s not go there right now) and requires Yuna to create not only a big bear bus but two bear minibuses, powered through her mana. This requires her, on the journey there, to switch from her normal black bear outfit to the reversed white bear outfit, as she’s going to be using mana like a sieve. This leads to people not recognizing her at first, which merely irritates her… for now.

So yeah, once they get to the ocean and the beach, Yuna has to give in and remove the bear costume. She’s done this before at a palace function, but that was mostly filled with people who had no idea who she was anyway, so it was mostly her own personal safety that worried her. Same with the school festival. Here she has a bigger existential crisis: when she walks around as Yuna, dressed in a swimsuit and without her bear things, almost no one recognizes her. Literally, they stand next to her and ask Fina where she is. Fina, bless her, seems to be the exception to this rule. (Note that everyone, once they DO see it’s Yuna, immediately praise her pretty and petite body, but Yuna being Yuna, she doesn’t take this as praise at all.) At first Yuna is merely annoyed, but as it goes on and on, and as she attempts to do normal things (like teaching girls to swim) and failing as she has NO STAMINA without the bear suit, she gets more and more depressed. As she states to herself, no one is friends with Yuna, they’re all friends with “the bear”. The bear is the one that does everything. The bear is their savior. The bear is their friend. Yuna? Yuna is just an out-of-shape shut in.

Frustratingly, the book goes from Yuna’s spiral of depression to the usual end of book side stories, so we’ll need to wait till next time. Fortunately, as this book ran a bit late, next time is next month. Join me then to see if we get to see Yuna on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or if she simply shrugs everything off. Again.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by M.B. Hare.

Generally speaking, long-running light novels tend to come in two different varieties of some sort. The first is “there is a definite end goal in mind, but we can drag this on forever if it stays popular”. This applies to most romantic comedies where the end point is “he chooses girl X”, or to fantasy books which have a save the world sort of goal, where the world getting saved is the endpoint. The others are the ones where we create a world or a situation and then just write infinite variations on the situation, with no expected end beyond “and the adventure continues…” Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is definitely the second kind of book. No one expects Yuna’s past in Japan to ever be relevant again beyond going to this fantasy world’s Japan analogue. Likewise, this isn’t the kind of book where it’s going to pair Yuna romantically with anyone – not seriously, anyway. Unfortunately, this does mean that after a while it’s hard to find a real reason to carry on. Yuna’s not going to change.

The ten-year-old girl showing off her legs on the front cover (sigh…) is Karina, the daughter of the local lord of Dezelt, where Yuna has been sent. The water gem that stops their land becoming a sand-infested monster home has cracked and needs to be replaced, and fortunately Yuna’s water gem she got from killing the Kraken is just what they need. Unfortunately, for magic reasons, only the lord’s wife (who is pregnant) or Karina can guide folks through the labyrinthine pyramid to get to where the gem needs to go… and Karina dropped the magic map in the labyrinth. Karina, wracked with guilt, has been trying to find a group of adventurers who will help her find the map again, but you’d need someone super powerful who has a soft spot for ten-year-old girls, and where in this series can we find anyone like that?

Forgive me for saying things I have said about ten times over the course of this series, but Yuna seems to have a tremendous issue with accepting praise. To the point where even casual people who have just met her see that it’s a problem. It’s pathological by this point, and even when she’s forced to accept rewards for saving the entire town, she still finds a way to quietly only take half of it. It’s frustrating to me because, as I hinted above, I don’t think this is going anywhere. The author has mostly dropped the darker aspects of the series as they’ve gone along, so we’re unlikely to hear more about Yuna’s past. And I don’t think we’re reaching any sort of crisis point where Yuna has a breakdown or admits that she has to change herself. The only way I can see that happening would be if it comes from Fina, but Fina’s not in this book. Instead we have a Finalike, who is nice enough but frankly is another earnest ten-year-old girl with a crush on Yuna to stack onto the pile of earnest ten-year-old girls with a crush on Yuna.

I am aware that I’m not the audience for this series, and that it’s squarely in the “Cute Girls Doing OP Things” genre. But man, don’t use psychological trauma as your heroine’s one character trait.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda.

As you can probably tell by the cover art, the entire first half of the book sees Yuna outside of the bear suit, dressed in a school uniform so as not to attract the attention she did as a bear last time. (She still has the bear paws and feet, just in case.) And what ends up happening is one of the more fascinating psychological examinations of a character I’ve seen in some time. Yuna, throughout the series, has complained about having to wear the bear outfit all the time, as well as the fact that people can’t recognize her if she’s not dressed like that. In fact, that’s a running gag here. But as she walks around the festival looking like a cute and pretty 15-year-old girl, and more and more people stare at her, the reader starts to realize how much the bear suit is a shield she uses to avoid attention. Yes, she’s the most conspicuous thing ever, but she’s conspicuous as a bear. Yuna as a real girl is still “one step away from a NEET”.

Yuna and her group are ready for the second day of the festival, this time walking around it with Princess Teilia, who has been shooed away from her class’s booth for attracting TOO much attention. She realizes that Yuna has the same problem, so forces her to remove her bear suit and attend the festival that day as a regular girl. They watch plays, concerts, and sword dances. And they also watch a sexist knight captain trying to destroy the women attempting to be knights, which requires Yuna, bear suit or no, to fight back and teach him a lesson. After the festival ends and they all go back home, Yuna is asked by the King to take the mana crystal she got from slaying the Kraken to a desert oasis that desperately needs it, and so she moves south, fighting hornets and running into old friends along the way.

I joked on Twitter that you should take a shot every time Yuna deflects or denies when anyone calls her cute, or pretty, or is obviously staring at her in astonishment. The series rarely looks back at Yuna’s past in Japan, and I don’ really expect this to ever be anything but a character tic of sorts for her, but it really shows off how little socialization she has before meeting Fina. We’ve seen her being blase about her astonishing OP skills and deeds before, and calling acts of kindness and heroism “common sense”, but here we see how viscerally uncomfortable she is with being the center of attention, or having the idea that anyone could be attracted to her. Even when we get the “comedy” scene where she has to have her measurements taken for a swimsuit, which is filled with “lol I have small breasts and hate it” patter, there’s a sense that Yuna’s bear suit is a mask that she can use to hide from everything when she wears it. (I don’t think it’s quite at the level of “Yuna hates herself” per se. But Yuna doesn’t like herself all that much either.

Again, for the most part this series is “cute girls doing cute things”, and fans of that will be quite happy. But I do admire the jagged undercurrents in these waters, and though I don’t expect any emotional payoff, it serves to make me more interested than I might otherwise be.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by M.B. Hare.

As Kuma Bear has gone on, and gotten more attention, and particularly when it got the anime, the author has been slowly but subtly erasing its past a bit. I had remarked in my reviews of the first few books that one of the more interesting things about the series was the way that it would balance “cute girls doing bear things” plotlines with some very dark storylines. This short story volume features stories that were bonuses with in-store purchases and also some new stories, and also summarizes the events of Books 1-9. The dark storylines are not even mentioned in the summaries, and have zero stories featuring them. The author realizes that this world being terrible and needing Yuna to save it is not really why people want to read this series, and honestly that decision may be for the best. The undercurrent of “and that evil guy has also been raping those women” was always uncomfortable, and as for Yuna’s parents, well, I don’t think we’ll ever return to Japan, so we don’t need to care. In the meantime, there is bear.

As noted, these are stories that were originally either exclusives you got when you bought the books at a specific store, online short stories, or short stories from the original webnovel. There’s also ten or so new stories exclusive to this volume. One or two of them have Yuna’s POV, but for the most part they’re exactly what the short stories at the end of the main volumes are: a chance to see the same events from the perspective of different characters. There’s Fina’s stress about meeting nobles and royalty, Cliff’s stress about the fact that everything Yuna does changes the world, everyone’s stress at not being able to get the ever-so-popular bear books or bear plushies. There are no real revelations in this book except the most obvious one, which is that Yuna is less of a teen in a bear suit and more of an Act of God.

It really gets hammered home in this book how strange and inexplicable Yuna is to everyone who encounters her. Her desire to not attract attention to herself, discussed in previous books, is laughable here – any time she appears, she immediately does something that makes sure no one will ever forget about her. She’s not even an adventurer here: she’s a savior, changing everyone’s lives for the better (except perhaps the aggrieved Cliff, who ends up having to clean up after her when she nonchalantly does things like digging a tunnel through the mountain). We also get a bit more depth to minor characters like the guild masters, etc, though again, it’s only a tiny bit more. The problem with short stories that are exclusives and not part of the main work is that they can’t actually impact the main work – they have to be entirely optional.

So yes, you can probably skip this, but at the same time, if you’re already enjoying Kuma Bear, you’re probably the sort of person who’d enjoy this anyway. Also, it’s pretty long – there’s 50 short stories here, and the book itself is almost 400 pages. Inoffensive fun.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by M.B. Hare.

Another light and fluffy volume, though we are given a hint of the next major villain as Ellelaura has a noble who hates her… and hates Yuna, albeit for different but related reasons. He’s clearly going to be an antagonist at some point, but is merely shown off here in order to provide SOME drama in a book that otherwise meanders even more than a volume of Kuma Bear normally does. As for Yuna, she’s still doing her best to be blase about everything, but it’s getting harder, especially when it gets shoved in her face by multiple people that all the things she’s done, such as the tunnel, or the various new dishes, or taking out an entire noble family, cause lots of problems for the King and other nobles afterward… problems that Yuna herself has remained blissfully unaware of. That said, despite her feeling a bit of guilt over this, I don’t expect ‘The Bear Becomes a Civil Servant” to be a subplot here. Yuna is who she is.

The main plot of this volume is that the Academy is having a school festival, and Shia would like Yuna to come. This ends up roping in Noa, Fina, and Shuri as well, with Yuna acting as their bodyguard. Which, of course, means she has to walk around in the bear suit, which embarrasses her more than usual this time around, as the festival feels very much like the ones she… did not go to back in Japan. Honestly, most of the second half of the book is Yuna getting it ground into her face how much she is NOT a normal teenage girl. Yuna helps Shia’s group by suggesting they make cotton candy, an unknown quantity in this land. She also meets Flora’s older sister Princess Teilia, who has been someone upset at the rest of the Royal Family for hearing all about this amazing bear girl but never meeting her.

If that doesn’t sound like a plot, that’s because it isn’t. I’m happy everyone gets to have fun, but the main drawback to this volume is that there just isn’t any conflict at all. Previous volumes had a contract between Yuna’s fluffy antics and some surprisingly dark storylines, but that does make this one seem a bit shallow. I also urge Fina’s parents and Yuna to do something about that girl’s self-esteem, as there’s “I am modest” and then there’s this. Even as Fina shows off how she’s the best monster butcher in the land (and yes, how to butcher a monster is a booth at the festival), she still acts as if she’s going to be thrown in the dungeon the moment she makes a wrong move. She needs some confidence.

We’ve only finished the first day of the festival, so I assume it will continue into the 12th volume. But before, that… yes, it’s 11.5, featuring short stories posted to the web, original short stories, designs form the artist, and more. So I guess we’ll leave Yuna is festival mode for a few more months.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by M.B. Hare.

This is a lighter volume of Kuma Bear, despite the threat of the destruction of an ancient sacred tree. You know Yuna’s got this, though the fight is difficult enough that she has to switch from black bear onesie to white bear onesie, and she ends up fairly exhausted. Speaking of that switch… Kuma Bear is, I think, mostly written for a male audience, but I also think we’re supposed to go “aww” at the antics more than “Cor!”. Yuna has to strip to change her costume, and there’s a shot of her in her underwear. But it’s not particularly sexy, and the narrative is far more concerned with Yuna’s childish bear panties and her reaction to anyone who finds out about them. Yuna has an image that she wants to keep up of her as a cool lone wolf (or rather lone bear) sort, but it’s constantly undone by the reality of her being the big sister to 11 million kids and also having older than she looks issues. Is embarrassment fanservice?

Arriving at the elf village allows the author to bring out a whole mess of fantasy novel elf tropes to make fun of, from their supposed perfect hidden tracking skills (which Yuna spots immediately) to the fact that even “grandfather” looks, at most, about 40 years old. The barrier nis weakening, however, and it turns out the problem is that the elves’ sacred tree has been infested by a parasite, who is slowly killing it and weakening said barrier. So it’s up to the elves to fix things… along with Yuna, who can enter the protective ward that no one but elves can, because, you know, OP bear. There’s also other dangerous monsters to fight, some of which might actually kill off an elf or two… but probably not, as this is not one of the dark Kuma Bear books. The worst we’ll see is Yuna worrying about her secrets.

Yuna has, for the most part, remained quiet on her origins and the basis of her awesome powers, not even telling Fina, the one person she’s closest to. I had wondered briefly if she might open up a bit to the elves here, given that they sign a contract that tortures them with unstoppable laughter if they reveal her secret, but no, it turns out she’s just telling them about her bear gates so she can set one up here, and her bear phone so that the village can communicate with Sanya and Yuna when they want to. It doesn’t feel like she’s revealing much here, but I get it. Yuna hates making ties with other people, but does it anyway, and she also hates it when people praise her because she doesn’t think of any of it as HER. The Bear Suit is the OP heroine. She’s just the girl inside it. Which is an interesting psychological trauma to dig into, but I doubt we’re going there soon.

If you read Kuma Bear, you’ll enjoy this. If you don’t, we;ll, cute but OP bear girl slice-of-life again.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by M.B. Hare.

Well, I did wonder in my last review if Yuna could solve problems by hitting things again soon. More to the point, we’re back at the dark end of this series again. Japanese media in general does not shy away from putting dark things into a show that’s ostensibly for children, as anyone who’s seen the end of the first season of Sailor Moon can tell you. That said, Kuma Bear is clearly written more for light novel adults than it is for kids the same age as the girls in it. As such, it can be very surprising to see things like “please come with me to investigate my master’s torture and murder chamber”. I mean, Non Non Boyori rarely deals with the death of everyone’s entire family, nor does K-On! have a string of child kidnappings. But something about “isekai”, putting something in a fantasy world that is not “modern”, makes the authors want to show us just how dark things can get. We’ve seen it here before. It’s still dissonant.

We wrap up the plot from the previous volume here. The party went well, so our evil noble’s evil grandson decides to solve the problem by having Misa kidnapped, and the kidnapper also punches Fina and Noa in the face while he’s at it. To be fair, evil kid’s dad is also kidnapping children of merchants as blackmail. That said, we really haven’t seen Yuna as mad as she is at the start of this book. She’s so furious that the entire city is terrified of her and her two bears tearing through going after the nobles, and its only Ellelaura that manages to stop her enough that she does not commit murder… something that Yuna, as per usual, only really recognizes and dwells on after the fact. The noble house here is pretty much what Yuna feared after playing so many cliches games and reading all these light novels like … well, like this one. The side stories are 100% serious, dealing with a maid who was blackmailed into working for the noble and her current mental state, which is not great.

After this, we have scenes of Yuna finally getting her ingredients from Wa and making mochi. Because of course we do, it wouldn’t be Kuma Bear without switching from serious to happy on a dime. We get warnings about the dangers of eating too much sugar, and we get piles and piles of stuffed bears given out. (Yuna seems to finally have come to terms with the bear onesie and her bear lifestyle in general.) The second half of the book has the guildmaster’s little sister Luimin come to get them because there’s a crisis at the elf village… a crisis which will presumably wait for Book 10, as the rest of this book is the journey there, which involves a group of adventurers and merchants who appear to be crooked, as well as Yuna showing off that crossing a raging river at high tide is nothing to a girl and her bears.

If you enjoyed the light novels, this will please you just fine. If you enjoyed the anime… be aware they cut the darker bits. And if the mood swings bother you… please just bear with it.