my big sister lives in a fantasy world

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

We did not break up, we are merely taking a break from each other. I wasn’t fired, I chose to do other things. My light novel series isn’t cancelled, I just have a new idea I want to work on. I will totally get back to it. In due course. At the appropriate juncture. In the fullness of time. Sometimes you have people saying one thing but hearing the subtext behind it, and that’s sort of how I felt about the end of Big Sis Fantasy World, whose epilogue and afterword even hint at this by talking about “And the adventure continues”, one of the stock bullet points you see on the final page of a series that has been cancelled (usually in Shonen Jump). To a degree this is intentional, as like so many other things in this series the author is making fun of the genre it’s also swimming in. But unfortunately, this sort of thing only works if you’re thinking “Damn, I want to see what happens next”, rather than “Oh thank God.”

I think that my main issue with this series, with is taken to eleven here on purpose, is Yuichi’s inability to really grow or change because he has no need. All the training from Mutsuko happened before the start of the series, and made him who he is today. Which is fine, but he makes a really crap protagonist as a result. And this is in a book that even features a villain who is a parody of harem protagonists. Yuichi’s actions at the start of the book frustrate Mutsuko, which is unsurprising, but they also frustrate the reader, who wants to see him be proactive by choice rather than because he’s blackmailed into it or just thinks “oh well, guess it’s time to fight”. For an author that loves Haruhi Suzumiya so much, They’ve certainly missed the point of Kyon, who had an entire book set in an alternate world to come to terms with the fact that he IS having fun and SHOULD be proactive.

The book isn’t terrible. The prose reads fine, events happen quickly and make sense. Even the semi-incomprehensible plot involving the demon god starts to make a bit more sense as it hits its climax, though it’s mostly there to give us a good final battle. (Mutsuko, sadly, is sidelined because she’s mad at her brother – I kept waiting for Yuichi to briefly be defeated to teach him a lesson, but it never happened. Instead Mutsuko is beaten bloody… offscreen.) There are a few amusing gags, though once again the series seems to regard its non-regular cast as little more than cannon fodder – in fact, it gleefully points it out. If you’ve been reading Big Sis Fantasy World all along, you should read this too, as it provides a conclusion to the series, even one that is open ended and resolves nothing. But I’m not remotely holding my breath waiting for Book 8.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

This was one of the first series that J-Novel Club ever put out, and I recall being quite pleased with the ridiculousness of the first volume. Since then, however, J-Novel has released much better and much more ridiculous series, and Big Sis feels like it’s now running second to last in the marathon, just trying to finish the course so it doesn’t get extra laps from the teacher. The plot that’s been shoehorned in the last couple of volumes gets a lot more exposition, but sadly that doesn’t make it more interesting, and I cannot help empathizing with Yuichi when the Chinese waitress girl starts to introduce her own convoluted backstory and he says “nope, not dealing with this”, so we never find out what it is. Fortunately, when it comes to actual confrontations with bad guys, the series is still pretty fun.

I was going to start this review by saying that the narrative is divided into two halves, but that’s not really true. The narrative is divided into about 7 sections, but the divisions are poor and they all melt together after a while. Natsuki, who was absent from the last book, is fleeing the titular evil god, and unfortunately does nothing in this book other than be a damsel who needs to be rescued, because she’s handicapped by trying not to actually be a serial killer anymore. Yuichi is busy training behind sacred shrines (and destroying sacred forests as he is not a hero who thinks about things) and learning important backstory, and we finally see how he got the ‘soul reader’ ability in the first place. And then we have the search for the Evil God’s body parts, which brings together a variety of heroes and villains in various melee battles, including the Little Apocalypse wannabe from the last cliffhanger (who proves more boring than I expected), led by the Evil God himself, who may need to be revived but this does not prevent him creating a body to walk around and be smug in.

As I said, the final part is the best, as the villain is very punchable, and it’s always nice seeing smug people get what’s coming to them. That said, honestly, Yuichi and Mutsuko are starting to get a bit smug themselves. Mutsuko has been absent from these pages for far too long, and her running commentary on the fight was the funniest part of it. I also liked the setup for the next volume, which goes into Mutsuko’s own powers, and how they affect Yuichi easily beating universe-shaking horrors with one punch. The difficulty is that the plot of this series has become so convoluted and hard to follow that it’s almost become the series it was supposed to be making fun of. The next volume is the final one in the series (the author says there may be more, but so far there isn’t), and I am slightly looking forward to the conclusion, but the Big Sister has long since worn out her welcome.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

Well, we’ve reached the 5th volume, which is usually around when a lot of light novel series decide to give us a series of interconnected short stories, and that’s the case here, as our heroes’ club advisor (who is the villain from the prior book, returned to be a counselor for Yuichi for reasons I won’t bother to get into as they’re stupid) explains that the other villains will probably have a rest period before they try to attack again and restart the main plot. Of course, Yuichi is who he is, so this doesn’t mean that his life becomes a normal romantic school comedy. Every week brings a fresh new series of supernatural things for him to punch, rivals to take down, and girls to rescue. Why? Well, because he is who he is, trained by his older sister.

As I’ve discovered with a lot of these short story books, the rule of thumb is that the longer the story, the better it is. This means the book gets better as it goes along, as the final two stories are definitely the longest and best. But it also means you start by wading through a lot of drek. The first story (and connected prologue) attempts to show us that Kanako and her writing career is still relevant to the plot, but I’m fairly sure that’s not the case – mostly it’s there to make fun of light novels. We then get a story of a yokai who tries to seduce men, but looks like a little girl, which at least keeps the lolicon jokes down to a mere 2-3 per page, but is otherwise meh. The third story introduces a friend/lackey of Mutsuko, who has new powers she wants to test on Yuichi. The main thrust of the story is that the girl is very fat, which Yuichi seeks to remind us of constantly. I was more amused by her constantly slipping into different types of over the top speech patterns – it reminded me of the otaku from Oregairu, and distracted me from the endless fat comments. The other yokai stories are so dull I’ve already forgotten them.

The last two stories, though, are decent, and help to make the book at least get a low passing grade. The story with Yoriko attracting the attention of a delinquent, and then a yakuza with a thousand men at his command, is merely an excuse to see how ridiculous things can get, which honestly is why I read this series in the first place, so I was quite pleased – they got very ridiculous. Also, their mother is Kasumi Tendo – I was very disappointed she didn’t say “Ara, ara”. The final story deals with spirits, and whether Yuichi can punch them with his manly fists of justice (answer: of course he can). It’s more of a hodgepodge than the previous story, seeming content to throw plot ingredients into a nabe pot and see what comes out, but it was also fun, even if the ending was slightly predictable (I say slightly only because I guessed the wrong ghost).

The cliffhanger may be the most interesting part of the book (which doesn’t speak well of it), seeming to introduce Yuichi’s next major foe, a protagonist from a different world who honestly reminds me of the hero from Little Apocalypse. (Boy, wouldn’t that be a crossover?) Also, don’t think I didn’t notice Natsuki simply vanishing midway through the book. We’ve only got two more to go in this series, so keep reading if you’re a fan. Otherwise, skip it.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

I will save my objections for later in the review, so let me start by saying that a lot of this book is fun as usual. The author is getting more blatant in his Haruhi rip-offs, from the title of this volume to the fact that the villain is disappointed at Yuichi’s proactive personality and says she wants someone who says “yare yare” all the time, and it’s still funny. Mutsuko gets a lot less to do here than she normally does, but is still amusing in a “if I start to take her seriously she will be a Cthulian horror’ sort of way. Aiko and Yoriko make a good double act, and I’m amused at people saying Aiko’s not as much of a threat in the ‘love interest’ category as she’s too passive. And the overarching plot, which looks like it will be the core of the rest of the series, is not all that bad, taking the metatextual Haruhi stuff and trying to spin it in a dramatic way.

But enough of that, let’s move on to Kanako, who gets the spotlight here at last. I admit I had been misreading her in the first couple volumes as something of an airhead type, but now it becomes apparent that it’s more ‘withdrawn from reality’. And more to the point, Kanako has suicidal thoughts, and the book begins with her attempting to kill herself (it’s when she first meets Mutsuko and Yuichi). I will be fair, this scene works quite well. Mutsuko’s flip “that’s boring!” grates, but her solution, although ludicrous, teaches an important lesson, one that I think Kanako grasps. No, the trouble I have with Kanako’s subplot comes later in the book. Her relationship with her mother is written in a completely serious, realistic way, with no parodic elements at all, and the scene where she sees her, happy with her new family, is devastating. Having the villain take credit for her entire past, including her mother wanting a son so much that it poisoned her entire relationship with her child, is frankly awful and makes light of Kanako’s pain.

As for the climax of the book, Yuichi pays some lip service to the fact that you can’t just magically fix a suicidal person’s thoughts with a few well-intentioned words, but then he goes ahead and does it anyway. And Kanako is now added to the love interest pile, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we aren’t really going to touch on her problems again. It’s maddening in many ways, and one reason I find it hard to fully embrace this series – if it’s going to be a parody of Haruhi and similar series, it shouldn’t be using darker subplots like this one and the kidnapped girls one from Book 3, and if it does use the serious plots it should commit to them seriously and not handwave it away with the power of Yuichi’s GAR. And so I’m left with feelings of ambivalence. I do hope the next book uses Mutsuko more, as I find the series at its most intriguing when it’s examining her incredibly broken mindset.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

After three volumes, I’m still not quite sure how seriously I should be taking this series. Based on the premise and what actually happens in the books, you’d think the answer would be ‘not seriously at all’. And that’s probably the right answer, given the sheer amount of ridiculous things going on here. This is a parody of a certain melancholic series, and as a result is going to be over the top. At the same time, this is also the “this was a success, please expand on the plot and backstory a bit” volume, so we start to try to understand why Mutsuko is the way she is, and why Yuichi woke up one day seeing ‘roles’ over people’s heads. It’s a worthy goal, I suppose, but does mean you get a lot of wordy exposition at the start of the book, and if you think about it too hard it doesn’t really explain much at all.

The story picks up where we left off, with the club (and younger sister, who is there just because) heading off to a remote island, where Mutsuko has planned survival training. The remote island is a bit blatant, to the point where the characters spend several pages discussing the Haruhi equivalent without actually naming it. Once they get there, after conveniently jettisoning the minor characters, they find themselves drawn into a cult conspiracy to sacrifice virgins in order to resurrect an alien who is being worshipped as a god by the local anthropomorphic villagers. Yuichi, along with Natsuki, his serial killer-turned-love interest, is sidelined from the sacrificing for the most part, which is likely a relief, as when he does arrive to confront the God, he ends up one-shot killing it. In between these events, we get Aiko worrying about her vampiric heritage, Yoriko vacillating about how incestuous she really is, and Mutsuko being both obnoxious and disturbing at the same time.

When the book is being as light and frothy as this synopsis makes it sound, it’s excellent. Yuichi’s deadpan “well, whatever” reaction to events is shared by others in the cast now, and makes the whole thing less ridiculous and overpowered than it would sound if it was written in a more grandiose manner. Much as the series is riffing on Haruhi (to the point where much of the exposition discusses the idea that certain people can influence the world so that it obeys their whims, with the implication that Mutsuko is one such person), Mutsuko and Yuichi are only superficially similar to Haruhi and Kyon. Where the book falters a bit for me is when it does try to take itself too seriously. Kanako’s discussion about why she likes isekai stories hints at a much darker take on her character than I’d expected, and given how little she matters in the books to date it feels like pure setup and nothing else. Also, if you’re going to mock the “the sacrifices have to be virgins” cliche, don’t follow through with the “the non-virgins were raped and killed” part of that. You can’t mock your cliche and eat it too. That left a bad taste in my mouth.

In the end, this is an enjoyable series of books, but I find I’m enjoying the metatext a bit more than the text. the series walks a fine line between deconstructing this sort of light novel schtick and just going along with it. So far it holds up, but it needs to realize that dropping more serious content into the middle of it may be harder than initially thought. We’ll see what happens next – judging by its subtitle, the fourth book looks to double down on the Haruhi comparisons.

By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

The second volume of a series like this one was always going to be tricky. The seeming big reveal of the first book was that Yuichi, the supposed “average high school student” protagonist you get in these sorts of harem stories, was not remotely average. In fact, given the oddballs we saw in the first book, I had mentioned that the closest we had to a normal person in the cast was Aiko, who happened to be a vampire but was otherwise the fairly typical “shy cute girl” stereotype. Of course, as we find in this second volume, Aiko is far from normal either, even if she towers over the other eccentrics in her family in that regard. “Half-Baked Vampire” is your first impression, and the book tries hard to make it stick at the end, but I’m not buying it.

I’d argue this book isn’t as good as the first. The character of Yuichi’s younger sister Yoriko seems to be added for the sole reason that series like these always have little sisters who love their big brother just a little too much, and she doesn’t play any role in the plot besides getting jealous of Aiko and being too clingy. (You’d think she was the “Little Sister” in the second part of the subtitle, but no, as we find out, that is not the case.) There’s a lot of rambling discussion of the nature of murder and various other thought experiments by Mutsuko, whose tendency to exposit whenever it’s needed is her worst character trait. Girl who likes isekai continues to get so little to do that I can’t even remember her name. And poor Natsuki, the villain of the first book, is now reduced to playing the straight man role that Aiko played in the first book, as Aiko is too busy being the heroine.

Where the book succeeds is in analyzing the plot and character tropes you find in “Middle School Syndrome” types and, if not exactly deconstructing them, at least making you think about them in a different way. Honestly, much of the time the book reads as if it was written by Mutsuko herself, being the sort of self-insert you get from first time fanfic writers in their teens. Mutsuko may be the most interesting character in the series, which is fitting given she’s in the main title. I loved her discussion with Natsuki of those downbeat endings that seek to be dark for the sake of gritty realism, and how much she hates them – I agree 100%. At the same time, as Natsuki gradually realizes just what training Mutsuko has given her little brother, and how little it occurs to her to wonder if this is actually abusive or insane, we begin to see a dark core to Mutsuko, which I’m not sure if the author intends or not. She gets the final scene to herself, taking out the “power behind the throne” villain with a literal railgun, as suits her personality. She’s horrible and fascinating, which is fitting given that she’s an expy of Haruhi Suzumiya, who was the same.

In the end, this is still a silly harem series, but I enjoy it best when it’s taking a look at the stereotypes of such series, or asking us to examine the characters further to see how seriously we’re supposed to take them.