By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.
After spending the last volume having all the weddings, it’s no surprise that we’re starting to see the fruits of that labor, so to speak. No, not Souma, although he does bed three more of his wives in this book (it cuts away before the sex, sorry). Instead we have Poncho, whose two wives are already pregnant, possibly as they are banging so much he is literally getting thin because of it, and Hal, whose childhood friend Kaede is also pregnant. Fortunately, the sex and babies is only a tiny part of this book, which is otherwise devoted to integrating its new problem children into the kingdom. Sometimes this is easy – everyone loves Ichiha, the milder climate means he’s healthier, and he’s written the most important book in years. Sometimes it’s a bit more difficult, as with Yuriga, who is not only a budding tsundere in training, but is also writing her brother every week telling him what King Souma is doing. What is Souma doing? Oh, y’know, starting bicycle message services, doing a Day of the Dead costume parade, staging mock battles to cool anime music. The usual.
As you can see from the cover, the other big plot twist is that Roroa has de-aged, and is now attending school. OK, no. In fact that is Lucy, a merchant’s daughter who adores Roroa and models herself after her, to the point where she’s nicknamed “mini-Roroa” in story. The other addition to the schoolchildren ranks is Velza, the dark elf that Hal rescued who has fallen madly in love with him. It’s a bit too soon for her to be going after anyone, though, so in the meantime she join’s Tomoe’s posse to get some learning. As always with this series, part of the fun is seeing not only how Souma introduces things like sewers and the like to Friedonia, nut also normal Japanese things – in this case the idea of school clubs, who recruit just as violently here as they do in Japan. The kids are cute, and we’re seeing them start to grow up – Tomoe has a bit of a crush on Ichiha, and is also trying to be more mature in general.
Arguably the more interesting part of the book is Souma giving a symposium on monsters and what they’ve learned due to Ichiha’s drawings and analysis. Publicly, it discusses classifying monsters more easily and studying them to try to help prevent things like stampedes and the like. Privately, things are more disturbing – evidence points to the monsters being ‘created” rather than born, and if that’s the case, then what about say, the beastmen, or the sea serpents, or any of the sentient races currently living reasonably peacefully with humans. The last thing Souma needs is adding racism to a world that’s trying to get rid of it. And this doesn’t even get into the potential war with the demons they have coming up. The back half of the book is, therefore, lots of talk, but it’s interesting talk.
This book takes place back in Friedonia, but apparently in the next one we go off to another country and meet some more new characters – because honestly the cast is too small, don’t you think? Till then, this gives the readers what they want, and I enjoyed it. Though for God’s sake, stop citing Machiavelli.
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