By Toshio Satou and Nao Watanuki. Released in Japan as “Tatoeba Last Dungeon Mae no Mura no Shonen ga Joban no Machi de Kurasu Youna Monogatari” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.
If this series were not as successful as it has been, I could easily see this being the final volume. It has a final volume sort of feel to it – no, it doesn’t wrap up anything romance wise, but if you think this series is going to end with him picking one of the girls I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. It does, however, wrap up almost all the plots that we’ve had bubbling under the last few books when the series hasn’t been trying to be wacky comedy (which is to say, rarely). Lloyd’s dark older brother figure Shouma finally is forced to realize that he’s projecting onto Lloyd heavily, and that sometimes people can in fact be nice. We get the backstory of Sou, which ties into the backstory we’ve seen before, with Alka and company in the past. And we get Lloyd being the equivalent of a high school student, unable to fill out that career survey.
The career survey is actually hitting cadets a little earlier than usual. mostly because the King is trying to figure out a way to get Lloyd and his daughter together – which might work better if Lloyd ever actually figured out that Marie is the princess. He does not. He’s also very unhappy with the survey, though, mostly as he’s not sure what he wants to do with his life. Cue a series of internships, each of which are basically an excuse for shenanigans from the entire cast. Unfortunately, while this is going on, Sou has bribed/blackmailed a noble into helping with what appears to be a curse on the military city, causing people to lose control of their emotions and lash out in a rage. Can our heroes figure out what’s behind this and stop it? And what job is Lloyd best suited for anyway?
I’m always a fan of times in broad comedies where the characters show a glimpse of self-awareness. This is hard to come by in this series, especially with everyone’s favorite yandere Selen. So it pleased me greatly when she got my favorite moment in the book, where she explains to Shouma (whose mental breakdown has been nudged along by Sou into “kill his friends before they betray him”) that the fact that she’s completely obsessed with Lloyd has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he was strong enough to undo the belt curse, or even that he saved her at all, but that he treated her like a normal person. Again, Lloyd is nice to a fault, and not in a standard light novel potato sort of way, but genuinely altruistic. Even Riho, who confesses she *was* planning to fleece Lloyd, admits that went out the window the more time she spent with him. He’s just a good kid.
So we’ve dealt with almost everything… maybe. We still have the queen who likes to dress in a rabbit costume, and I think she’s the next major arc. Till then, this book is always funny (particularly the narrative voice), but also has some slight narrative heft this time around.
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