By MOJIKAKIYA and toi8. Released in Japan as “Boukensha ni Naritai to Miyako ni Deteitta Musume ga S-Rank ni Natteta” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Roy Nukia.
As I write this, we’re a little under halfway through the anime version of this series, which is quite enjoyable provided you don’t mid that it has the animation budget of one peanut. It’s clearly an advertisement for the books, which just wrapped up in Japan. Unfortunately, despite my saying in my review of 9 that 10 is the last, it turns out that I am wrong, and there’s another book on the way. That said, this definitely has the feeling of an epilogue, and I think that’s fine. Yes, one of the bad guys got away, but honestly I’m OK with ignoring him for now and concentrating entirely on everyone going back to Bel’s hometown and settling into in their new huge mansion to match all the daughters that Bel has accumulated throughout this series. And, of course, his new wife. As for Ange, well, she’s had a lot of dad lately, and believe it or not does love being an adventurer more, so she’s headed back to Orphen, with one extra team member.
We’re back in Turnera! There are lots of kids to play around with and train to hunt and fish. There’s Belgrieve and Satie, who are now married but honestly seem far too comfortable and passionless for others in their group, so a secret second wedding is decided on so we get a real love confession. And then there’s Mit. His mana is still an issue, and the best way to deal with it is to build a dungeon that uses the excess mana to spawn fiends that can then be killed by adventurers. Of course, the question is where to put a freshly built dungeon? Should it be Orphen, which has the guild and is used to this sort of thing? Or Bordeaux, which has been growing rapidly but could use a dungeon to become a city unto its own. Or… should it be Turnera? Can we really turn Bel’s sleepy village into a dungeon tourism industry?
There were some moments in this I really liked. I appreciated that it took Helvetica’s crush on Belgrieve seriously, and also that it was not something that she could just give up on when seeing Bel and Satie being all mild and sedate at each other. (Satie spends a lot of this book acting like a standard housewife, but given the last twenty years of her life before this, I’d say she’s due.) They needed to overtly love each other to make it easier for her to back off. I also liked Angelica telling Maria about her own demonic heritage. She’s not only come to terms with it, but is OK with being used as a guinea pig if it will mean helping to solve the problem. Though Maria doesn’t really believe her. There’s also a great short story at the end showing us how Angeline, Anessa and Miriam first teamed up, and how incredibly awkwardly things started off. It was sweet.
This series runs on good vibes, and if we get more of those in the finale, I’m find with it.
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