By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Matthew Birkenhauer.

This is not the first time I’ve seen this happening, but I am noticing that, having established the fact that Serafina was raped for weeks before she was murdered in the past, and that this is really the main source of the PTSD she still suffers, the novels are doing their best to dial that back so that they don’t have to make the reader think of it again. It’s become a sort of general demon trauma, but it’s also become specifically “that one guy”, who we (but not Fia) already know is not the “demon lord’s right hand man” at all. The front half of this book actually deals with that trauma, giving us an actual demon, and is quite good. Unfortunately, I think we have hot a new record, as the main part of the book ends just before the halfway point. We now have more side stories than regular plot.

Fia is still on vacation with Green, Blue, and Kurtis, and, since it came up when she returned to her childhood home, she goes into greater detail with them about her fear of demons. And it’s just in time, as while they’re up on the mountain they happen to run into a young woman with black hair and black eyes, who is clearly a demon but enjoys toying with them, calling herself a poor defenseless human. Unfortunately, she *is* a demon, “The Bird Cryer”, and much as they’d like to tell a panicked Fia to stay back and let them handle it, she’s more than the three others can handle. Fortunately, this is not the one demon Fia is traumatized by, so she’s able to pitch in. The rest of the book is, well, Fia being Fia. Which let’s be fair, might be why people are reading this book more than folks who are here for the plot.

So yeah, Fia is a giant silly person, who doesn’t get that she is obvious and unsubtle and super powerful. She hands out potions that can restore someone’s health from a coma without thinking about it. She hands Blue and Green (and yes, despite them giving it away several times, she still doesn’t know they’re royalty) a curse-destroying hairband for their sister, not thinking anything of it that she’s basically given her peace of mind and stopped the trauma. She gets her commanding officer one of the most powerful griffons in the land. Accidentally. She rediscovers magical hearing restoration potions as she didn’t realize that in the 300 years since she made them, they became unknown. If she put her mind to it, she could easily take over the world. Everyone but her knows this. Fortunately, she is 100% avoiding this. She’s just a knight, after all!

I really wish we had more main story and less side stories, but this remains funny and cute.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Matthew Birkenhauer.

I have to be honest, I should not enjoy this series as much as I do. It really does a lot of things wrong. At its core is broad humor involving a heroine who misunderstands almost everything everyone says to her, and that’s fine. In fact, it’s almost a genre in itself. And she’s really, really good at not getting it. But it also manages to bring up her very real PTSD that comes from her actual death and everything leading up to her death, to the point where she’s actively repressing the worst memories of it. This is also quite well written and handled with care, but the two plotlines really should not co-exist next to each other as well as they do. In addition, this volume once again is 2/3 of an actual book, followed by endless extra side stories that either tell other character’s POV of what Fia narrated for us, or Fia’s wacky adventures as Serafina in the past. Where we find she was also a giant ditz.

After the events of the previous two books, Fia is now officially a knight, but before she can get down to the business of protecting the royal family, she’s given some time off. She uses this to go north to visit her older sister, aka the one sibling that did not treat her like hot garbage growing up, and also check in with Zavilia, who is no longer a tiny little dragon familiar but has become King of the Mountain – literally. He even has his own dragon cult, though there’s some implication that this is mostly due to pure terrifying force of will. Unfortunately, when she gets back to her home, she’s also met by Guy Osbern, who used to “tease” her as a kid by calling himself a legendary demon. Sadly, he had no real way of knowing the very real trauma that she had in the past from demons, and seeing him again brings it all back.

Again, for the most part this is hilarious. Before she sets off on her journey she runs into “Green” and “Blue”, the royals from the neighboring kingdom who are still just random adventurers to her, and she takes them with her on her journey. Literally everyone except Fia can see they’re Very Important People, but she does not care. She also has a nice dose of accidentally using her saint powers and having to pretend that it’s for some random reason, though fortunately she doesn’t have to restore any severed arms here. Amidst all this, we do get actual plot, if only a bit. The past history of the kingdoms does not quite match up with Fia’s memory of her past from 300 years ago, and Kurtis knows why but does not want to upset Mia too much. What’s more, it turns out that they may not have defeated the real demon lord – and “the demon lord’s underling” is the one part of Fia’s memories that she’s still running away from in terror.

So: this is hilarious You will laugh. But there’s an odd current of deep tragedy also rolling through it, and the resulting taste should not work but does.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Matthew Birkenhauer.

I’ve talked before about how this series frequently can’t decide if it’s just pure comedy or if it has true tragedy embedded within it, but in one way it definitely fills the comedy mode, and that’s because the reader is left wondering, after four volumes, how long Fia can possibly be able to keep her reincarnation a secret given how absolutely lousy she is at hiding anything about it? The difficulty is that this is half of the humor (the other half just being Fia in general, unrelated to her past). So I suspect the answer is “it will get revealed right before the series comes to an end”, and it’s still ongoing as both a webnovel and a light novel. So this means I will have to put up with the fact that it is increasingly unbelievable that no one else picks up on this except the OTHER guy who has reincarnated memories. I mean, that’s the gag. It’s just a really belabored gag.

We pick up right where we left off 2/3 of the way through Book 3 (which is to say the end of the main plot), with Fia having to deal with the fact that her former bodyguard from her previous life, Canopus, has regained his memories and is now Captain Kurtis of the Thirteenth knights. Fortunately, he seems willing to go along with whatever she says. UN-fortunately, that’s because he’s just as obsessed with her sainthood as the rest of the Sutherland people, if not more. Things are not helped by the fact of Fia constantly accidentally doing Saint things while completely failing to realize they’re abnormal. The third volume was about the drama that surrounded Cyril and his homeland, but this volume is surrounded by an utter LACK of drama. With Fia around, everything’s fine.

Despite my grousing in the first paragraph, this is still an enjoyable volume, mostly because Fia is so fun and likeable. We’ve seen flashbacks that show that this is not just a function of her past memories interfering with her present ones – she was always like this. So we get things like her trying to explain to the local healer how to make the cure for their deadly disease by essentially saying “here are the ingredients, the actual amounts used are up to you” and having everyone stare at her in a sort of daze. I am slightly less enamored of the additions to her reverse harem, especially as we now have TWO who are a bit too obsessive for my liking, but honestly, Fia’s obliviousness is also something that will probably last until the final volume (and Cyril, let’s face it, has a very big lead on the others). Fortunately, this also ends this arc, so we’ll start a new one in the next volume, possibly involving those color-themed royals from previous books.

This is never going to be in any best of the year lists, but if you like Katarina Claes-types who are also far, far too powerful for their own good, this is definitely one to keep up with.