By Sunsunsun and Momoco. Released in Japan as “Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matthew Rutsohn.

I feel badly for Alya at times. This is, theoretically, her series. She’s the character on the cover art, she’s obviously going to be the winning girl, and she’s cute. But the overall plot of her arc is “I need to open up to others and not just rely on myself, and also I need to admit I’m in love with Masachika.” As arcs go, it’s simple. It’s not something that can carry a series. That’s Masachika and Yuki’s arc. Yuki’s not going to be the winning girl, for obvious reasons, but the screwed-up family she and Masachika are both in is what we’re going to be seeing more and more of. We get a bit of it here, and see that everyone is still carrying Expections, with a capital E, and that failing to meet them is worse than actually murdering someone. This has a lot of fluff in it, but the back half sets up darker things going forward.

The first half of this is pure fluff and fanservice, as we continue to have the school festival arc. We now see Alya dressed up as an elf, which frankly is perfect for her, and the sight blows everyone’s mind. Meanwhile, Masha is running a magician’s bar, and has some brilliant tricks… that she can’t perform in front of her sister because she’s always forced to be the goofy one in her presence. We get Ayano’s incredibly intimidating MAID SKILLS, which threaten to overwhelm Masachika when she maids a bit too hard at him. And, of course, the band get ready to perform. Unfortunately, it turns out that some mysterious person forged invitations to the festival, and there are now various pranksters, thugs, and bad guys there, who have been ordered to destroy it. Can the student council find out who’s responsible and save the day?

It’s really brought home here how this is a school for elites. Yuki, in an amusing takedown of one of the ringleaders, points out that his romantic angst would make a very poor subplot in a villainess book, and that’s kind of what we have here – not the villainess herself (though Yuki’s trying her best), but the “nobles rule the world” worldview. The elite families of many of the students are at the event – including Masachika and Yuki’s family – and they observe the chaos that’s been created with an amused eye, knowing that it will all come down to who controls the narrative and who can win the day. No great prizes for guessing who’s the man behind it all, but I did appreciate the ending, which does not revolve around Alya’s band performance (again, she’s not narratively important), but around Masachika’s, and his tendency once again to a) be miles ahead of everyone around him, and b) hate himself so much I worry he’ll end the series with a suicide attempt. Though I doubt it gets THAT dark.

The next book looks to be the athletics festival, and will no doubt once again be half otaku nerdery and half GRIPPING DRAMA.

By Sunsunsun and Momoco. Released in Japan as “Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matthew Rutsohn.

It’s been about ten months since the last non-short story volume of Alya, and since then we’ve started the anime, which is doing a pretty good job, even if it’s also reminding us how hard it can be to watch Alya herself at times. It’s also facing stiff competition from Too Many Losing Heroines!, another anime that is very interested in light novel cliches. But while Makeine uses the tropes straight on occasion but for the most part wants to call attention to them and deconstruct them, Roshidere positively revels in the tropes. It will give you the fake incest, the boob measurements, the “I saw the girls I like changing” gags, walking in on a girl naked out of the shower is literally engineered here. Now, it’s not the point of the series. The point of the series is seeing Masachika and Alya both struggle to have any self-worth at all despite both being ludicrous geniuses. But it *is* why people obsess with this series.

We start by “resolving” the cliffhanger from the fourth volume. It’s not actually resolved at all, really – even if Masha isn’t already aware she’s the forgotten childhood friend, anyone in a light novel who confesses and then says you don’t have to give me an answer right away is already digging a massive hole it will be impossible to climb out of. In the meantime, it’s culture festival time, and the student council are stepping in where needed. In fact, they’re stepping even above and beyond – Hikaru’s band collapsed due to romantic drama, and they need three new band members… which might be a good opportunity to Alya to sing and show leadership skills. More importantly, there’s a quiz game where Yuki and Alya will be competing against each other. Supposedly a fun contest, you know it’s actually a proxy war in the election.

Alya is doubting herself. She wants to be able to stand on her own, to not have to depend upon Masachika as much as she has in previous books. (She also wants Masachika to ask her out on dates, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.) She does a great job in this book! Possibly too great a job. Masachika’s ridiculously huge self-hatred has driven everything he’s done in this series since the start, and we wallow in that in this book, whether it drives his cowardice in not actually asking Alya for that date, to his jealousy over seeing her get along with his other male friends, to his despair at realizing that she is growing and becoming able to stand on her feet… without him. His final words to her at the end of this volume imply that once she’s won, he’s going to quietly bury himself so that she can move forward without him holding her back. I do hope that before he finishes his self-loathing Samson act he at least crushes the asshole piano prodigy who’s trying to destroy Alya first, however.

If you enjoy seeing insecure and pessimistic kids avoid being in love with each other and lots of girls in underwear or even naked, this series is written just for you.

By Sunsunsun and Momoco. Released in Japan as “Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matthew Rutsohn.

I joked on Twitter that after Agents of the Four Seasons (which was terrific) and The Deer King (which was sublime), anything read after it would always suffer in comparison, so I’d have to “sacrifice” a series and it might as well be Alya. Honestly, though, I think I’d have been ‘meh’ about this volume even if it hadn’t come after books that are much better than it is. First of all, and most obviously, my least favorite part of the series to date was the horrible hypnosis subplot in the third book, and so it’s not surprising that I greeted a short story that’s basically a sequel to that with numb horror. More to the point, though, the last volume was relatively disconnected to begin with, showing the cast on summer break, so I’m not sure why we needed another volume that shows the summer break stories we missed the previous time. Can’t we just get on with the plot?

The stories: 1) Sayaka and Yuki bond over their love of otaku stuff, but that also means they’re rivals; 2) A day in the life of Nonoa, whose facade hides a whole lot, and her underlings she has picked up from the bottom; 3) Alya and Ayano both suffer trying to cure their fear of spicy ramen; 4) Masachika and Yuki’s father gets home from overseas, and realizes that his son and daughter are a bit weird; 5) The cast try to clear up the “seven mysteries of the school”, which involves wandering around the school late at night; 6) Part 2 of this, involving Alya and Masachika getting “locked” in a gym storeroom; 7) Part 3 of the story, where we deal with Maria and Alya’s fear of ghosts, and discover that ghosts can be punched; 8) The story of how Touya and Chisaki met; 9) more hypnosis; 10) Maria and Alya go shopping for swimsuits; 11) the cast has a “guess who cooked what meal” competition; 12) the girls, late at night at the summer event, talk about love; and 13) Masachika and Alya, on the subway, discuss the kiss that happened in Book 4.

As with most of these collections, some stories are better than others. I enjoyed the “guess who cooked what” chapter more than I expected, mostly as it did not fall into the trap of anime cliches. Sayaka and Yuki being giant nerds was also amusing, though honestly we get that from Yuki all the time. Masachika and Yuki’s own father worrying they’re a bit too incestuous helps to show why the two of them have gotten away with hiding their sibling relationship for so long – people don’t want to pick the creepy option. And the final chapter was sweet and quiet, and probably should have been in the fourth book to begin with. Aside from the one I mentioned above, none of these were bad, but they weren’t essential – even the author admits they’ll never be brought up in the main series. It is a quintessential .5 volume.

Fortunately, Vol. 5 is next. Let’s hope for plot.