By Hyougetsu and Nari Teshima. Released in Japan by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

It is a question often asked by authors, and even more often by publishers: when it the right time to end a series? It can depend very much on what kind of series it is, but for a series like Der Werwolf, the last volume certainly felt like an ending. Veight and Airia were together, she’d had their child, and he was busily uniting the entire kingdom and bringing a new era of peace to all. Medetashi, medetashi. Except frequently if you try to keep doing stories after “and everyone lived happily ever after”, it tends towards “until they died and here’s how”. Fortunately, Der Werwolf may be moving on to the Next generation, but it’s not quite ready to give up on Veight, or more accurately to give up on Veight being a living legend whose only fault is his absolutely crippling humility. Something that, fortunately, does not seem to have transferred over to his daughter, though she certainly seems to have inherited his ability to find trouble.

The book takes place, with many timeskips, around the first ten years of the life of Friede, Veight and Airia’s daughter. That said, most of it is still the usual setup for this series: Veight’s POV, and then an alternate POV from another character that expounds on Veight’s greatness. (I will assume that if this sort of thing bothers you,. you dropped the series ages ago.) Veight is filled with parental love and also Japanese ideas on how to raise children, which differ a bit from “give them to childcare people and see them once a year” that this world’s nobles tend to do. Friede is also not your typical child – while she can’t transform into a werewolf, she has all of Veight’s other abilities, enough mana to level a warship, and by the end of the book is learning swordfighting, martial arts, and diplomacy. Which may be needed, as she’s packed off to the Rolmund Empire at the end of the book, as Eleora wants to meet her.

Again, the biggest flaw in this book is is irrelevance: it’s After Stories, so if you wanted to drop the series neatly, doing so just before this book starts is a perfectly good response. That said, it doesn’t really do anything wrong, and gives us more of Veight being Alexander the Great as a wolf, only with more sense. He’s still resolving disputes, still occasionally being forced to fight 20-against-1 battles, and still insisting that he’s just a humble vice-commander. In addition, as much as Veight is hoping to usher in a time of peace, there are always going to be bad guys – someone in this book is kidnapping girls from other kingdoms and has them all holed up in a house in Meraldia… which Freide promptly finds in about two seconds, which bodes well for her. She’s a fun kid, who was raised thinking her dad was a normal goofy dad, and only now finding out that everyone reveres him. Which means she’s now in the “dad is so cool!” phase of her life.

So yes, if you really do like Der Werwolf, this is a fun read, and has a nice side story about Woroy trying to start his own city and realizing that the best way to do it is by inventing rollerball. Certainly the series was popular enough to be grabbed by a larger publisher… but we don’t have to worry about that till after Vol. 13.

By Hyougetsu and Nishi(E)da. Released in Japan by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

The last couple of books have been trying to explain why Veight is as successful and beloved as he is, and that it’s not simply “he is an incredibly strong and powerful werewolf”. As Veight notes in this volume, he could immediately solve the problem in the kingdom of Kuwol if he simply killed Zagar. He’d be justified in doing so. Zagar killed the king and framed Veight for it. But doing that would plunge the country into chaos, which is absolutely not what Veight wants. Zagar is certainly strong, and can kill anyone who is suddenly no longer useful to him. But all he wants is combat, which means he’ll never be satisfied. Veight, on the other hand, has spent the last ten books making the kingdom safe for both humans and other races, and all he wants to do is settle down with his wife and child. He investigates thoroughly. He takes the opinions of commoners into advisement, but also thinks of the nobles and their pride. He’s just really good at this.

No, don’t worry, that’s not Veight’s unborn child on the cover, but the late king’s, who it turned out had a favorite consort. This volume picks up where the last left off, as Veight tries to figure out how best to unite the nobles, stop Zagar, and not have everything explore into war. He’s helped by the return of Parker, who may have gone missing but was never really in danger, and who is perhaps at his least silly in this book. With the help of a mountain tribe and a cleverly placed fake… as well as, admittedly, the power of modern laser guns… Veight is able to win the day. This allows him to hurry home, as he’s gotten an unfortunate prophecy about Airia, who it turns out needs to have a cesarean section (completely unknown in this world) or else the touch of death may strike her and their child. Can Veight and company save the day? And will the prophecy come true anyway?

This is not the final book in the series – J-Novel Club has licensed at least through Vol. 13, and the rights to the novels were just sold to Square Enix, who will be releasing more. But it’s the end of the “main story”, and the author says that the rest of the books are essentially going to be side stories. (They’re even changing the illustrator to reflect the books “lighter feel” starting next time.) Certainly this seems like the “end of one age, stat of a new one” sort of book, especially with the last few pages of the main story showing off Veight and Airia’s child as well as the return (sort of) of a very old friend. This is why Veight is not Zagar. Zagar cannot be satisfied unless he’s fighting an enemy. Veight, though, once he’s managed to protect what he wants to, and helped others to thrive as a nation… he’s ready to relax and be a husband and father. In fact, he looks forward to it. Well, and a simple vice-commander, of course. He’ll always be that.

I have perhaps enjoyed this series a bit more than it really deserves (it might be the medium – J-NC has licensed the manga and I find it near unreadable), but I do think it rewards readers who like this kind of thing. I look forward to a more relaxed tale going forward.

By Hyougetsu and Nishi(E)da. Released in Japan by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

Now that Veight has pretty much succeeded in uniting the continent, and Airia is settling in as the new Demon Lord (and also getting pregnant, which answers that whole ‘can werewolves and humans mate?’ question from the last book), the book have been branching out into other unrelated countries, showing how they really need Veight to come in and shake things up. His trip to Wa was fairly straightforward and normal, despite the past life shenanigans, but this time things are a lot more difficult, and Veight is going to be forced to take action despite wanting nothing more than to stay by Airia’s side. Oh yes, and teach young students how to be a good leader. In fact, this book may be outdoing Realist Hero on the subject of running a country, and it also does not need to venerate Machiavelli, which is always a plus. Most of all, though, we get a really nasty and horrible villain here, something we haven’t seen in these books for a while.

Kuwol, a southern kingdom with lots of sea transport, is getting close to a civil war between two varieties of nobility and a rather shallow and brainless king. Veight is trying his best to stay out of it, knowing that they don’t have the ships to send a huge army and also don’t want to get involved in foreign affairs, but as things go further south, and Parker goes missing, he is forced to act. What he finds is that one of the groups of nobles has hired mercenaries to supplement their forces, led by Zagar, who is a thoroughly reprehensible man who nevertheless commands intense loyalty from those at his command. Veight doesn’t trust him, but is not particularly a violent man, so is content to wait and watch and try to make things better for the civilians caught in the war. Unfortunately, this proves unwise as Zagar has grander plans than a simple civil war.

The main plot is pretty much what you’d expect, and the author says in the afterword he wanted to show Veight’s hands-off approach being the wrong choice. That said, there are lots of little details in this book I liked. Seeing Veight’s young students trying to come up with forward thinking ideas. Airia’s absolutely awful morning sickness, and Veight feeling somewhat helpless to do anything for her. There’s a moment near the end when Zagar offers Veight three of the former lord’s mistresses for pleasure, and Veight, naturally, is uninterested in anything but Airia. However, Zagar is determined to second the women to Veight’s company (are they spies?) and so asks if they can be secretaries, and they promptly show off a savviness that I quite liked. That said, the brutality of the final scenes is start, and we’re left with a cliffhanger that makes us wonder how Veight is going to handle things without the whole nation falling apart.

The next book is supposed to be the last book in the “main series”, though I know there’s at least one after it. I suppose peace and prosperity are harder to write about, which is probably why Veight is traveling to a civil war. In the meantime, Der Werwolf remains very underrated, and has a minimum of Veight being super modest this time around.