By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On.

Well, I suppose I asked for it. In the last few reviews of this series I kept mentioning how the mechanics of the series meant that Hestia, the supposed female lead, kept getting less screen time than everyone else. Now we have a book where she actually comes along on a dungeon crawl in order to rescue Bell, and it’s sadly fairly cliched. She can’t use godly powers in there, so she’s useless in the fighting. She spends much of the time post-rescue jealous of the fact that every girl in the entire series has fallen in love with Bell (though honestly, I think what Aiz is feeling is deep jealousy of Bell’s progress, but that doesn’t matter to Hestia), *and* she gets kidnapped and has to be rescued.

The others fare better. Bell too needs to be rescued, but that’s not really his fault, and he, Welf and Lilly show off their excellent teamwork here. (Lilly also shows a lot of jealousy, but she’s more cynical and sarcastic about it, and thus appeals more to Western readers.) Bell’s reputation is starting to precede him, and much of this volume is devoted to the fact that if you are an overpowered character in what is for all intents and purposes an RPG, you’re going to have players assuming you’re cheating, or getting help, or just plain old “who does he think he is?”. And so we see the return of some old bullies from Book 2, who decide to teach Bell a lesson – and by that I mean beat the crap out of him. The trouble is, Bell is just too good for that to work.

The big debut this volume is Hermes, who’s the standard trickster god type, also out to teach Bell a lesson: stop being so naive and realize that some humans are bad people. This lesson does not work, because Bell is Bell, and this isn’t Black Bullet. Hermes is amusing, and I love the fact that everyone just accepts that he’s something of an asshole – indeed, when we get the standard “whoops, Bell is peeking on the girls at the hot spring, lol” scene, literally everyone there knows this isn’t something Bell would do, and blame Hermes instead. I was ecstatic to see that. He also lets the cat out of the bag about Bell’s ancestry, but honestly I think everyone had guessed that by now anyway.

For those who enjoy battles, the one in the last third of the book is very epic, with a huge cast of characters all teaming up to take out a nightmarish monster. Lyu, one of the waitresses from our favorite pub, gets a tragic backstory and a serious chance to show off. In fact, I’d argue the series has more women kicking ass than men by a large margin – which is partly for the service, but it’s also simply nice to see. In the ‘odd’ department, we meet one of the Japanese gods and his all-Japanese human team, who do well but feel out of place in this land of Greek fantasy archetypes. On the whole, though, it’s another strong volume, though I hope Hestia can get over her jealousy soon. (Yes, I know.) Also, we’ve now caught up with the anime, so the next book should be new to viewers.

By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On.

This volume of Bell Cranel and his ongoing adventures has the main story only take up 2/3 of the book, the rest being filled in by two character developing short stories. While both stories are enjoyable, and I did like the main tale, it does feel a bit like the author wanted to hold off on the next big twist till Vol. 5, but could not quite come up with enough material to squeeze into this volume to pad it out. Welf Crozzo’s backstory is mostly given in an infodump, and his issues are resolved simply by having Bell be who he is – Bell is the sort to not go after someone for his own personal gain, and Welf has had nothing but that most of his career.

Welf adds a needed dynamic to Bell’s group, though, especially given this is essentially a shonen manga in light novel form. He adds the loud, brash type who rushes in first, which complements Bell’s extremely skilled but self-loathing personality and Lilly’s savvy yet cynical not-a-hobbit-honest girl. Which is good, as it’s also made apparent in this volume that in order to delve further into the dungeons they’ll need more people – don’t be surprised if Vol. 5 brings us another regular, and I bet she’s female. As usual, the story is presented smoothly and with a minimum of fuss, showing off an amusing sequence where the gods give Bell a nickname (and remind us of Freya, otherwise absent from this book) and a brief look at Aiz, who is trying to go beyond the impossible as Bell has and finds it’s not as easy as he’s making it seem.

The two short stories both have large amounts of Hestia in them, which makes up for – once again – a fairly small part in the main book. Hestia can’t go dungeon crawling with Bell, which given that’s the main thrust of the book means she’s always going to be getting the beginning, the end and not much else. The better short story was the second one, a simple character piece showing us Hestia three days after taking Bell in, and how she starts to fall in love with him. The other piece develops a small house that specializes in potions, and how unfortunate circumstances have led them to try to put one over on easy suckers – meaning Bell, who luckily has Lilly with him to be genre savvy. The best part of this story had Hestia and Lilly describing how oblivious Bell is and how the two of them are delegated to ‘goddess who isn’t even female’ and ‘cute little sister’ in his eyes. Given the ‘rivalry’ scene in the last volume, I’m pleased to see them bonding over lack of affection.

While not as strong as the other volumes of the series, this is still a very easy read, and I suspect we’re due for a major crisis point soon. Also, for fans of the anime, they adapted this into a single episode, so pick it up to see how much was cut out.

By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On.

The thing that struck me most about the third volume of this light novel series was how tightly paced the whole thing is. The second book followed directly from the first, and this one follows on right from the second, with Bell and Lily discussing the fallout of her leaving the Soma family, and introducing her to Hestia. The narrow focus allows us to really get a handle on Bell, his desire to be the best, and his frustration at being unable to progress as fast as he’d like – this despite the fact that he is making the fastest progress in the history of this world. Many overpowered light novel protagonists try to balance their perfect heroes with a massively low self-image, and Bell is no exception. He’s getting there, though – his goal isn’t to get a harem anymore, it’s to be a hero.

Of course he’s getting the harem anyway, though he’s totally unaware of this. Hestia and Lily jealously jockeying for position is highly amusing, though once again Hestia is very much a minor character in the book. This is surprising given how much her popularity has exploded in Japan – you’d think she were the only character. Instead, this time around we get a closer look at the mind of Aiz Wallenstein. While she’s not exactly knocked off the pedestal that Bell has put her on yet, he is at least starting to realize that Aiz is quite eccentric in her emotionally stunted way. Another comedy highlight is seeing Aiz beat the tar out of Bell over and over, and his waking up with his head in her lap then freaking out. It’s also a good plot moment, as Aiz really wants to find out how Bell is getting so good so fast – he learns from her teachings (which are mostly “I beat you up a lot”) astonishingly well.

Then there’s the minotaur. The series began with Bell about to die from having a run-in with one of these, and Freya’s underling Ottar is convinced that it’s his fear of that incident that is stopping him from progressing even faster. So, the decision is simple. Have him face off against another one. If he dies, oh well, he wasn’t worthy of Freya. Of course bell does not die. The sequence is utterly badass, even more so that it happens in front of the high-level adventurers of Loki’s family, who offer a running commentary. I will admit that the book pretty much stops right after the fight, as if the author is working to a set page count. But it’s a great fight to go out on. Oh, and I have a suspicion about Bell’s grandfather. Let’s just say I think I know his name, and I bet he’s gotten a harem by appearing as a bull or swan.

Again, I remain very surprised at how good this series has gotten, particularly with that cliched light novel title. Which was apparently by editorial fiat, I’ve found out. If you love fantasy series, absolutely give this a try.