By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Every few volumes, the series needs to have Yuna go somewhere she’s never been before, partly because otherwise the series would get even more boring than it already tends to be (sorry, Yuna, I really don’t care about you making omelettes from giant eggs), but also so that the audience can remember that a girl walking around in a bear onesie is not normal and does, in fact, make people think Yuna is either a child or deeply weird. They’re not wrong on the second part, but the bear suit is, of course, absolutely essential for Yuna – and she can’t actually explain why. Some folks have seen obliquely that when Yuna is not in the suit (such as the beach scenes two books ago) she’s super weak, but I don’t think they’ve connected it to “the bear stuff gives her all her power”. Honestly, if this series ever ends, that may be the final boss. Someone who steals her bear suit/gear and forces her to rely on others.

After a few introductory chapters like “let’s make pressed flowers” or “let’s make ice cream”, Yuna decides to do something she’d been meaning to do for a while: go visit the dwarves’ village. She takes Fina, because shed get lonely otherwise, and ends up picking up Luimin from the elves’ village as well. (Elves and dwarves get along fine here, confusing Yuna, who is used to fantasy cliches.) While there, they also meet Jade’s party, who are there because Toya is finally going to get his mithril sword… or at least, he would be if the blacksmith didn’t reject him for not being good enough. As for Yuna, she’s busy buying pots and pans for everyone she knows, as well as talking with the mentor of the dwarf blacksmiths she knows, who is currently refusing to make swords.

It is interesting sometimes to imagine the audience for this series. It’s filled with cute girls, so you’d think that “guys who like to see cute girls” would be the #1. That said, the book really does like to hammer home how useless the guys in it are. Yuna sometimes forgets that Fina also has a stepdad in addition to her mom. Toya is basically a punching bag for everyone else in the cast until right at the end of the volume, and his story is still going to have to wait for the next book to get resolved. Is the book for yuri fans? The author is definitely writing in more yuri tease, with both Shia and Fina indicating they’d be very happy being Yuna’s bride. Unfortunately, like a lot of yuri tease series, Yuna is always there to say things like “but I don’t like girls that way” or “that’s not happening”. Is the book fans fans of grumpy 15-year-old girls in a bear suit who constantly worry about her flat chest? That seems most likely.

This book ends in the middle of the dwarf plot, so I’d expect the next book to resolve it. Till then, this sure was a volume of Kuma Bear.

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Spoiler for my last review: she shrugged everything off. Yes, this author loves to play in the psychological trauma kiddie pool but knows which side his bread is buttered on, so instead of dealing with the possible dissociative idea of Yuna and “Miss Bear” being two distinct people, they have decided instead to just have Yuna feel vaguely uncomfortable about it for a bit and then get distracted by a giant floating island. This is one of the lighter and fluffier books in the series, which is unfortunate for me in that normally I’d have far less to write about, but there’s a bit more this time. The author has seen this series’ yuri fandom, and has decided they do not like it. In this volume, despite being propositioned by a girl her own age and having a mother offer her daughter up to Yuna for marriage, Yuna insists a) girl’s can’t get married, and b) she’s never getting married anyway. So if you had “ace Yuna” on your bingo card, congrats!

So yes, identity crisis is quickly forgotten, as the worst Yuna has to deal with in this book is the fact that she’s being forced to wear a different swimsuit every day to please the designer. She does various beach activities with the kids in this one, such as making a water slide, creating ice cream, or shooting off fireworks (without sound, alas). But the big news is the mysterious island, forbidden to go near, that appears and disappears randomly and has appeared once more. Yuna wants to explore that island, and unfortunately due to her lack of stealth Fina, Shuri, and Shia are along or the ride. The island ends up having historical interest, but also being a bit of a spoiler. Let’s just say there are monsters, and Yuna is tented as much as she ever is in this series (which is to say, not much). Then the vacation is over and it’s time to take everyone home.

I have to admit, taking Fina and Shuri to the island surprised me – Yuna is usually a bit more sensible than that. I get why they were taken along, as they totally would have tattled otherwise, and the goal here was to avoid having the “explore the island” secret come out. And yes, Yuna can just throw everyone into her basement via a bear door to play cards, so there’s no actual danger. But still… wait, why the hell am I complaining? This is a series where common sense is useless and you just have to accept we’re in the author’s strange mentality. This is also why Yuna is praised to the skies for giving all the 4-5-year-old orphan kids jobs with a paycheck, and vows to have more child labor in future. Yes, yes, fantasy world, orphans starve otherwise, but come on. At least she doesn’t buy any slaves. We have not quite reached that low point.

So yes, bear series is still “itself”, and aside from infuriating those who ship Yuna with… well, anyone… this is a typical volume in it. When do we get to go to “the land of Wa” anyway?

By Kumanano and 029. Released in Japan by PASH! Books. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

No series has quite managed to make me eat my words quite as much as Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, a group of books that is about an overpowered shut-in who wanders the land defeating powerful monsters and acquiring a string of little girls to follow her around and hero worship her. The start of the series balanced out the “cute girl doing OP things” vibe with some truly dark and weird plot points, with young girls being abducted, raped and killed, or Yuna having to repatriate a group of women whose families were murdered and who were *also* raped. To no one’s surprise, as this series got an anime, almost all of this was thrown out the window in favor of “let’s watch Yuna finance a bakery” and similar things. But it still occasionally dips its toe in darkness. Last time I was grumpy about Yuna’s pathological avoidance of praise being treated like a quirk of her personality rather than a genuine problem. In this new volume, it’s clear the author knows that, and is sending us to dark places again.

It doesn’t really seem that way at first. The majority of the book is Yuna coming back home after her trip to the land of giant scorpions. She presents a “Mission Accomplished” to the King, then relaxes in her bear house, only just remembering to tell Fina and the others that she’s back. She then prepares for the massive vacation to Mileela, which by the time it starts has about fifty people going (mostly the orphanage who are Yuna’s main child labor force… let’s not go there right now) and requires Yuna to create not only a big bear bus but two bear minibuses, powered through her mana. This requires her, on the journey there, to switch from her normal black bear outfit to the reversed white bear outfit, as she’s going to be using mana like a sieve. This leads to people not recognizing her at first, which merely irritates her… for now.

So yeah, once they get to the ocean and the beach, Yuna has to give in and remove the bear costume. She’s done this before at a palace function, but that was mostly filled with people who had no idea who she was anyway, so it was mostly her own personal safety that worried her. Same with the school festival. Here she has a bigger existential crisis: when she walks around as Yuna, dressed in a swimsuit and without her bear things, almost no one recognizes her. Literally, they stand next to her and ask Fina where she is. Fina, bless her, seems to be the exception to this rule. (Note that everyone, once they DO see it’s Yuna, immediately praise her pretty and petite body, but Yuna being Yuna, she doesn’t take this as praise at all.) At first Yuna is merely annoyed, but as it goes on and on, and as she attempts to do normal things (like teaching girls to swim) and failing as she has NO STAMINA without the bear suit, she gets more and more depressed. As she states to herself, no one is friends with Yuna, they’re all friends with “the bear”. The bear is the one that does everything. The bear is their savior. The bear is their friend. Yuna? Yuna is just an out-of-shape shut in.

Frustratingly, the book goes from Yuna’s spiral of depression to the usual end of book side stories, so we’ll need to wait till next time. Fortunately, as this book ran a bit late, next time is next month. Join me then to see if we get to see Yuna on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or if she simply shrugs everything off. Again.