By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

Good news, we’re back to a normal page count for Loner Life. Which is still over 400 pages, but at least it doesn’t break the 500-page barrier like last time. As for the content, honestly, a lot of this is set up for a battle we haven’t gotten to yet. It’s clear that we will eventually be fighting the Evil Church, and the way that Haruka is stressing about it, in his own bananas way, suggests that he’s sure they have a secret weapon similar to Nefertiri. As such, everyone in the cast takes turns attempting to go and fight the battle, while keeping the others safe. Haruka wants to go alone. The girls all want to go. Angelica and Nefertiri want to protect Haruka. It’s a vicious circle of self-loathing and love. I appreciated Merielle lecturing Haruka towards the end of this book, telling him that women are stronger than he thinks, and eventually they are going to have to (as Marielle has) kill people. Stubborn Haruka still wants to avoid this.

On the cover is Arianna, the cleric who arrived at the end of the last book. She’s from an offshoot of the Church that isn’t evil, and has come to the group to ask for help. If you look at the “inner cover” all these volumes have, you’ll see her looking crazed and holding a sword, but I think that’s a deliberate deception – she’s not secretly a bad guy, she’s just being put through Haruka’s Training from Hell (the funniest part of the book, as he grabs her and the other folks in her party and literally swings them like swords (they are also holding swords) until they level up enough). And then the Church holds the royal family hostage, so something has to be done. And that something is… MORE leveling up, as Haruka is still trying to learn how to fight normally, and the girls are all still one step behind when it comes to being strong enough to go fight a major enemy on their own.

As with previous volumes in this series, it requires the reader to have a lot of recall about all the books books and who all the characters are, even when you haven’t seen them in a while. I appreciated the plot twist with the merchants (and it helps to set up future arcs), but I could have used a quick reminder about where we were with the elves, as I forgot they came back with Haruka and everyone else. I did really enjoy one moment near the end as Haruka struggles because his body is moving faster than his brain, where he appreciates how, unlike himself (who has to level up the weird way) or the nerds (who are gamers and think like gamers) and meatheads (who are strong enough to simply punch things till they win), the girls are having to deal every day with leveling up and their body being slightly different, having to learn how to move slightly differently, not being able to trust footwork… he really does see how they’re struggling and improving vastly. Even if he won’t say it to their face.

I left out all the sex stuff, but be assured it’s still there, and this book drips with horniness. As always, though, the interest lies in the other stuff. Next time, the church battle? Nope, judging by the cover, Beastmen are next.

By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

It feels odd to call a book that is 100 pages longer than the previous books a breather volume but that’s exactly what this is. After all of the plot going on in the last three volumes, Loner Life is returning to its roots, which means get ready for a whole lot of dungeon crawling. As always, you not only need to translate this book to English (and the translation is fine, I hasten to add – a) even Japanese fans say this is incoherent, and b) Haruka is meant to sound like this), but you also need to translate subtext into text. As such, the fact that we’ve moved from “let’s clear out all the 50-floor dungeons” and have now become “hey, all these dungeons are now about 90 floors” is a cause for great concern, and even small, supposedly random things like “Haruka is asked to make sanitary pads for the girls” delves into a critique on isekai stories in general as well as a dark examination of why Angelica and Nefertiri are only concubines. There is meat on these bones, under all that narrative bullshit.

The cover has Vice Rep B, but she’s no more prominent here than any of the other classmates not named Class Rep; the artist clearly gave her a cover shot to show off her assets, so to speak. After the civil war of the last two books, everyone is back in Omui, and there’s now a passel of orphan children with them. Most of the spare time is spent dungeon crawling, partly to get spellstones so they can afford any of the many things Haruka is making, but also partly to see what the dungeons are like after they’ve already been cleared once before. The answer is that the monsters are not QUITE as strong, but they’re still very strong, and more worryingly, the dungeons are deeper now. Haruka implies that any dungeon with 100 floors is a Very Bad Thing. Meanwhile, the rest of the class is getting stronger and stronger… but they still can’t hold a candle to Haruka, Angelica, Nefertiri or even the Slime Emperor. How can they possibly protect him?

There’s another reason Haruka’s doing all this dungeon exploration: he’s reached the limit of where he can go with just skills. Even though it’s very, very hard for him to accomplish, he’s going to have to start getting stronger and leveling up. Which means having to fight using actual COMMON SENSE, rather than fighting the chaotic Haruka way. It’s actually a bit heartwarming seeing him sparring with Angelica normally – though it leads the girls to assume, now that they can understand his moves, that they can defeat him. Hardly. Speaking of the girls, I’d mentioned the sanitary pads before (and Haruka observing that all the isekai books out there never bother to go into this sort of thing in their pre-industrial fantasy worlds), but it also brings up a melancholy subplot: Angelica and Nefertiri may look human and gorgeous now, and they’re both starting to communicate a lot better, but they’re still, at the end of the day, monsters. They don’t have periods, and they can’t get pregnant. This means that they want the girls to be Haruka’s wives while they remain his concubines… because the girls CAN get pregnant.

A somewhat sexist POV to have, but then this is a book that now uses sex like a comma (how in God’s name are the PG-rated manga and forthcoming anime going to handle this?). It remains not for everyone, but I still find nuggets of gold here. And I apologize for not mentioning the water park. Or the summer festival. Next time it looks like we start a new arc, as a (maybe?) good religious faction shows up near the end. Just… not 528 pages next time? Please?

By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

One of the reasons why this is such a difficult series to get anyone into (and trust me, there are so many reasons) is that it is trying to be so many different things. It is a military combat novel in this volume… or at least the start of this volume, as it turns out that Haruka, in fact, manages to take care of everything far more than anyone expected him to. It’s a raunchy sex comedy, with Haruka’s stats leveling him up to Sex God (no, really, it says that in his stats) and featuring a number of explicit sex scenes that nevertheless will likely get overlooked by the Powers That Be merely as they’re narrated by Haruka, which means they’re completely incoherent. That said, there is one thing that this series tends to put first, before anything else, and I 100% approve: the nobility sucks. Class warfare forever. Eat the rich. Because trust me, almost all the nobles we meet here are scum.

Haruka rushes back to the frontier in order to stop the army that’s headed that way, an army backed by the theocracy’s soldiers (who are quite content to let the regular army folks be killed off while they hang back) and the theocracy’s secret weapon, another Dungeon Emperor on the same level as Angelica. Oh, and they’re also unleashing monster rushes from nine dungeons around the kingdom, guaranteed to have the populace horribly murdered, which means none of Haruka’s allies can come to his side because they all have to stop this. Needless to say, Haruka… wins almost embarrassingly easily. And now he has a new Dungeon Emperor on his side, the gorgeous Nerfertiri (any resemblance to an ancient Egyptian queen is purely intentional) as his second “concubine”, and has saved the day. Time for a grand ball!

The lack of suspense in the first third of the volume is almost laughable, at least on Haruka’s end. I worried far more about Stalker Girl and her father, who are trying to defeat a mass rush of monsters despite essentially being a ninja spy force. The second third of this novel is basically comic relief and porn, though again, it’s porn written in the style of Haruka’s narration, so it’s not in the least bit arousing. He’s just banging two girls now rather than one. (Again, it’s hinted he refuses to do anything to the Japanese girls for past trauma reasons.) The last third, though, it easily the best part, as the grand ball turns out to be a trap to ensnare all the other evil nobles, baited by a play that gives all the credit to the war to the Princess and Duke, and none to Haruka – meaning they underestimate him. The girls at first asked why in hell he was making their ballgowns with so many defensive armor traits – it turns out they need every single one of them. It’s glorious.

So this long arc is over, and I assume we start something new next time. Might be a few months till the next book, so go back and try to translate Haruka to English, that’s my advice.