By MOJIKAKIYA and toi8. Released in Japan as “Boukensha ni Naritai to Miyako ni Deteitta Musume ga S-Rank ni Natteta” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Roy Nukia.

For a while I thought that this was going to wrap up all the plots, and that the 10th volume would just be an epilogue/victory lap. Alas, one of the villains got away, so we’re going to have a final confrontation back in Belgrieve’s village. Which makes sense, as that will allow us to bring in the rest of the cast who have been absent for this arc. This arc definitely wraps up here, though, solving most of the problems by hard work and sword/magical battles. We get to see Ange using the smarts she was taught by her father, and we also get to see her and her father fighting back to back, something that fills both of them with glee even though it’s a life-or-death situation. That sort of sums up the book, really – even though there’s a lot of gore and death, you end up feeling good. Everyone’s back together.

When we left off, everyone was headed to where Ange and company is, there to try to rescue Satie. This involves splitting up, of course. Touya and Maureen handle their own subplot, taking on Hector and revealing the true reason behind Touya’s revenge. More importantly, Ange is captured by the fake Prince, getting thrown in a time space prison where escaping her cell is quite easy but escaping the prison itself proves much harder. As for Satie… well, she’s captured, because this is the sort of book where the message is “you can’t do it alone, rely on others to help you”, so her philosophy of “I have to do this all on my own” is not going to work. Will Bell be able to save Satie? And is Satie finally the woman that Ange has been looking for… someone to be Belgrieve’s wife?

There is a plot twist near the end that is so stunningly schmaltzey that I would be annoyed if it weren’t so sweet. It also helps tie in to Ange’s own birth – we’ve known for a while that she’s part demon, but it’s never really been clear just how that is going to tie into the overall story. The earlier books implied that it would slowly turn her evil, but honestly, apart from being a bit jealous of her dad’s easy way of making friends with everyone, Ange simply is not going to go that route. As for Belgrieve and Satie, their plot resolution is “blink and you’ll miss it”, but that fits the two of them. These are two people who have wanted to reunite and admit repressed feelings for years, so while it’s frustrating that we don’t get a more explicit confession, hey, at least they’re definitely married now.

That said, we have one final book to go. This one will be coming out after the anime starts, so it will be interesting to see what people who are new to the series think of it all. Honestly, I suspect we’ll be back to where we were at the start of this series: reassuring fans that this one ISN’T going to turn into incest.

By MOJIKAKIYA and toi8. Released in Japan as “Boukensha ni Naritai to Miyako ni Deteitta Musume ga S-Rank ni Natteta” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Roy Nukia.

Given that we’re near the end of the series, it’s no surprise that we’re actually picking up a number of plot threads that have been lurking around since the start of the book, and some of those plot points are quite a bit darker than we’re used to. As an excuse for not meeting up with Bel and company for the last 20 years, “I was running around the country trying to rescue women from being used in forced breeding experiments with demons” is a good one. If I’m being honest, it’s what isn’t here that’s more of a surprise: Ange spends most of this volume brooding and in a blue funk, and I wondered the entire time whether it was going to tie in to her secret demon heritage and all that. But no, it’s just typical daddy issues, because that’s what this series runs on, really. And as Ange grows up, those issues get less fun for her.

After locating Percival, our intrepid group has only one to go before they can get the band back together. That said, all they can find of Satie are rumors… until they arrive at a city which is apparently trying to kill an elf woman. This is not good news for Marguerite and Maureen, who have to remind folks that elves are, in fact, unique persons. Fortunately, Ange has friends in high places, so things settle down. Even more fortunately, the elf being hunted is, of course, Satie, who has been doing the things I alluded to in the last paragraph. Unfortunately, the “prince” has nearly caught up with her and is really trying hard to kill her, probably because she knows that he’s not the real prince. Can Belgrieve, Percival and Kasim manage to rescue Satie, or is that going to fall to Ange?

So yeah, Ange is starting to regret her own actions a bit, mostly the fact that she was going around to every woman she knew and asking if they wanted to marry her dad. Now they’re about to reunite with Satie, who the others admit had a thing for Belgrieve, and he probably did for her, and she starts to realize that she might not be the closest person in his life anymore. Ange is old enough and mature enough to know that this is unfair to Belgrieve and that it’s just envy, but that does not make the feelings go away, and her wrestling with them is probably the best part of the book. The other good part of the book is a nice bit of light horror, as there is a spell that can be used to disguise a person as another person so well that the other person does not even know they’re a disguise, and this is used to chilling effect here.

Good stuff, and a rare cliffhanger for this series, so we’ll have to wait till the 9th volume to see if we can save the day. (I suspect the day will be saved, this is not that kind of series.)

By MOJIKAKIYA and toi8. Released in Japan as “Boukensha ni Naritai to Miyako ni Deteitta Musume ga S-Rank ni Natteta” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Roy Nukia.

It’s been a long time coming, getting to this part of the plot. This is the seventh book of 10, but they’re pretty chunky books. And we’ve had a few flashbacks before to Belgrieve’s time as an adventurer in the past, but now at last we actually get to see the scene where he’s lost his leg, and really see how it affected everyone else. Including him, of course. He’s finally away from the comparative safety of his hometown or the big city where his daughter is based, and it shows almost immediately, in that he’s out of his depth. This is not to say that he falls behind or ends up being a liability – the opposite, in fact. But this is a series that has, as its main plot point, a daughter talking about how awesome her daddy is, so it’s nice to end up in what is essentially a Hellmouth so that we can see what he left behind.

Having finally left the village, the first three-quarters of the book is the journey, as Belgrieve and company set off to find Percival, who is rumored to be at the Earth Navel. Fortunately, the rumor turns out to be true, as Percival is there, but he’s a far cry from the happy-go-lucky lunkhead we’ve heard Belgrieve talk about before. As the group get clover and closer to the Earth Navel, the area gets hotter and more dangerous. In addition, Belgrieve is not the only one who has to confront his past, as Kasim runs into the guild master of a city they pass through, who not only has a clear crush on him still but is very bitter about this “:Bel” Kasim was always obsessed with. As they get closer to the Earth Navel, will things really resolve so easily?

There are times when I can feel the hand of the author on the plot a bit too much, such as when, just before arriving at the Earth Navel, Belgrieve is struck by a bad illness, so that he can look at death’s door when he finally meets Percival and cause even more angsty trauma. That said, I did laugh at the way that their past is resolved – Bel hits Percival till he feels better. I also really liked seeing Yakumo and Lucille again, especially Lucille, who still tends to slip old song lyrics into her speech (Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Thing Twice, It’s Alright” is the most obvious here). I also enjoyed Percival and Angeline bonding over killing monsters, even as Angeline is starting to slowly realize something she has been ignoring – spending years traveling around adventuring with her dad is probably not in the cards.

We’ve only got one more “past” character to reunite with, which I suspect will happen in the next book. Till then, of all the “Daddy and Daughter who really loves her daddy” series from Japan, this is probably my favorite.