By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

I will admit, as I was reading this new volume about a small little girl beating the absolute hell out of things she has no business beating, I could not help but think of Do-Over Damsel, which has an anime running this fall and also features lots of this sort of thing. They even have similar “this is vaguely creepy but doesn’t quite cross a line, but I’m watching you” characters. That said, whereas with Jill I tend to really enjoy it when she finally lets loose and lets violence be her answer for everything, with Nia there’s no question that the magivision has become more interesting to me. There’s simply not much about Nia murdering ancient giant crabs by punching them a few times that I can say anything about, beyond “nice punch”. But if she’s being manipulated by royalty (again) or trying to think of things to get ratings besides outrunning dogs, I’m intrigued. And, so far, those are the two plots – though that may change soon.

Nia is a bit grumpy at the start of this book. Relia has stolen Nia’s thunder with the paper play show, and everyone in the school is talking about it. That said, she’s not frustrated enough that she won’t help Hildetaura come up with her own popular show – even if the extent of Nia’s help is “let me ask my brother to be clever for me”. Her greater concern, though, is earning that one billion. Adventuring is earnin g tons of cash, but tons is not enough. As a result, she and Lynokis take a trip over the holidays to a different country filled with expensive monsters that Leeno – or rather, Leeno’s child assistant – can murder without destroying their value as a carcass/magic corpse. Unfortunately, doing feats no one has been able to do in a hundred years attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Possibly the most interesting part of this book was the occasional “had I but known” hint that implies things are going to go very badly for Nia at some point in the future, implying she may have to flee the kingdom. Certainly, while she can quickly take action when her future is definitely being threatened, she is otherwise completely uncaring about being manipulated by the two royal princes in order to get what they want – and, let’s face it, Nia’s best resource is her position as Nia Liston, not her secret super strength. She’s a celebrity, and outrunning dogs is all very well and good, but that’s just more important than punching crabs. Unfortunately, a lot more crab punching may be needed to get that tournament, so I suspect we’ll be getting more fighting next time, though it’s also possible that the politics that threatened in this book overflow at last.

This was a decent volume, but again, I’d like a bit less “Nia hits things”, please.

By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

When I have a book where there are things I liked and things I didn’t like, I generally like to start with the bad stuff and work my way up to the good. And there’s definitely stuff I enjoyed here! But we have to address the elephant in the room, and it’s an elephant that every series starring an adorable six-year-old, past memories/abilities or no, seems to have to deal with. The author finds people creeping on Nia hilarious, and assumes the reader does as well. We’ve already had the first two volumes, where her maid is constantly trying to get into her bed. Here we get Reliared’s older sister (yes, another one) wants to paint Nia in the nude (she’s an artist, but it’s also framed deliberately as “this is a skeezy creep”. And the king essentially saying “you will be mine once you’re old enough.” It’s designed for a very specific light novel audience that isn’t me, and I hate it. Anyway, onward.

It’s summer vacation for Nia, but of course that means ENDLESS FILMING FOR MAGIVISION. Once that’s over with, fortunately, she can visit Reliared and her lovely family (and creepy sister), and then head off to the princess’ private royal island… which also has the king, who is also vacationing, and turns out to be not quite as royal as you’d like… or is that just a facade? As for those of you who follow Nia to see her punch things, well, here’s not as much as the previous two books, but she does discover a new dungeon. And what’s more, she assigns her protege (and maid) Lynokis to go out adventuring and hone her new techniques. And earn money. A lot, a WHOLE lot, of money. Which Nia will need in order to realize the next part of her grand plan.

The best part of this book, aside from the ending, showing Reliared for once winning against Nia, if only indirectly, is her discussion with the King. Aside from his creeper tendencies (again, see the rest of the book), he turns out to be one smart cookie. Indeed, he’s much smarter than Nia, who presents an idea of having an annual fighting tournament but can’t think of more than two reasons why it would benefit the kingdom. The king thinks of eight other reasons, tells her how mind-numbingly expensive it would be to do properly, and sets her a goal of two years to raise that ludicrous amount of money. In just two pages he shifts the entire goal of this book from “let’s watch Nia race puppies” to “let’s watch Nia finance a shonen manga”, and I think it’s a good pivot. More of smart king, less of lecherous king.

So yes, a big asterisk next to this title. Assuming you can get past it (and it’s always used for humor, not seriously), this is a good entry in the “overpowered elementary school girls beat up the world” genre.

By Umikaze Minamino and Kochimo. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

One of the things that I did not touch on in my review of the first book in this series is how funny it is. And by funny I mean that Nia Liston is a horrible, horrible little gremlin and her thought process is hilarious. I started quoting some of her more batshit moments on Twitter as I read, and it might have seemed as if I was complaining about the book. No… well, if you’re the sort who is not a fan of 6-year-olds who have a thirst for a little old ultraviolence, than yes but honestly, if that concerns you you probably didn’t start the second volume anyway. It also helps that she gets her very own tsukkomi in this book, as Reliared, the girl we briefly saw in Book 1 who decides to make Nia her biggest rival, meets her and immediately becomes the only one in the group with any sense, which means she’s the comeback queen. I mean, it can’t be Nia’s servant, who’s just as bad as she is.

Nia is starting her first year at Altoire, where all the kids go to school, be they royalty or commoner. That said, her core friend group rapidly becomes Reliared, another noble, and Hildetaura, the third princess. Nia is here to find strong people, but is also there to help promote Magivision, and finds two strong allies in her fellow classmates, who both want to get everyone owning a TV set… erm, a Magivision tablet. The idea they come up with is a martial arts tournament among the elementary and middle school students, to be filmed on campus by other students with the three girls acting as “hosts”. This interests Nia not at all, as no one is strong enough for her, but when she finds out about an illegal underground fighting tournament, nothing can keep her away.

I am starting to wonder if the punchline to all of the many and varied sword styles, martial arts styles, and other weapon styles that everyone is obsessed with at this school is that she was responsible for all of them in the past. She remembers nothing about her own past self except in little bits (she seems to imply that she eventually lost control and fell to ruin), but she definitely remembers other strong people in the past… none of whom are as strong as her, of course. That said, I think she has to admit that at times she definitely has the emotional maturity of the 6-year-old that she is now. Not realizing that Lynokis would follow her to the illegal tournament and indeed enter it in order to protect her was *so* stupid that Nia spends a page and a half berating herself for it. That said, her “I apologized, so we’re back to normal and I learned nothing” is also very six-year-old. She’s an immature kid, she just… is ludicrously strong.

The next volume continues to be about half livestreamer, half “let’s punch everything”, judging by the synopsis. That should do find, as long as Nia continues to be the arrogant asshole we know and love.