By Ichiro Sakaki and Yuugen. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

For the most part, I tend to wait at least a day before writing a review of something. Reflection can be a good thing, and so sometimes my opinions on Twitter – which are as I read – don’t match up with what’s here. And, let’s face it, this volume had an uphill battle to win my affection in the first place. I enjoy Outbreak Company a great deal, but not for the fanservice. Thus when you have a volume that, in one way or another, doubles down on such things, you’re going to be losing me. That said, it is not without interest. If you can ignore the fact that the entire first story seems to revolve around Minori’s tits, it’s actually a lot of fun, and there is some actual suspense in there briefly – that turns out to be undercut. It’s Outbreak Company’s excuse to do a beach episode with swimsuits, something it admits within the text, and as such is fine. The other two stories were a bit more problematic with me.

The second story should have easily been my favorite, as it’s an emotional character-driven piece. It’s also from the POV of Myusel, which makes for a great change. We’ve known since the first book that she’s half-elf, but the subject of her parents has never come up. Now, all of a sudden, due to changes in the family, her mother has arrived (she’s the elf) and wants Myusel to leave the mansion and come live with her. Myusel, we know, really does not want to do this at all, but runs up against everyone seemingly thinking it’s a done deal and accepting that it has to happen. And if Minori and Shinichi are already arranging for her replacement, how can she say no? I was struck by how obtuse everyone was being in this part. Frankly, as a reader, Myusel’s depression could not be more obvious if she’d tried, and the fact that the characters all assume she’s fine with it really bothered me. Do they really know her all that well? This was well-written but the characterization just felt… off.

The third story was apparently written with the help of one of the author’s female assistants, who is a fujoshi. He clearly said to her “I want a story where Minori is going through BL withdrawal, make it as exaggerated as possible.” And boy howdy, that’s what happened. Again, the issue I have is with the characterization. I’m fine with Minori being like this. Though the constant chants of “homo, homo” are perhaps a bit… insensitive, shall we say, they certainly fit with a certain type of fujoshi. I was more annoyed with this essentially turning into a fujoshi zombie movie, with Minori infecting everyone else in the story (even Myusel, though she holds out at first, for reasons that everyone but Shinichi understand) so that the entire cast are suddenly mindless BL maniacs. Yes, that’s the exaggeration, but it didn’t sit well with me. That said, if you enjoy over the top comedy, this may be your favorite segment. It’s certainly that. And OK, the “Vitamin BL” gag was very funny.

This was certainly a volume of short stories. There were some interesting parts, but I am hoping that next time around we get back to the main plot.

By Ichiro Sakaki and Yuugen. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

It can sometimes be a bit striking how blase this series is about the government of Japan wanting Shinichi to be murdered because he ruined their grand plans. The Japanese side of things are simply one of the villainous factions in the books, and this time around they put into place a new plan: give Shinichi an assistant who turns out to be better than him at everything and watch him slowly lose confidence and break. Or at least, that would be an excellent plan if that was their actual intent. Because in that respect it works out quite well, and it’s only the heartfelt feelings of Myucel that manage to win him back from depressed land. No, instead Japan and the new character seem to be dedicated to destroying the country through commerce one way or another, and while they don’t succeed, things do get a bit dicey. Fortunately, as always, Shinichi is here to win the day with a really irritating otaku speech that grates on my nerves.

On the cover is Hikaru, who is the new Japanese “assistant” to Shinichi who is there to shake things up. Honestly, she should share the cover with Shinichi, but I know a lot of light novels refuse to have the main character on the covers, possibly as they still tend to think in terms of “faceless unseen protagonist” from ero games. Speaking of ero games, Hikaru is willing to do anything to get profits for the Japanese side, even if that means importing trading cards (the rare ones immediately get traded for massive amounts of money) and, yes, erotic games, which is causing the kids of Shinichi’s school to turn into, well, puberty-infested boys who refuse to leave their game. (The fact that the ultimate solution for this issue is to give them body pillows instead of games shows us where the issue ultimately lies.) Unfortunately, turning a bunch of the nobles’ kids into addicts is not what Shinichi had in mind. What’s worse, in the games you can create your own girl to moon over… and some are creating girls that look a lot like the Queen.

There’s a lot of discussion in this volume about the ‘otaku’, and how they’re viewed in Japan. Hikaru seemingly hates them with a passion, and regards them as the root of all evil. Some of this is related to Hikaru’s past, but there is a certain amount of truth to the idea of “let’s find a game/anime we can blame this tragedy on” to both Japan and North America. That said, ‘gaming addiction’ is clearly the motif here, and I really liked the fact that Shinichi accepted that it was ultimately his responsibility for what happened, and he thus sets out to correct things. A kidnapping helps to add a bit of excitement to things (the kidnapping, it turns out, is unrelated to the game issue), but for the most part this volume turns on Shinichi vs. Hikaru, and how they both view this world and the people in it. Shinichi is an empathic guy, as we’ve seen time and time again, and this is why he’s trusted by the Eldian people, despite his goody @D speeches.

Next volume we take a break for short stories, but I’m sure that there’s more political machinations to come. In the meantime, this was a pretty good volume of Outbreak Company. Plus this is past where the anime ended, I believe.

By Ichiro Sakaki and Yuugen. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

Every volume of Outbreak Company seems to begin trying its best to irritate me, I swear. It’s as if the creator has to present his bonafides before he gets into the meat of what he actually wants to do. Hence we begin with Shinichi, who has just been kidnapped by this world’s equivalent of Saudi Arabia or something similar, going on and on about moe fetishes for a bit, followed by his summarizing the entire plot for those readers who may have wanted to start with Book 5. That said, this book does show us, even more than usual, that Shinichi is very fond of these fetishes AS FICTION, and when they’re given to him in real life he is reasonably creeped out by them. And given that the entire premise of this book is basically “Shinichi has done the Eldant Empire so much good and now the entire female cast (who either love him or are at least good friends with him” proceed to rescue him:”, the reminder is needed. Shinichi is a model otaku – he can separate fiction and reality.

Myusel gets her second cover, and also pretty much separates herself from the harem pack here. We get a large chunk of the book narrated by her (out of necessity, as Shinichi’s been kidnapped), and her love and devotion to Shinichi is really impressive. As is her use of automatic weapons towards the climax, which given it gets two interstitial pieces of art may have been the excuse for the plot. At this point, if she’s not Best Girl by the end of the series I’ll be very surprised. Elvia too gets a lot to do here, given that it’s her country who has kidnapped Shinichi – we get to meet her sisters, and see how the family dynamic is. It honestly looks like it’s a good thing that Elvia was captured and stayed with the main cast. That said, it was rather startling how much she was treated as ‘evil spy’ at the start of the book given that she’s pretty much lazed around drawing and occasionally firing off soccer balls. No one forgets how she first arrived.

The plot itself is quite interesting. We’ve seen for the first four or so books Shinichi dealing with a very unequal world, where humans are the ‘norm’ and elves, dwarves, beastmen etc. are considered less than human. The core of the series has been showing that this is a bad thing. Now, however, we see Elvia’s country, whose king has set things up so that everything is equal – by force. People eat the same things, work the same jobs, are married in mass ceremonies to whoever the King picks out for them… it’s pretty damn appalling. Shinichi is supposedly kidnapped so that he can write something that will make the population of Bahairam love their king the way the magical girl movie made everyone love Petralka, and after wracking his brain and avoiding the obvious, he finally gives in. He can’t do it. Equality is important, but not at the cost of individuality.

Of course, all this may have been planned all along, and we see at the end that Shinichi’s idea of fixing things may be the smartest. Overall, though, this was a very good entry in the Outbreak Company series, and should appeal to those who enjoy it and don’t mind Shinichi occasionally leaping off of otaku cliffs.