A Cozy Life in the Woods with the White Witch, Vol. 1

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By MOJIKAKIYA and syow. Released in Japan as “Shiro Majo-san to no Henkyō Gurashi ~Saikyō na Majo wa Nonbiri Kurashitai~” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amanogawa Tenri.

I wasn’t originally going to try this series – again, contrary to popular belief, I don’t read everything – but I decided to pick it up after I saw it was from the author of My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Ranked Adventurer, which I quite enjoyed. That one had the author trying out the “raise a daughter that they picked up somewhere” mini-genre, though thankfully without the “and then marry them” part of that same genre. This seems to have the author trying out another genre to write in, that being the “slow life” type, though there’s also a dash of “kicked out of the party” to start us off. It’s very good at the slow life too, for good and ill. Good because I’m not really a fan of “I try to have a slow life but have to keep saving the world” books. Bad because the first half is really pretty boring. And if you’re waiting for our protagonist to do something OP, keep waiting.

Tori is part of the Platinum Adventurer group the Muddy Four Horns. That said, he’s not really a fighter, so provides backline support for them, such as cooking and cleaning. When they decide to combine several parties into one big elite one, Tori is informed by the guild manager and the rest of his party (who seem a bit reluctant) that he’s fired. As he walks along after this, he runs into a huge elderly woman, the famous White Witch, who has literally come looking for him, in order to put her life in order. Despite attempting to be bitter and sarcastic about it, Tori is whisked away to her cottage… where he finds that a) the huge elderly White Witch is a disguise, and she’s actually young and cute; and b) she’s an utter slob and her cottage is a disaster area. But a job is a job, so he gets down to work.

This feels kind of like the gender reverse of a typical shoujo manga, where a bunch of men sleep, eat, fight and make messes until a girl comes into their lives, cleans up, and forces them to straighten up. Fortunately for us, there’s no harem antics here – mostly as Euphemia, the witch, makes it very clear to her other familiars that Tori is HERS. The love story starts off a bit forced, in my opinion, mostly held back by Tori’s self-hatred and Euphemia’s lack of emotional knowledge, but her solution to “how to get him to stay with me forever” not only drives the rest of the book but amused me. If you’re going to attract a man, go big and solve ALL his friend’s problems so he never worries about them again. The other surprise is that Tori is not involved in any of the action – there’s quite a few battles here, especially at the climax, but Tori really DOES have no really good combat ability, as opposed to others in the genre, and so he stays home, cooks, and cleans. And as a reward he gets a hot witch girlfriend. This is still a title written for teenage boys.

Theoretically, this could easily be a one-shot, as it wraps everything up, but there’s a second volume coming, so I guess we’ll see. This isn’t as good as My Daughter Left the Nest, but it isn’t too bad.

The Tanaka Family Reincarnates, Vol. 1

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By Choko and kaworu. Released in Japan as “HTanaka-ke, Tensei Suru” by Dragon Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sasha Schiller.

OK, this was an absolute hoot. I suspected I would enjoy it when I first saw the license announcement, but I wasn’t aware just how much fun I would have. It’s not perfect, but the things that annoyed me are things that I tend to get annoyed at in most light novels, rather than being unique to this one (obsession with large breasts by the heroine, the lolicon stuff). Our heroine is fun, the family in general is in that “stupidly competent” genre, where people tend to magically be fantastic at everything and solve everyone’s problems while being blissfully unaware of it. There’s also a really good and deadly serious fight in the third quarter of the book, allowing the author to show that this isn’t just going to be for laughs. I even enjoyed the worldbuilding, which at first suggests this family is reincarnated from our Japan, but as the volume goes on we realize that our Japan is not quite as cat-obsessed as the Tanakas’ Japan, and that something has it in for our heroine.

The Tanakas, consisting of the 65-year-old parents and their three middle-aged children, are sitting down to dinner at the daughter’s condo when they are all killed by what seems to be a massive earthquake. Minato, the daughter and our protagonist, wakes up to find that she is now Emma, a cute 11-year-old noble who is absolutely obsessed with bugs. To her surprise, she finds that Emma’s younger brother William is her own younger brother… and yes, the rest of their family are all Tanakas as well. They’re actually quite wealthy, thanks to their silkworm cultivating, but they’re located, for the moment, out in the sticks. And now they all have past memories, particularly Emma, who was eccentric in Japan and is even more so here, and she’s going to take this new world by storm… after finding a pet cat.

The Tanakas feel like an actual family that’s grown up in close proximity, and I howled at how they all realized that they were actually all Tanakas reincarnated, rather than it just being them with some other family. The siblings act like siblings, with George and William trying desperately to not have Emma somehow blow everything up – especially as she’s a gorgeous little girl in this world, so everyone pays a lot more attention to her. I also loved the subplot with Rose, the king’s favored concubine, who after giving birth to two children is unceremoniously shipped out to the sticks, and has been having a very bad time of it. How she ends up bonding with Emma may annoy me a bit (hint: she’s stacked), but I appreciated how she no longer felt anyone saw her as anything but an extension of her children. As for the monster which leads to the biggest threat in the book, this is another reversal that relies on the reader knowing their light novel lore, and I appreciated the threat – and how it leads to permanent damage, if thankfully less than expected.

The next volume has the family all moving from the countryside into the capital, and I have a suspicion we’re getting a magic academy arc, even if magic is super rare in this world. And yes, I haven’t mentioned the giant cats, and where they come from. Or the giant spider, who would get along well with Mr. Crawly Wawly. Basically, assuming you don’t mind the usual Japanese light novel cliches, this is a huge winner, and I can’t wait for more.

I Abandoned My Engagement Because My Sister is a Tragic Heroine, but Somehow I Became Entangled with a Righteous Prince, Vol. 2

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By Fuyutsuki Koki and Haduki Futaba. Released in Japan as “Higeki no Heroine Buru Imōto no Sei de Konyaku Hakishita no Desu ga, Naze ka Seigikan no Tsuyoi Ōtaishi ni Karamareru you ni Narimashita” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Sarah Moon. Adapted by Veles Svitlychny.

This is a classic example of a sequel that manages to do some things right and some things wrong for the second book. Much to my relief, a lot of the broad humor that felt out of place in the first volume has disappeared, which is good, as there’s a very real threat to the kingdom going on here. That said, the tendency of the author towards writing ridiculous cartoon villains has not gone away, and I ended up calling the main villain of the book Jacob Rees-Mogg, if only as he had a top hat AND a monocle, and his inner monologue tended to end in “Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!”. There is an exception, though, which I’ll get to later, as it was easily the biggest surprise of the book for me. Oh yes, and the Chinese stereotype girl? She’s worse. I wish she hadn’t been in it.

After the fallout from the arrest of Jade Berklein, Eric and Leia are ready to do things such as visit the new popular ice cream shop, run by a mage with a talent for ice magic. Unfortunately, while they’re there, Baron Almer, one of the minor villains from the first book, is poisoned, and while Leia saves his life, evidence points to the ice cream shop being responsible. While this is going on, Eric and Dale’s father the King declares that he is going to announce the revocation of special rights to the elite families in the kingdom, and boy are those families pissed. So the King needs extra guards. Fortunately, Duke Rees-Mogg… erm, Algrene, is here to lend the King his crack mercenary troops who are totally not assassins in disguise. Can Eric and Leia manage to save the king? And what’s up with Dale anyway?

The surprise I was alluding to, which… mostly works – I give the author credit for trying it in the first place – is the presence of Jill in this book. No, she is not, as I expected, escaped and once again being the worst. She spends the entire book in a cold, damp cell. But she is visited by someone who keeps asking pointed questions, such as “why is no one coming to save you?” and “why do you think your sister hated you?”. And the lack of her mother or other people telling her how to think forces Jill to think for herself, and you can see the “Are we the baddies?” meme show up on her face. This doesn’t go perfectly – she was such a cartoon in the first book that I found her sudden turn a bit hard to buy – but certainly I like it better than just having her executed. It was also a surprise, which is nice.

The third book, judging by the wedding outfits on the cover, is the final one. This isn’t great, but it’s also not awful, stereotypes aside. Also, given she’s now engaged to the prince, we’ll get the Princess Leia joke soon.