My First Love’s Kiss, Vol. 1

August 30, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Hitoma Iruma and Fly. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Hatsukoi Aite ga Kiss Shiteta” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Kiki Piatkowska.

Tempted as I am to just write “Christ on a cracker” and let that be my review, I suppose I should get into the nuts and bolts of this thing. First of all, I feel retroactively annoyed with Adachi and Shimamura 11. I’ve mentioned many times before how this author has a cast of characters that are all part of the same “world”, and they flit in and out of each other’s series. That was the case with Adachi and Shimamura 11’s review as well. Little did I realize just how MUCH those characters took up all of Book 11, to the point where it now reads as nothing more than an ad for the author’s darker yuri series. (A&S 11 came out the same day as the final volume of this one.) The author also states in the afterword that this is a “romantic comedy”, then admits readers will get annoyed at them for saying it. Which is very true. This is a trawl through the sewers of love, and it will make you feel dirty.

Takasora is very, very surprised when her mother one day brings home someone she knew when she was in school, along with the woman’s teenage daughter, and announces that they’re now living there. The other teen, Umi, is very pretty (a fact Takasora will mention over and over again throughout this book), but also doesn’t seem all there, and there’s clearly something going on behind the scenes that Takasora… really doesn’t want to get involved with. Unfortunately for her, not only does she slowly begin to get obsessed with Umi as the days go by, but she also notices Umi going out late at night and frequently staying out all night. And there are rumors that she’s doing compensated dating. Are the rumors correct? The other half of the book is Umi’s story, which tells us that a) yes, they are correct, and b) it’s far more desperately awful than we’d like.

So, first of all, the opening of this novel features physical abuse of one of the heroines. FYI. Secondly, the rest of the book features emotional manipulation of the same heroine. Takasora is the easier part of this book. She’s immediately very attracted to Umi, can’t really work out why, and spends the book realizing that she’;s in love. Umi has spent most of her life bouncing from house to house with her mother. The better households ignore her, the worse ones abuse her. Then six months ago, she meets a gorgeous older woman who wants to pay her lots of money to have sex with her. And Umi falls for this lady HARD. It’s the first caring and affection she’s ever really received, and even though she knows the woman is a creepy pervert, and that this is illegal, and that love is not involved, she still confesses and begs her to NOT pay her anymore and just date her normally. (Something which the other woman notably does NOT do.)

A brief extra note to talk about the connections to Adachi and Shimamura, for fans of that series who I know are curious. The first half of A&S 11 can pretty easily be understood after reading this volume. The “kimono lady” 15-year-old Shimamura meets, who acts creepy but states straight up that Shimamura is one year too young for her, is the lady who is involved with 17-year-old Umi in this series. The last half of the book might be more confusing, as I’m pretty sure the senpai that Shimamura meets on her vacation with Adachi in Takasora from this book, only their personality is literally NOTHING like this Takasora, so I may be wrong. Most ominously, Chiki (the kimono lady) at one point apologizes to Umi for being a) late and b) in an out-of-place yukata, as she was “visiting Hino”. Hino as in Hino and Nagafuji Hino?!?! It’s even implies she stays at their estate. Given everything about Chiki makes me recoil in horror, I kind of hate this.

I will probably read the other two books in this series, as I want to see what happens and how it ties in to a yuri series I do enjoy. But man, I cannot recommend this at all unless you revel in the most toxic yuri and do not mind feeling like your skin is crawling while reading most of this.

Filed Under: my first love's kiss, reviews

Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, Vol. 5

August 29, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Sunsunsun and Momoco. Released in Japan as “Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matthew Rutsohn.

It’s been about ten months since the last non-short story volume of Alya, and since then we’ve started the anime, which is doing a pretty good job, even if it’s also reminding us how hard it can be to watch Alya herself at times. It’s also facing stiff competition from Too Many Losing Heroines!, another anime that is very interested in light novel cliches. But while Makeine uses the tropes straight on occasion but for the most part wants to call attention to them and deconstruct them, Roshidere positively revels in the tropes. It will give you the fake incest, the boob measurements, the “I saw the girls I like changing” gags, walking in on a girl naked out of the shower is literally engineered here. Now, it’s not the point of the series. The point of the series is seeing Masachika and Alya both struggle to have any self-worth at all despite both being ludicrous geniuses. But it *is* why people obsess with this series.

We start by “resolving” the cliffhanger from the fourth volume. It’s not actually resolved at all, really – even if Masha isn’t already aware she’s the forgotten childhood friend, anyone in a light novel who confesses and then says you don’t have to give me an answer right away is already digging a massive hole it will be impossible to climb out of. In the meantime, it’s culture festival time, and the student council are stepping in where needed. In fact, they’re stepping even above and beyond – Hikaru’s band collapsed due to romantic drama, and they need three new band members… which might be a good opportunity to Alya to sing and show leadership skills. More importantly, there’s a quiz game where Yuki and Alya will be competing against each other. Supposedly a fun contest, you know it’s actually a proxy war in the election.

Alya is doubting herself. She wants to be able to stand on her own, to not have to depend upon Masachika as much as she has in previous books. (She also wants Masachika to ask her out on dates, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.) She does a great job in this book! Possibly too great a job. Masachika’s ridiculously huge self-hatred has driven everything he’s done in this series since the start, and we wallow in that in this book, whether it drives his cowardice in not actually asking Alya for that date, to his jealousy over seeing her get along with his other male friends, to his despair at realizing that she is growing and becoming able to stand on her feet… without him. His final words to her at the end of this volume imply that once she’s won, he’s going to quietly bury himself so that she can move forward without him holding her back. I do hope that before he finishes his self-loathing Samson act he at least crushes the asshole piano prodigy who’s trying to destroy Alya first, however.

If you enjoy seeing insecure and pessimistic kids avoid being in love with each other and lots of girls in underwear or even naked, this series is written just for you.

Filed Under: alya sometimes hides her feelings in russian, reviews

My Happy Marriage, Vol. 7

August 28, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Every so often, I hot a point in a book where a plot point bounces off me so hard that I just go “NOPE” and throw the book away. Usually it’s pretty easy, as it’s in the first or second volume in a series and I can easily just drop it and never look back. It’s much harder when it’s in a series I really like. I don’t WANT to drop this series. And yeah, the second half of the book is basically everything we wanted to have happen. But man alive. I absolutely did not need the main plotline of this volume, whose entire purpose (and it’s clearly, deliberately on purpose) is to fill this volume with drama even though all the roadblolcks and evil villains have been taken care of. It is there to pile on the pain and suffering once more, and I’m not sure it makes the resolution sweeter for that fact. Basically, there is a scene (it has the words “I hate you” in it) that made me want to jump into the sea. Anyway. Moving on.

It’s finally time. We’re at the wedding, Miyo looks gorgeous, the guests are here, everything is prepared… and the groom is absent. Clearly it’s time for a flashback to show how we got to this point. Miyo is doing her best to get ready for being an actual wife, including facing up to the fact that she will need to be intimate with her husband (when she can’t even say the word “darling” without falling over with a red face) and also trying to brush up on her cooking skills, which are already miles better than her sister-in-law but could use some work. While at a cooking demonstration, she runs into an old classmate from elementary school, who was the other “quiet, shy girl nobody liked” in class, and Miyo gets told a rather depressing story about a sacrificial marriage. She then goes home… and has the scene I mentioned at the start.

The good and bad thing about this series is that it is filled with the supernatural, and there are tons of things that have something evil, monstrous, or twisted as their cause. This is bad because it means that we get everything that happens in this book, which involves curses, evil from the previous generation seemingly trying to rise up and make Kiyoka late for his wedding, and in the end, straight-up murder attempts. The good thing is that it means that we don’t have to have all those horrible romance cliches of “I misheard you and we must now not talk to each other for the next five volumes” miscommunication. It turns out to really be a curse. We also get to see discount bargain-basement Kiyoka and Miyo, who are there as an object lesson in how sometimes you can try to escape a terrible life by entering into an arranged marriage with a stoic, cold man and it goes really badly. I don’t think there’s supposed to be a moral here, like “they should have tried harder”, I think it’s just meant to be “there but for the grace of God go I”.

The good bits of this book were very good. The wedding was fantastic, the ceremony afterwords was heartwarming, the wedding night was moved offscreen but we assume it happened without a lot of blushing and awkwardness, and after that there’s only one minor knife to the heart to deal with and we can get our happily ever after. Except we get an 8th volume soon, so now we get My Happy Married Life. I’ll be reading more. Just… perhaps fewer road cones for the sake of being road cones?

Filed Under: my happy marriage, reviews
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