Observation Records of My Fiancée: The Misadventures of a Self-Proclaimed Villainess, Vol. 1

August 12, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Shiki and Wan Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Jishō Akuyaku Reijō na Konyakusha no Kansatsu Kiroku” by Regina Books. Released in North America by Hanashi Media. Translated by Ethan Holms.

I am, frankly, a little sick of every new villainess book forcing me to say how much it reminds me of My Next Life As a Villainess. And given that this book stars a dumbass who everyone loves, that’s a trap that I want to avoid. So let’s try something else. You know the works of Sarasa Nagase? The kind where the clever heroine has to think on her feet and not let her guard down for a minute or else fate will slot everything back into place and she’ll be killed? And this is helped along by an evil but equally clever heroine? This series is the mirror opposite of that. Both the villainess and the heroine are desperately trying to NOT fight fate, for reasons that we don’t really find out in this volume, but the problem is that they are both not particularly clever, so fate is constantly changed so that things are better. Congratulations on falling face first into success.

While visiting his fiancee on her eighth birthday, the Crown Prince Cecil is rather surprised to hear her say that she’s actually a villainess, and she will do her best to grow up to be a fantastic one so that he can dump her and her family will fall into ruin. And she can go ‘GAH!”. (The “GAH!” is very important!) Cecil is baffled by all this talk of “otome games” and “routes”, but he finds Bertia amusing and interesting, which frankly almost nothing does as he’s the most jaded ten-year-old in the world. Each chapter in the book is “one year later”, and we see that Bertia’s schemes and plans do things like tell everyone where those trying to overthrow the country really are, or making sure that people get together with their true loves, or telling Cecil enough information that they can stop a deadly plague. Isn’t she actually sweet as pie? Why does she want to be a villainess? And what’s with the new girl named (sigh) Hironia?

I read the first volume of the manga when AlphaPolis put it out here, and reviewed it in a Bookshelf Brief where I mentioned Cecil was who interested me most. That goes double for this first book, though Bertia is also interesting for reasons that I don’t think we’ll get explained till the next book. Cecil regards Bertia as a fun toy when he’s a kid, but as he grows older and grows to appreciate her as a person… he’s still not quite there. It’s mentioned many times that Cecil is fundamentally broken, and that gets more clear as we get closer to the climax, when we realize that Cecil has never expressed any affection for Bertia besides “you are my fiancee”, and that he doesn’t really get that he’s fallen in love with her at ALL. We never get Bertia’s POV, for reasons that, again, I think will make more sense in Book 2, but I think she has realized her feelings, but is desperate to avoid them for the sake of the greater good.

This is a series that will end next time, though I think there’s a sequel that Hanashi Media has also licensed with their marriage. Till then, this is a fun Villainess book that starts off very wacky and gets increasingly less so as the book goes on.

Filed Under: observation records of my fiancee, reviews

The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power: Forget My Sister! Turns Out I Was the Real Saint All Along!, Vol. 3

August 11, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Almond and Yoshiro Ambe. Released in Japan as “Mujikaku Seijo wa Kyō mo Muishiki ni Chikara o Tare Nagasu: Imadai no Seijo wa Anede wa Naku, Imōto no Watashi Datta Mitai Desu” by Earth Star Luna. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Dawson Chen.

It’s never a good sign when I’m checking Amazon Japan to see how long a series has left to go. Fortunately, this series looks like it ends with the 4th volume, so I guess I’ll finish it. It’s not doing anything wrong per se, and doesn’t have random slavery or the usual light novel turnoffs, but it’s a damp wet towel of a book. Our heroes hear of a setback, think of a plan, and the plan, for the most part, goes swimmingly. The bad guys are really bad, the good guys are really good, with the exception of Teodore being a standard “glasses sadist” for laughs. There are one or two exceptions, which I’ll get to later, but if I’m being honest, the most interesting and exciting part of the book was when this volume’s antagonist snaps and decides to start choking Carolina to death in front of royalty and hundreds of people. Dumb, but exciting.

Carolina’s father arrives with bad news: Archbishop Mills is on his way to the kingdom and wants an audience with Carolina, likely to try to get her to come back to Celestia. Unfortunately, they’re not quite ready to reveal how powerful she is to the world yet. So they try several stopgap measures. She puts off her decision while she “thinks about it”, they investigate the bishop for his horrible crimes (can’t have a light novel without a Church of Evil, though in this case it’s just one Bishop of Evil), and create a Saint for their own Empire. Unfortunately, while they get enough support to do this, they can’t just make it Carolina, especially since her power is a secret. There’s going to be a magic competition. And her main opponent is Monica, the noble girl who despises her.

So there are a couple of bits that weren’t too bad, most of which revolve around accepting that sometimes people change, and sometimes kids can’t change situations because they’re kids. Marisa and Owen both had terrible childhoods that left them with many regrets, and indeed we saw Marisa’s younger sister of terrible in the last book. But they need people to vote for their new Saint idea, and that means she has to talk to her OLDER sister, who also treated her like crap. Then she finds… her sister happily married, and love has softened her, and she deeply regrets what she did and apologizes. Marisa really doesn’t know how to take this. As for Owen, it turns out that his brother’s disinterest was not that in the slightest, but just a massive miscommunication, and now the two of them are getting along again. Now, both of them credit Carolina for basically making them nice enough to reach out and make amends, but I’m used to perfectly pure heroines.

I didn’t mention Flora at all, but the final volume has basically one question: will she be saved or will she die? We’ll find out. Bet the answer is the obvious one.

Filed Under: oblivious saint can't contain her power, reviews

The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival, Vol. 2

August 10, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Harunori Biyori and Hitaki Yuu. Released in Japan as “Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyō Survival” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Camilla L.

Fans of this series may be surprised that I’m reading the second volume of this book, but they’ll be even more surprised that I’m looking forward to the third. It’s rare I get a series I enjoy so much which is filled with things that normally annoy me. First of all, Villainess fans must be going nuts reading this, as there’s really very, very little of the actual otome game plot here, though we do meet another villainess (more on her later). There are stats. So many stats. I raised my endurance stat +2 just reading this volume. And of course this is an incredibly dark book in which we meet a cast of about twenty new minor characters and by the end of the book almost all of them are dead by the hands of our heroine, who perhaps does not quite deserve that moniker anymore. They even get little backstory flashes right after they’re killed to make it more tragic. So why do I like it? It’s compelling.

Having survived, barely, her life and death battle at the end of the first novel, Alia is now apprenticed to a dark elf named Cere’zhula, who was also the master of the woman who tried to kill Alicia and take her “heroine” place back at the start of the series. Alia ends up actually confessing almost off of this to her new mentor, and ends up being a much better apprentice, if somewhat… eccentric. Unfortunately, only a few months in, a nasty guy shows up and tries to blackmail Cere’zhula into doign an assassination job for him. Rather than get used as blackmail fodder, Alia offers to do the job herself… and then discovers that the Assassin’s Guild don’t trust her a lick. So, I mean, she goes through with the initial “kill these mooks’ test, and then does the actual dangerous assassination job, but she has a far greater goal in mind: killing the entire guild, who are now her enemies.

There is one big reason to read this new book. Just as, in the first book, the main enjoyment was the relationship between the heroine and the first “villainess”, Elena, here it’s between Alia and another villainess, Karla. And while Elena stands a chance of actually surviving the books, Karla may actually end up being the final boss. To be fair, her backstory is essentially “Sakura Matou with less rape but more torture”, but she is absolutely a hoot, absolutely a psychopath, and bonds IMMEDIATELY with Alia, who she not only sees as a kindred spirit (she’s right there, Alia is not remotely an empathic person) but also as someone who will be able to kill her – and not kill her so she dies pathetically, like her family could have done, but kill her so that her death has MEANING. She’s absolutely horrible, and I can’t take my eyes off her.

By the end of the second book, Alia seems done with Assassining, at least for now. Where she’ll end up, who knows, but the 8th in the series just came out in Japan, so it will be a bit. This is dark as pitch, but I’m sticking with it.

Filed Under: otome heroine's fight for survival, reviews
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