The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power: Forget My Sister! Turns Out I Was the Real Saint All Along!, Vol. 1

February 17, 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.

Sometimes a title can work against you. When I first saw this title, which (as with so many other light novel titles out these days) describes the plot, I focused on the words “oblivious” as a personality trait of the heroine, and was expecting something along the lines of Bakarina or Villainess Level 99. This is, however, definitely not that kind of book. It’s not on the level of I Swear I Won’t Bother You Again! (the gold standard of dark villainess tragedies), but this is definitely one of the more serious “disgraced noble” books, and the main obstacle through much of it is the heroine’s own self-loathing due to years and years of abuse and neglect. It ends up being… good. It’s very readable. It does, however, have quite a few problems, one of which is also directly linked to its title: this book gives away almost everything it’s going to do long before it does it.

Carolina Sanchez has had a rough life. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and her older sister has never forgiven her for this. Carolina has “good, but not great” grades, and no magic, whereas her older sister is the Saint, one with great magic potential who can heal people. Her father is remote. And now their kingdom has gotten into trouble with the far more powerful Empire, so they need to marry someone off to make amends. Marry someone off to the second prince, who ha a reputation of being a bloodthirsty psychopath. And we’re not going to marry off the very important Saint, are we? Enter Carolina, who is railroaded into this. Fortunately, this ends up being fantastic for her… well, mostly. There are multiple attempts on her life. But I mean, compared to where she started the book, it’s fantastic. It is, however, very bad for her older sister, who finds she is far, far less powerful now that her “magicless” sister is far away.

Carolina is a nice person who is dealing with having to have self-worth for the first time in her life, and I like her as a heroine. Certainly the supposedly bloodthirsty prince (who turns out to be a sweetie) falls in love with her almost instantly. That said… this book telegraphs its punches something awful. At the end of the first volume, none of the characters have figured out that the Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power, only the readers and the writer know. Which is honestly frustrating, not cool. I kept yelling “test her for magic again! Come on!” Instead we get hints, which… we know. Why are you hinting about something you literally told us in the title? (And yes, the Japanese says the same thing.) We also get told about the power struggle going on between the two princes, which is mainly because the prince who should rule is magically sick and will be dying soon. UNLESS… there’s an oblivious saint around! This is also not resolved or hinted at, but is obvious.

I enjoyed reading the characters, though again even the backstory for her guard was predictable. Recommended for those who don’t mind reading something where you know everything that happens before it does.

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

Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, Vol. 1

February 15, 2024 by Leave a Comment

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.

I appreciate a book that can subvert expectations right off the bat. The cover of this book features the titular heroine sitting on a throne, with blood spilled at her feet. The subtitle is “The Merciless Maiden”. The narrative explicitly says she’ll grow up to be absolutely terrifying. And the start of the book shows us her origin: in order to save his own skin, a disreputable mage, hired to save the life of a sickly young noble girl (who has, in fact, already died), transplants the soul of a fierce warrior who lives only for battle and desires a glorious death. Throughout the start of this book you get Nia Liston casually mentioning how strong she really is. But we very, very rarely see this. This book is, until near the end, the definition of a slow burn. Instead, what we get are Nia Liston’s adventures in livestreaming. And honestly, if it were “Nia Liston: The Impassive Presenter of a TV Show”, I might not have picked it up.

After being reincarnated into Nia’s 5-year-old body, the nameless warrior (who cannot remember much of anything about their past life aside from battle lust) has to spend much of her time making it so that the body does not immediately die. Fortunately, there’s chi and cultivation and all that stuff that I am thankful we don’t go into too much detail about, and eventually Nia gets healthy again, to the delight of her parents and older brother. She then proceeds to try to learn about the world she’s living in, as subtly as possible (i.e., not very) asking her maid about who the Liston family are and what they control. The answer, for the most part, is “magivision”, which is, of course, magic television. In order to show off their daughter’s miraculous recovery, they decide to have her host a show of her own. But… will she ever get to be merciless?

Yes, it does eventually happen, though I was going to wonder if it would be subverted. Nia goes on so much at the start about how much damage she could do to people with just her pinky finger that I thought the gag would be that she was a mere 5-year-old girl in reality. But no, when she spots her co-star (she ends up acting in a teleplay near the end) being accosted by thugs, we see her gleefully getting in a bit of the old ultraviolence. Nia is not training to do anything but make her body healthier – the martial arts skills are all innate, advanced, and extremely powerful. So, of course, the main reason to get this is to see other people’s reactions to a 5-year-old girl beating up over a hundred mafia goons, which range from terrified (the goons) to intrigued (the co-star, who asks “can I watch?”), to over the moon (her maid, a former adventurer, who basically says “PLEASE TRAIN ME”).

The next volume has Nia head off to boarding school, and I assume will focus more on the fighting than the livestreaming, though I could be wrong. In any case, if you want to know how to do slow burn plotting properly, this is a good example.

Filed Under: nia liston, reviews

Loner Life in Another World, Vol. 8

February 13, 2024 by Leave a Comment

By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Lorin Christie.

It feels odd to call a book that is 100 pages longer than the previous books a breather volume but that’s exactly what this is. After all of the plot going on in the last three volumes, Loner Life is returning to its roots, which means get ready for a whole lot of dungeon crawling. As always, you not only need to translate this book to English (and the translation is fine, I hasten to add – a) even Japanese fans say this is incoherent, and b) Haruka is meant to sound like this), but you also need to translate subtext into text. As such, the fact that we’ve moved from “let’s clear out all the 50-floor dungeons” and have now become “hey, all these dungeons are now about 90 floors” is a cause for great concern, and even small, supposedly random things like “Haruka is asked to make sanitary pads for the girls” delves into a critique on isekai stories in general as well as a dark examination of why Angelica and Nefertiri are only concubines. There is meat on these bones, under all that narrative bullshit.

The cover has Vice Rep B, but she’s no more prominent here than any of the other classmates not named Class Rep; the artist clearly gave her a cover shot to show off her assets, so to speak. After the civil war of the last two books, everyone is back in Omui, and there’s now a passel of orphan children with them. Most of the spare time is spent dungeon crawling, partly to get spellstones so they can afford any of the many things Haruka is making, but also partly to see what the dungeons are like after they’ve already been cleared once before. The answer is that the monsters are not QUITE as strong, but they’re still very strong, and more worryingly, the dungeons are deeper now. Haruka implies that any dungeon with 100 floors is a Very Bad Thing. Meanwhile, the rest of the class is getting stronger and stronger… but they still can’t hold a candle to Haruka, Angelica, Nefertiri or even the Slime Emperor. How can they possibly protect him?

There’s another reason Haruka’s doing all this dungeon exploration: he’s reached the limit of where he can go with just skills. Even though it’s very, very hard for him to accomplish, he’s going to have to start getting stronger and leveling up. Which means having to fight using actual COMMON SENSE, rather than fighting the chaotic Haruka way. It’s actually a bit heartwarming seeing him sparring with Angelica normally – though it leads the girls to assume, now that they can understand his moves, that they can defeat him. Hardly. Speaking of the girls, I’d mentioned the sanitary pads before (and Haruka observing that all the isekai books out there never bother to go into this sort of thing in their pre-industrial fantasy worlds), but it also brings up a melancholy subplot: Angelica and Nefertiri may look human and gorgeous now, and they’re both starting to communicate a lot better, but they’re still, at the end of the day, monsters. They don’t have periods, and they can’t get pregnant. This means that they want the girls to be Haruka’s wives while they remain his concubines… because the girls CAN get pregnant.

A somewhat sexist POV to have, but then this is a book that now uses sex like a comma (how in God’s name are the PG-rated manga and forthcoming anime going to handle this?). It remains not for everyone, but I still find nuggets of gold here. And I apologize for not mentioning the water park. Or the summer festival. Next time it looks like we start a new arc, as a (maybe?) good religious faction shows up near the end. Just… not 528 pages next time? Please?

Filed Under: loner life in another world, reviews
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