I’ll Become an Elegant Villainess! Time to Enjoy My Second Life to the Fullest, Vol. 1

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By Shisui Hazuki and kururi. Released in Japan as “Karei naru Akujo ni Naritai wa! ~Aisare Tensei Shoujo wa, Tanoshii Nidome no Jinsei o Okurimasu~” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Olivia Plowman.

We’ve started to see metatextual isekai with folks hit by Truck-kun who are delighted to be in another world, ready to eat up all those great tropes, get a harem of cute babes, and have a +1 sword new life. (Indeed, I have one in my queue for two days from now.) So it should not particularly be a surprise that we’re getting the shoujo equivalent, which is to say girls who are absolutely delighted to find that they’ve reincarnated and they’re now a villainess. For once it’s not due to love of the genre when they were Japanese – this particular girl is reincarnated from THIS world, she just remembers her past life. But it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that “villainess” has once again been twisted a bit to mean “incredibly cool and powerful girl who just ojou-sama laughs a lot”. There will be no evil here. Which is good, as this world is already filled with evil.

We open with Mitia Lumiol… no, she’s not having her engagement broken. Instead, it’s the usual “your magic isn’t what I wanted, so I hate you” from her father. We then get her telling us about her reincarnated memories, her love of romances with villainesses, and how getting exiled from home to a dying part of the country is perfect as this means she can put her master plan into effect. Her master plan… to be AWESOME! Coming with her are her maid, Ciel, who went from “wow, she’s suddenly become a different person” to “she is my literal daughter that I gave birth to only not literally” in a couple short years, and her butler, Vincent, who is actually a spy but who thinks that Mitia is secretly a genius, and decides to ally with her because of her goal. Which is to be AWESOME! … by healing the sick, repairing the land, lowering taxes, and essentially being a good person, unlike most other nobles in this book.

As you may have gathered, how much you enjoy this depends how much you are prepared to buy into the silliness of its lead. It’s basically a cross between Observation Records of My Fiancee (Mitia and Bertia are very, very similar) and The Eminence in Shadow (Mitia’s followers all adore her, and things she makes up later turn out to be 100% true). Her lowly Household Magic turns out to only be lowly if you don’t have all the mana she does, as she can essentially cast it on top of itself till it can do almost anything. She’s also very GOOD at being an evil villainess, which is to say that she’s not a ditz – she can use blackmail and cleverness with the best of them. It’s just that, despite her past memories, she acts like a six-year-old trying to be nineteen. Which is to say, she’s absolutely cute as hell. This is why she gets Ciel and Vincent, who by the end of the book basically admit they’re her new parents (there’s no romance between them yet, or indeed between anyone, but it is a Heart title). And her former village thugs turned crack secret agents. And the prince in disguise, who she… loathes, as she doesn’t see through the disguise at all.

So yeah, enjoyed that. Very silly. And there’s a second volume! Hooray! Surely that will be the start of a long run… what’s that ominous train in the distance?

Father, Have You Sinned? An Assassin in Priest’s Robes, Vol. 1

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By Kennoji and Reita. Released in Japan as “Moto Saikyou Ansatsusha wa Inaka de Hissori Shinpu ni Naru ~Daishusse Shita Oshiego-tachi ni Shitawareru Ossan ga An’yaku Suru Hanashi~” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jade Willis.

Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this one. I’ve read this author before – among their titles over here are The Girl I Saved on the Train Turned Out to Be My Childhood Friend and Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin – and can’t help but notice that I eventually dropped both of those other series. The author enjoys dabbling in various genres, and it shows. I’d also argue the blurb is slightly false advertising – after spending the bulk of the first half focusing on Emilia, as promised, she promptly vanishes, as this book is not interested in her story. it’s all about the former assassin turned priest, his grim job now continuing in secret, and the crappy, crappy world he lives in. Things may be peaceful, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of terrible people around.

The world used to be at war, and needed people like Zach, a skilled assassin and master of disguise. Now that the world is, theoretically, at peace, Zach decides to retire and lead a humble life as a priest in an orphanage – helped out by his former contact Rebecca, who disguises herself as a nun to help him because she has a not-so-secret crush on him. For the next few years, things seem to go well, and one of his graduated orphans is even now a knight captain in the nearby city. Unfortunately, there’s still lazy, creepy nobles, there’s still arrogant bandits, and there’s still child slavers. Clearly it’s time for a former assassin to put on a fresh new disguise and go out to take care of business so his cute l’il orphans can grow up in peace. He may even have to stop a coup.

So, despite the cover that seems to suggest a slow-life, relaxed sort of book, content warning: this book has a child being raped until she is killed. We don’t see it, but we graphically hear it. It was a repugnant scene, and honestly it wasn’t needed to show off the bad guys were really bad. We also see more child slaves in other sections, mostly there to be rescued by Zach. And there’s also Emilia, a 19-year-old knight captain who doesn’t seem to understand why it’s a bad idea to have all the knights room in the same barracks together regardless of gender. Zach is, honestly, a bit overprotective about this. The book emphasizes the sexism in its universe while also being sexist itself, and that doesn’t sit very well. On the bright side, the prose is pretty zippy, and some of the interactions between clueless Zach and the various women who like him but he doesn’t see it are cute in a light novel way. But honestly, I wish this didn’t have the fluff. It’s meant to be grim, and reminds me a bit of titles like Secret Saint and Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, which also had rape in their early volumes before gradually scrubbing it out.

So yeah, I continue to have issues with this author. But if you liked their other titles, and don’t mind the questionable content, it’s certainly readable.

A Young Maiden’s Growing Pains: I Reincarnated and All I Got Was This 100X Stat Buff!, Vol. 1

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By Yuno Yozakura and Nimoshi. Released in Japan as “Seichouritsu 100 Bai Cheat no Tensei Youjo ~Heion ni Kurashitai no ni, Mawari ga Sou Sasete Kuremasen~” by Dre Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kim Louise Davis.

I’ve mentioned before that a lot of light novels these days feel like eating stew. The author puts together various ingredients they have around the house, cooks it all up, and if you’re lucky it ends up being far tastier than you were expecting. Unfortunately, sometimes you aren’t so lucky. Sometimes you get what Japan calls “dark nabe”, where people throw deliberately bad ingredients in and the person eating it just ends up unhappy. This should have been a delicious stew. It’s a comedy – in fact, it verges on parody. It’s got a really strong girl who’s also kinda dumb. I normally eat these sort of titles up. Unfortunately, the book cannot quite get past… well, OK, there’s many things wrong with this book, but the biggest is that its heroine, Satie, is thoroughly unlikable. She’s not an airheaded ditz meathead who’s fun to read about, she’s just annoying.

Please count the cliched light novel tropes with me. Our heroine, Saki, is an overworked office lady (1) whose parents abandoned her (2) and who is far too small for her age (3). One day, she saves what she thinks is a cat from being run over by a car, only to die herself (4). She then meets a goddess (5), who explains that what she actually rescued was a plastic bag (6 – OK, so that’s only KonoSuba, but still). She’s offered reincarnation in Japan, or reincarnation in a world filled with fantasy tropes (7). Normally, for once, they don’t give out free stat buffs, but her death was so hilarious – erm, touching – that Hades offers her one cheat skill (8). She decides, having never had a boyfriend due to her small stature, to ask for a smoking hot body. But she words it ambiguously (9), and she ends up smaller than ever – in fact, she’s a perpetual seven-year-old (10) – but her strength is such that she can take down entire armies! (11).

Satie is a pain. Her buffed stats don’t kick in till she takes out a monster, so she doesn’t even realize what’s happened till she’s 13 years old and she kills a slime (12… OK, I’ll stop) that’s terrorizing a cute little puppy that turns out to be Cerberus, a hellhound. Instead, she’s spent most of her time sulking in her room. Her sister loves her, but also sort of regards her as useless, and her parents have given up on her. This is most as she’s given up on herself – she admits she’s not smart and hates to study, so this is not a “sure, my sibling got all the looks and talent but there’s still something I can do” sort of series. Once she gets her powers, she does do things like take on giant monsters, save her sister from a creep trying to use her as a hostage, and prevent a war between two kingdoms by taking one over in half a day. The whole thing is meant to be funny, but it barely raises a chuckle, mostly as Satie is just a whiny girl who doesn’t understand how life works. To be fair, she does manage to avoid breaking up the love between the prince and his childhood friend. Eventually.

This is a Drecom title, and so no doubt there will be one or two more, but they’re not out yet, and I feel comfortable abandoning Satie here. For folks who enjoyed I Shall Survive Using Potions! but figured a 12-year-old body was way too old.