Looks Like a Job for a Maid! The Tales of a Dismissed Supermaid, Vol. 3

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By Yasuaki Mikami and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Maid nara Touzen desu. Nureginu wo Kiserareta Bannou Maid-san wa Tabi ni Deru Koto ni Shimashita” by Earth Star Novel. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sylvia Gallagher.

I’m enjoying this series more and more with each volume. It’s interesting to contrast this with Heroine? Saint? No, I’m an All-Works Maid!, which Seven Seas is putting out and whose anime is currently airing. Melody is a maid otaku with literal OP magic powers, so her maid tasks are impossible in many different ways. For Melody, what drives her to a near nervous breakdown is spending a long period *not* being able to be a maid. Nina is in a world with magic, but is merely an incredibly accomplished maid, due to her ludicrous training. If anything, being thought of as a maid who can do anything makes things much worse for her in this book. And she also has PTSD, in this case from the sheer identity crisis of the fact that she doesn’t know how to be anything but a maid. She has no sense of self. Melody DOES have a sense of self, it’s just that self is Maid.

Nina and her friends are headed to the capital, where the Council of the Sages is about to begin. Taking place every 10-20 years, this brings together five of the movers and shakers of this world to solve major problems. The trouble is, none of them get along, and usually the council breaks off after a couple of days as one storms out. Tuyledo, the leader of the council, who is the elf that loved Nina’s tea and general maidetry in the first book, has asked her to essentially be there as a maid, thinking that she will magically see the issues around the council and solve them. Which, to be fair, she does to an extent, usually with help from the others. An ancient sage wants female companionship, but not just any woman. A vampire woman has dietary issues that make the food unappealing. The pope is overeating sweets and can’t stay awake. And the magic master is just kinda weird and rude. As for Nina? She has anxiety.

I really appreciated that not every problem can be solved here, and that the main one (how to get people to travel through a dangerous desert) is solved not by Nina but by the geniuses Nina now travels with. The pope’s subplot, in particular, fizzles out, and I think that’s on purpose – he can’t really have the experience or talent that the other four do, and likely never will, so the solution is just to be less annoying and eat more healthy. Nina’s issues are not resolved either, at least in terms of her psyche, but she is at least allowed to leave the capital and travel again with her party, and it’s implied the next book will give us even more information on her drill sergeant maid teacher, who we meet near the end of this book. This is a light novel, but it has a foot in reality. Poverty is still a problem with no good solutions. Nobles can do bad things and not care. And maids can’t magically solve everything by being really good at being a maid.

Unless they’re Melody, but that’s a review for a different series. This is an underrated gem. Also, thinking more and more that most of these girls are gay.

An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride, Vol. 21

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By Fuminori Teshima and COMTA. Released in Japan as “Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

How much you like this volume probably depends on how much you like escalating shonen magic battles. About half of this book consists of a magic battle between Asmodeus and Phenex on one side, and Marchosias… erm (checks names), Glasya–Labolas, and Eligor on the other. This is entirely variations on “I will simply use the magic that always kills everything!” “Well, I’ve countered with the magic that ensures I never get killed!” over and over, with attempts to be ironic given that the battle has one combatant who can foresee their own death and another who has been desperately trying to die since before this world began. If you like this, you’re golden. If not, there is at least the rest of the book, where everyone watches videos of the long-lost tragic backstory of half the cast. I am begging the author to get back to cute romantic shenanigans. And so is Zagan.

Aside from Asmodeus’ glorious last stand against Marchosias, what else do we have here? Zagan’s still dead, but his soul at least shows up, and gets to see the story of Solomon, his grandfather, and Azazel, the seraph. Which should be very familiar to him, as they are basically him and Nephy, except unlike him and Nephy they do actually have sex. Alshiera and Marchosias are also there, as well as Azrael, who reminds me a lot of Chastille (well, competent Chastille… actually, it’s been a few volumes since crybaby Chastille, too. Oh, for the Archdemon’s Dilemmas of yesteryear…). Meanwhile, Alshiera and Asura are also watching memory videos of how everything went so badly. In the present, they’re all trying to rescue Kuroka, and Barbatos is trying to rescue Vepar… well, once he remembers to actually do it. Everyone’s fighting everyone else, in other words.

Death has always been fairly fluid in this series, with some folks genuinely being dead but a lot of the folks on the good guy’s side (though Zagan will, of course, insist archdemons are not good people) have been almost dying but not quite, or getting brought back from death. Here that’s directly addressed, as while Asmodeus would dearly love to bring back her departed loved ones from the dead, she knows that you cannot go back, only forward. Marchosias, meanwhile, presumably gestures at the previous volumes of this book as a response. Again, this isn’t badly written, though once again I wish it came with a bigger cast list than the small one it has at the back. It’s just this is not really why I started reading Archdemon’s Dilemma in the first place, and I desperately want everything to resolve soon so he and Nephy can moon over each other again. Unfortunately, it appears when this battle ends, the series may as well.

If you’ve been reading this series, there’s nothing here to make you stop. But man, please get out of Weekly Shonen Jump, Zagan.

Love & Magic Academy: Who Cares about the Heroine and Villainess? I Want to Be the Strongest in this Otome Game World, Vol. 3

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By Toyozo Okamura and Parum. Released in Japan as “Renai Mahou Gakuin: Heroine mo Akuyaku Reijou mo Kankeinai. Ore wa Otome Game Sekai de Saikyou wo Mezasu” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

I appreciate how the dungeon diving is so irrelevant to this series that by now we just never see it. Arius, in his spare time, goes into the dungeon constantly, but to the reader it’s simply “I went to the dungeon and leveled up 50 more times, then I came back.” This series does not actually care about the fighting all that much. You can definitely see this is the case in how it resolves the battle between Arius and the hero, which I won’t spoil, but wow, I was not expecting that resolution. I was, however, completely expecting another girl to throw on to the Arius harem pile, and she fits in perfectly. Not that this matters to Arius, who tells every woman in his life he has no interest in dating. Unless it’s dating a dungeon. He is here to get stronger, which means battle battle battle forever.

After the events of the second book, which was over seven months ago so I had forgotten what they were, Arius has ended up in the middle of the demon’s country talking with the Demon King Alanis, who is, amazingly, someone that he cannot in fact easily defeat – or defeat at all. Nevertheless, he almost gets in a few shots, so she intrigues him. He admits the issue is the hero, and says he’s going to do something about it. Meanwhile, back at the academy, Eric’s sister, Princess Ellyse, has shown up. This is a bit of a surprise, as she’s engaged to marry Crown Prince Dominic in the neighboring country. Unfortunately, Dominic is a louse and a rapist, so she’s escaped for the moment. Eric and Arius convince her that she should screw the politics and have them destroy that guy, and she eventually decides to agree once she realizes she’s fallen deeply in love with Arius – like the rest of the female cast except for Sasha. You go, Sasha, stay with your man.

For the most part, Arius remains exactly what he’s been in the first two books – a blank wall of a man whose lack of a personality allows everyone to read good intentions into him. The trouble is that, by being around all his friends and wannabe lovers, that is starting to actually be the case. He resolves the hero conflict the way he does because it’s what leads to the least casualties, and he wants Ellyse to choose what she wants as a person, not as a princess or as a lover. He’s gradually actually becoming a nice guy, though he’ll insist otherwise. Certainly he’s nicer than Eric, who now seems to be engaged to Princess “I Swear I’m Not the Evil Boss”, though at least he allows Sophia to be treated as well as he possibly can – so that she can pursue Arius as well, of course. I am fairly positive that the winning girl in a series like this will be “none of them”, but hope springs eternal, I guess.

There’s lots more webnovel to go, but in terms of the GC Novels version we’re caught up with Japan. This remains a decent “stoic guy and his harem” series.