The Devil Princess, Vol. 3

Leave a reply

By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

One reason that this series works so well is that, no matter how dark or serious the climax of each volume gets, or how many corpses pile up, the start of each new book is mostly fun and often funny. Yulucia spends some time in this volume at the standard noble academy, and her quest to make friends, or at least interact normally with people, suffers from everything about her presence. There’s a great side story about a young girl who also has memories of a past life, and knows that this is a “dating sim”, and is there to game the system… and runs into Yulucia, after which she reforms and we never hear from her again. You can almost hear the sad trombone. Alas for people like the second prince, they are too important to vanish from the narrative, and the second half of this book gets substantially darker, as we learn why it’s a bad idea to poison the saint and use her body to summon God.

This volume, like the others, takes in a 2-3 year period in the life of Yulucia, who is dealing with normal light novel things like “I can’t understand why this tsundere guy keeps hanging around me it can’t be love it must be something else” while also doing things unique to this book, such as eating souls in order to gain power and trying to cultivate evil people, who have the most delicious souls to eat. She also runs into the “so-called hero’s party”, which not only contains her two sisters, but also an elf, whose name is unfortunately a Japanese pun and so she can’t stop laughing. In the back half, though, she’s invited by the evil rival to her mother to come visit, and please bring the prince along as well to visit her sickly daughter. And it turns out the mother’s soul is just what Yulucia likes.

Yulucia literally eating souls is pretty evil, of course, but I will admit to loving my favorite part of the book. Cordelia is the daughter of Isabella, the evil rival woman, and she’s been trained by her mother to be a standard jealous catty bitch… till she meets Yulucia and witnesses her doing super powerful healing magic, at which point she undergoes a conversion and decides to be the best “big sis” ever to Yulucia. The funny part is Yulucia’s reaction to this, as Cordelia’s yummy evil soul has now turned all good and yucky. This author really loves playing in the “rooting for the bad guy” sandbox, and while Yulucia is not quite on the level of Karla from Otome Heroine’s Guide to Survival, she’s still pretty bad. That said, it is notable that even when she’s become a mindless monster lashing out and killing all around her, she tries to avoid killing people close to her. She’s not completely evil.

Which, as it turns out, may be the plot leading into the fourth book, where she’s likely to reunite with the demon who made her what she is today. If you like dark comedy, with the emphasis on dark, this is a good one.

Sword of the Stallion, Vol. 2

Leave a reply

By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan as “Sword of Stallion: Taneuma to Yobareta Saikyou Kishi, Ringoku no Oujo wo Netore to Meijirareru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Last time I said that this mecha fantasy might be meeting up with a villainess story, and this second volume leans right into that. Ras goes back to his country only to find that they’re immediately returning, as it turns out that Princess Tishna has an assassin that’s been hired to kill her. So they’re moving up their plans to try and cut this off at the past, all while dealing with their own internal politics – they attend an event that features the ex-fiancee of Auriol, the prince that Fiarca is currently impersonating, which is fun – and trying to figure out exactly what Tishna, a so-called Wicked Princess who acts selfishly and horribly but whose selfish actions always turn to be the right thing to do and uncover greater crimes – is up to. Oh yes, and she and Auriol – who is really Fiarca – are getting engaged. Given all this, it’s no wonder Ras has no time to deal with his increasingly poor reputation.

If you’re familiar with my reviewing style, and see that I put the summary of the volume before the cover art, you know spoilers are a-coming. Because I want to discuss my favorite part of the book, which examines the type of plot device that most “time loop” villainess stories use. Generally speaking, for the most part, the books rarely go into the mechanics of the loop itself beyond “stop dying” or “stop being evil” – the protagonist taking actions to prevent her (it’s always her) fate are what’s enough. The main part of this volume is no secret, as it’s discussed in the first few pages – Tishna has gone back in time and is redoing this life. This also explains why she’s being “wicked” in order to ferret out corruption. But she also plans, when she’s achieved her goal, to die. But… is her goal achieved? What evidence does she have that she won’t just wind up back in time again because she died? How much of a happy ending do you need? She can’t know, and thus they’re able to stop her.

Other than that, this is a perfectly decent book that is also not really exciting in any way. I’ve dealt with this author before in Strike the Blood, so I know how things are going to go. The fights are good, the interaction is solid, the characters are types. There’s never going to be anything here that will make you go “wow!” and punch the air. Likewise, you’re never going to go “ew” and put the volume down – even the so-called premise gets undercut at every turn so that we can be assured he’s not actually a sleaze. It is very much written to be adapted into an anime down the line. Whether that happens or not I don’t know – but this is just the sort of book to read on the beach, when you need something uncomplicated.

There’s a lot left up in the air at the end of this book, so I think when I tell you this book came out in 2023 in Japan and there’s no sign of a 3rd volume, you’re just going to be annoyed I made you read the review at all. Sorry! Tee-hee. (bonks head) We can just imagine that they solve everything and he ends up with multiple partners, just like Strike the Blood.

Spy Classroom: The High Plain of Sara

Leave a reply

By Takemachi and Tomari. Released in Japan as “Spy Kyoushitsu” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Nathaniel Thrasher.

After the events of the last volume, which were dark but not as dark as the rest of the series, we’re back into pitch black with this volume, which does just about everything except kill one of the main cast off – and even that’s left up in the air at the end. It turns out, amazingly, that being a spy continues to be very hard! And that one of the few things harder than that is starting a revolution. Honestly, this particular book feels very relevant to our times right now in a way that I will try not to go into great detail about. Things aren’t helped by the fact that we’re down a good two-thirds of our regular cast. The team split up to do their big job at the end of the 9th volume, and it’s now over a year later, and they’re still split. Which is good news if you’re a fan of Sara, of course, as well as Erna and Annette, but fans of other girls will have to be patient.

The book consists of one main plotline interrupted by a subplot that happened before the start of it. The main plotline continues the adventures of Erna and Annette that we saw at the end of Volume 9, as they try to incite a revolution among the people, infiltrating an underground organization, investigating a very suspicious mine explosion, and trying their best to avoid getting noticed by Nike, who is the country’s top spy, and would absolutely destroy them. Oh yes, and Erna also has the added problem of Annette, who has basically resolved that she’s just going to get more and more evil as time goes on, and eventually will not be able to be held back. The subplot involved Sara, who objects to Klaus’ plan – not splitting everyone up, but pairing Erna and Annette, which she regards as a bad balance. Klaus takes the opportunity to show Sara how far ideals go in the spy world.

This is technically Sara’s book, despite the fact that the bulk of it is pretty much Erna’s show. I feel very bad for Erna, who after weaponizing her woobiefication finds that being a woobie is something that can happen whether she wants it to or not. By the end of this book she’s a wreck, but I’m sure she’ll get more opportunities for cool things later. Sara, probably not so much. Now, I am not so naive as to think that the author is going to kill off one of its more popular characters. I do, however, think Sara will probably sit the rest of this arc out. Which is fine, as this was a really killer performance by her. The theme of “you are a very competent spy but still about 5000 times less competent than everyone else” is a hard lesson to take in when you are trying to ensure everyone survives and lives happily every after, and it’s very Sara that she accepts the lesson and then decides to be an idealist to the end anyway. It’s no wonder that “big sis” Sybilla says about Sara, “She’s such a mom.”

By now you know what I’m going to say: next is a short story collection? Yup. Still, good start to this arc, which reminds you how difficult it can be to make folks understand who are the right people to hate.