Yearly Archives: 2018

How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord, Vol. 2

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By Yukiya Murasaki and Takahiro Tsurusaki. Released in Japan as “Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo Dorei Majutsu” by Kodansha. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Garrison Denim.

The second volume of this series picks up right where the first one left off, both in terms of the plot and in terms of my feelings about it. It’s rare to see a series that has so many of the things that I dislike in it be something I still want to read, but there you have it. I want to find out what happens next to Diablo, Shera and Rem. I find the pacing and narration easy to read. The book is occasionally funny, and the battles are well done. On the minus side, we double down on “this is why slavery is OK here”, complete with explanation of how it would work if good, nice people were in charge of slaves. We get another in a long line of villains who are meant to be as evil as possible, though for a change this one is not written by Reki Kawahara. He still works in rape threats AND incestual feelings, though. That said, honestly, for fans of this sort of book? This volume delivers the goods.

Shera got the cover of the first book, so Rem features here, even though the plot revolves around Shera. Her brother is trying to force her to return to the Elven Kingdom and become a broodmare (with him, which makes the whole thing even ickier), first trying threats, then using a mind control that is so painfully obvious that the only person it would ever work on is an insecure Japanese hikkikomori with no social skills who is pretending to be an over the top demon lord. Lucky for him! (In all seriousness, Diablo’s “mask” slips quite often in the dialogue, and he frequently sounds less like a demon lord and more like a typical tsukkomi-style protagonist. No one really remarks upon, this, so I’m not sure if it’s just sloppy writing or a deliberate attempt to show his “Diablo” is not as perfect as he’d like – certainly by the end of the book Rem seems to be seeing through him.) Naturally, Diablo, once he snaps out of it, goes to Shera’s rescue, but then he has to take on the very powerful Governor of the city they’re staying in.

I continue to like the relationship between Rem and Shera, who bounce well off each other, and are rapidly becoming close friends, much as Rem may not want to admit it. And while the fanservice is not my cup of tea (particularly the final “gag” involving the grasswalker adventurer who gets Diablo drunk and lives to regret it), it’s exactly the sort of thing that readers of this series would like to see. We’re also introduced to a Holy Knight named Alicia, who’s fairly straightforward and dull, and thus the epilogue pleased me as I’d been expecting something else to be going on with her right from the start. I suspect that the next volume will get back into the whole demon lord revival thing that had been a part of the first book. In the meantime, this is only for readers of harem isekai, I want to emphasize again. But I will be sticking around despite all the book’s faults, which is a positive thing.

Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 10

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By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

Character development is something that you want to see in a good story. It’s something we’ve seen throughout Yona of the Dawn. For all that people were chanting “badass sword princess!” when the series was originally licensed, it’s taken a while for Yona to get from her sheltered princess to that point, and she still has a long way to go. And that means that character development happens even with the villains, provided they aren’t meant to be the standard “I am so evil I have to die” sorts. That’s why this volume is devoted almost entirely to Tae-Jun, the arrogant Fire Prince who has been dealing (badly) with thinking that he killed Yona back at the beginning of the series. He’s always been played for comic relief, and there’s certainly still some of that here – his puppyish devotion to Yona makes us uncomfortable but also makes us laugh. But there’s a larger story to be found here, which is the suffering that the kingdom has been going through.

Yona has slowly been realizing what she wants to do for this kingdom, but it’s not something that she’s really able to fully achieve as a bandit. Tae-Jun could really make more of a difference, though it’s worth noting that even he has to disguise it as “searching for the bandits and making the towns better as a result”. The peasant towns we’ve seen the last few volumes are really struggling, as every able young man is now gone to the army, leaving almost no one left to keep everyone eating and surviving. There’s a heartwarming moment with an old woman who bitches and moans about how bad Tae-Jun is at backrubs and everything else he tries to do, but Yona notes that it’s mostly just bluster. But later on, we hear that the old woman has died. This isn’t a magical cure, where Yona or Tae-Jun start to do the right thing and everyone magically gets better. People still die. People still suffer.

Tae-Jun’s soldiers are also seen throughout, and don’t have quite as much of a leap, as they go from “we are devoted to our lord even if he’s like this” to “we are devoted to our lord and oh look, he’s doing things now”. That said, they seem perfectly content to help the villagers as part of finding the bandits, once they get over their initial “if we come near them, we will get sick and die” phase. (Which, truth in manga, does actually turn out to be somewhat true – one of the soldiers seems to pick up a bad case of “con crud” fairly quickly.) As for Yona and the others, they realize that they need things that aren’t in the Fire lands, so are off to find them, and presumably to start a new arc. In the meantime, everyone who’s been reading Yona of the Dawn will enjoy this, and appreciate a more nuanced look at a former goofy villain.

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 3

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By Yuu Kamiya, Tsubaki Himana, and Sino. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by fofi.

Last time I said that reader sympathy was largely shifting away from Naoto and towards Marie. I’ll go further this time: Marie is why I’m reading this series. There’s actually some decent not-Naoto characterization in this volume, as RyuZU begins to actually appreciate who Marie is and AnchoR is able to realize that she is not merely there to be a giant Mass Weapon of Destruction (though she possibly wishes she learned that lesson a bit earlier). But it’s Marie who the reader follows throughout the book, as she’s now become the star far more than Naoto has. This despite the fact that, like Naoto, she too is shown to be something more than human – after she angrily rants about his amazing hearing one too many times, Naoto comes right back and mentions how Marie’s eyesight is just as ridiculous, and allows her to perform equally impossible tasks. They may not be a romantic pairing (though AnchoR calling them her parents is not helping), but together they are a force of nature.

The basic plot of this series has been the same over the three books, as this book picks up shortly after the end of the second one. Things are looking very bad for our terrorist heroes, who are up against a very crafty enemy, who knows both when to show off its amazing power and when to step back and simply watch the government fall apart. The scenes with the cabinet were viciously satirical, and you get the feeling that the authors are no great fans of politics in general. Meanwhile, RyuZU is out of commission, Halter and Vermouth are down to brains and heads, (and not necessarily both), and Marie is constantly feeling as if the end has finally arrived. Naoto gets frustrated with this, mostly as he’s no0t that type of personality (which is why his characterization suffers – where can he go from here?), but I feel for Marie, as this is indeed a horrible situation it’s impossible to get out of. Luckily, with her, Naoto and his “wife and daughter”, they can achieve the impossible with a bit of effort.

The afterword suggested that this volume was mostly Kamiya’s work, and I’m not surprised, as there are elements of the book that are rather sleazy, particularly everything involving Vermouth, who is absolutely horrible and yet absolutely hilarious. This volume is also considerably longer than the others, and is one of the longer light novels on my phone – when it hits print, I’ll estimate it may be around 300 pages. There’s a lot going on here. That said, almost all the plot threads get wrapped up nearly – in fact, a bit too nearly. If I didn’t know there was a 4th volume of the series I’d swear that this was the final one, and I wonder if their editor made it end like this just in case they were late with the manuscript one too many times. In the meantime, I understand the anime was not well loved, but fans might want to give the novels a try, as they’ve gotten very good indeed.