Monthly Archives: January 2019

In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 12

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By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve had a volume of Smartphone that didn’t irritate me in some way. Touya does not take the time to wipe out and entire country full of evil cliches here, which helps a lot. Instead, we get what are essentially a bunch of short stories, as always – Smartphone has an ongoing plot, but it sort of judders along, and gets abandoned whenever the author feels like it. Here Touya investigates the hidden island discussed in prior volumes and makes contact with them; deals with a return of the creepy soul eating monster, which he now knows is being controlled by the rogue God (the one bit of ongoing plot here); travels to another dimension to help a group of phantom thieves; and tries to resolve a political romance. In between there’s time for a forest that’s being taken over by bad guys (and fanservice), and a puppet show. A very leisurely Smartphone, in other words.

The art is… mostly good, except for that cover, which has creeped me out ever since I first saw it in the original Japanese. Yae and Leen’s expressions are just deeply wrong. In any case, the fiancee horde actually gets a fair bit to do here, with each of Touya’s missions except the third one involving him traveling with one or more of the girls. The third, the one in the alternate world, honestly reads sort of like a backdoor pilot for a different series, and given most of the thieves are cute young girls, it’s likely for the best that the fiancees didn’t come along. They’re still not married, having a couple years of waiting to go, though after a fertility device works as planned (Sue’s getting a little sibling), Touya does take the time to ponder having children with his wives, and the wisdom of perhaps staggering them out a bit so he doesn’t have 8 kids at once. And, let’s face it, Linze’s puppet making ability, and the show that follows, runs on pure adorable. I won’t even complain about the forest of monsters that involves licking the heroine’s butts, though I will roll my eyes a bit.

As for Touya, the author has found a nice balance between him doing ludicrous things and his getting called out on doing ludicrous things. Given Touya’s lack of emotional range (he’s the sort to say “that makes me mad” in the same vaguely cheery voice he uses for everything), everyone around him has to pick up the slack a bit. This is shown off best in the final story, where he is forced by circumstances to fight a 10-year-old girl who is very strong in both fighting and magic and has grown rather proud and arrogant as a result. He’s asked to teach her humility… and he does, literally saying “it’s time to dunk on a 10-year-old”. Leaving aside how weary I am of terrified girls wetting themselves in Japanese series, the fight is hilarious, as is the reaction of everyone else, which is basically “I know we told you do to this, but eeeeeehhhh.” Poor Touya, once again history’s greatest monster.

If you’ve been avoiding Smartphone because it’s been leaning a bit too hard on the genocide sort of thing recently, this is an excellent volume ot pick up. It’s relaxed, fun, and features Touya being ludicrous.

Apparently It’s My Fault That My Husband Has the Head of a Beast, Vol. 2

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By Eri Shiduki and Kasumi Nagi. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by David Evelyn.

The second volume of this romance sees our heroine and her beast-headed husband traveling to a seaside religious community, hoping to find a way to cure both her condition and his. Unfortunately, there seems to be something very wrong in the Holy Land. There’s maids and princesses trying to take Rosemarie down, and she herself is seemingly possessed to leave the room late at night to try to return to the gods. That said, Rosemarie is made of sterner stuff in this book compared to the last one. Can she overcome mind control with the sheer power of being kind to people? Can she manage to tear herself away from her beloved bucket? And can she actually manage to have a direct conversation with Claudio where they both admit that they’re in love with each other? All the ingredients are here for a classic romantic potboiler. We may even discover what happened to her and Claudio as children!

The mystery is not really a good reason to read this (for a moment I thought we were going to meet a non-evil clergyman, but he was an undercover sorcerer, so…), but the romance holds up well, provided you’re OK with these two socially awkward kids doubting themselves and saying absolutely the wrong thing all the time. The reader will no doubt be sympathizing more with Heidi, Rosemarie’s maid who is somewhat desperate for her lady to realize that she is loved. That said, we do make some definite strides here. Rosemarie realizes that she’s actually jealous when Claudio is dealing with other women who have their eye on him, and that fixing his mana issue and leaving to go back home would devastate her. As for Claudio, he can still be a jerk when he’s trying to be kind (which leads to the funniest part of the novel, as his sorcerer friend literally kicks him in the ass for screwing up a romantic moment), but he too finds it in himself, albeit accidentally, to admit that he loves her.

The biggest problem with this book occurs at the end, when you finish it and realize that a lot of things are still up in the air. Rosemarie and Claudio’s problems have still not been solved, and they’ve still not consummated their marriage. They have admitted they love each other to their faces, but I was hoping for a bit more. Sadly, the second volume appears to be the final one, so this is all the closure that we’re going to get. I want to see more of these characters. I want Alto and Heidi to hook up (there’s zero evidence for this, but I want it to happen anyway). And there was almost no gardening! Am I going to be forced to turn to Bakarina for all my gardening heroine needs? Oh well. Despite a “you’re cancelled” feeling, only for light novels rather than manga, this has bee a fun and romantic little series. I recommend it for those tired of isekai.

10 Dance, Vol. 1

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By Inouesatoh. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Magazine the 3rd. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Karhys.

You can learn a lot from looking at a cover. This was one of those titles that I picked up solely because the cover looked so great, so it’s worth looking at. Clearly, based on the title and the two guys on the cover, it’s a ballroom dancing manga. Clearly, by the fact that there *are* two guys on the cover, it’s BL. The ’10 Dance’ part of the title is helpfully laid out for you in the text below their arms, showing us the ten dances in question – five Standard, five Latin. But most of all, the facial expressions and the posing of the two guys tells you immediately that this is going to be a contentious relationship, that they will probably dislike each other before they like each other, and that they’re both seriously attractive. It is, in fact, most everything that you could ask for in a BL title from a company that is just starting to dip its toe into that arena.

Both leads are named Shinya, and their last names are pretty close as well – Sugiki is the black-haired Standard Dancing champion, and Suzuki is the Latin Dance expert. Each wants to learn each other’s specialty so that they can compete in the 10 Dance, an endurance competition which, as the title implies, has contestants do all ten dances, five from each type. Both of them have female partners, who briefly get attempts at characterization before being quietly moved to one side, but we’re not reading this for them (though I loved the bit right at the start where Aki complains about female Latin dancers being pigeonholed as sluts or bitches). As a result, Sugiki and Suzuki take turns playing the ‘woman’ as they try to learn from each other, which mostly involves sniping at each other because each of them is wretched at the other’s specialty. Suzuki lacks the composure for Standard Dancing, trying to skip over the basics. And Sugiki is stiff and formal, which in Latin dancing is the kiss of death. Will they ever see eye to eye?

They also make a pretty hot couple, though neither of them is admitting it right now, or even admitting that they might not be as straight as they expected. We see Suzuki having various short-term affairs (including one who proceeds to rob him after sex), none of which are satisfying. The two women who are their partners are both in relationships of their own, despite media coverage (the media really like it when ballroom dance couples are also real life couples, which is not the case here). Suzuki sometimes makes suggestive comments, but you get the sense that that’s because that’s the sort of guy he is. That said… there’s no denying these two have a deep sexual tension right away, and they can’t stay away from each other. There’s a pilot chapter near the end that shows it even more – one woman is stunned when Suzuki hits on her, as she was pretty sure they were a gay couple. It’s a classic case of everyone can see it.

And, of course, there’s the main reason to get this – the art is great. The artist may not be as knowledgeable about the subject as, say, Welcome to the Ballroom’s artist (and given Ballroom’s erratic release schedule, fans of that may simply want to move to this title instead), but the drawings convey both a passion for dancing as well as the underlying sexual passions. Even if BL is not your thing, you may still want to read this – I enjoyed it quite a bit.