Monthly Archives: October 2021

No Game No Life: Practical War Game

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By Yuu Kamiya. Released in Japan by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Richard Tobin.

It has been a rough couple years for No Game No Life. The author has had health issues, which has led to a long hiatus in Japan (though the 11th volume is due out there next month). As with Re: Zero and Index, Yen licensed this side story volume out of order, so a lot of it is setting up a 10th volume that we read a year and a half ago. And of course the entire series has been banned, in print and digital form, by Amazon… except for this new volume, which they are quite happy to sell because no one can guess how they actually decide anything. That said, it is good to finally see this book which goes back to the events of the 6th volume and shows us things from the POV of Think, the elven legend. Unfortunately, this flashback is only a little more than a third of this book, which is otherwise padded out with short stories that originally came with the DVD releases in Japan. Yep, it’s a short story volume.

Practical War Game itself starts off with Sora and Shiro playing Feel and Chlammy in a game of chess, which Feel is trying to deliberately lose once she hears what the prize is (molesting Chlammy). Jibril then tells the siblings about Feel’s ancestor, and about her acolyte Nina, who takes over after Think supposedly “disappears”. After this, we get a story showing off a desperate Steph, running low on sleep and sanity, challenging the siblings to game after game, even it means more humiliation. Par for the course, in other words. We then get a story about Feel and Chlammy’s past, and how and why they set up what happens at the start of the series. Finally, we get a two-parter focused on Jibril, just why she’s so special, and her determination to do the impossible simply because everyone else says it can’t be done.

As always with this series, I love Steph, even when it’s making her the fanservice queen or having her be the chump for the sake of humor. She almost manages to speak out a win here, and is basically told “try this again when you’ve slept and are calm”. The story with Feel and Chlammy was also fun, showing them as a lot more of a loving couple than the main books do, as well as exactly how they got that way. The bulk of the book are the stories with Think and Jibril, which are flawed but good. I can do without the author’s “is this LGBT representation or shameless trolling fanservice!”, mostly because by now we know it’s both. The sections of Jibril’s story dealing with the dragon are fantastic, but Azril is simply FAR too annoying to make it 100% enjoyable, and the canon explanation as to why really doesn’t work for me.

Still, overall it’s a better volume than some of the recent books have been, and should make fans of the series happy. Oh yes, and there’s a new translator. I think the books read a bit smoother than before, though Kamiya’s writing is always hard to parse.

Strike the Blood, Vol. 19

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By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

Readers of the Strike the Blood light novels have always had a somewhat annoying problem, which is that we can never quite catch up to what’s been animated. For a while it looked like the novels would pass the anime, but then all these OAVs came out. It’s been especially noticeable with the last two books, both of which are expansions of original OAV storylines that came out years ago. You’d think, now that we’re only four volumes from the end, that we’d bee home free, but no: this volume and the next two came out in animated form last year. And, let’s face it, probably the only person still reading Strike the Blood who has NOT seen the anime is me. Most fans are likely simply reading the books to see what bits were cut out. I’m going to guess that the answer is not much, because as always this reads like a novelization more than a novel, and is almost entirely action.

Returning from the off-island events of the last book, Kojou and company find that the entire island is isolated – and appears to have been tu5rned into a survival game. This is being done by the Order of the End, a mysterious and powerful organization who can nearly murder a shaman princess, kidnap the Witch of the Void, and otherwise be the latest unstoppable opponent for Kojou to stop. They’re also led by The Blood, the very awkwardly named man (who also says his real name is Kenon here, though Kojou still annoyingly calls him The Blood) who is now pretending to be the Fourth Primogenitor. The obvious thing to do is to have Kojou go public, but he’s still trying to cling on to normal life till he can graduate. So he’ll do what he does best: muddle along, fight and find that it doesn’t work, rant and rave a lot, and win anyway. Though not yet, as this is more than one part long.

First of all, props to the author: Having Asagi save Yukina from certain death by turning the ocean into Strawberry Jell-O, then having to flee across it before it snaps back to reality, is one of the best things in the books to date, including her relief at it not being pudding, which would have been lethal. Other than that, there’s not really much to talk about here. It’s clearly only the start of the story (there’s no “this is OUR fight!” to be seen) and, well, it’s a lot of fights. Yume, the succubus from earlier books, is back protecting her school, and does cool things. The First Primogenitor, who we saw in the cliffhanger for the last book, is also around, along with his minion/girlfriend, and he’s fairly begign – so far. And the goofy humor is mostly kept to a minimum here – Kojou panicked when Kanon’s father sees them both in bathrobes in a love hotel; Sayaka getting summarily dumped out of La Folia’s airplane at 10,000 feet. It’s a decent action book.

But there’s no depth to it, which is why I always find these reviews hard. It has its highs and lows, but in the end Strike the Blood will always be what it is on the surface.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 12

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By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

Let’s start with the ending, because we know how these books all go. Things look like they may finally resolve happily, and then you plummet to your death. It is a frequent fact that behind an “icy” romantic lead in a high school light novel is an even worse mother, and that proves to be the case here. We’d known before that Yukino’s mother was the sort to make her daughter feel terrible about everything, and seeing Yukino try to face her down and fail so miserably is painful to read. Then of course we have Haruno, who makes a very good point about the relationship between Hachiman, Yukino and Yui. Unfortunately, it’s not really a point I agree with, but it’s certainly a point. The argument is that the three of them are codependent on each other and therefore what they’re doing is a mistake. Which, y’know, I’ve talked before about the characters making bad decisions, but I think they HAVE to here, or Yukino’s life going forward is doomed.

That said, the first 80% of the book is fine, and can even be called fun and heartwarming. This despite the fact that we get a recap episode in text form from our three leads to start us off. Hachiman is mostly waiting on tenterhooks to find out Komachi’s test results, and this results in cute scenes like hanging around with Saki (also waiting for her brother’s exam results, and still being the worst tsundere in the world) or heartwarming scenes like every scene he has with his sister (this book is hands down one of the best non-creepy portrayal of a close bother-sister relationship, even as it also asks how it feels to be TREATED like a little sister). He and Yukino and Yui are getting along very well too, despite The Elephant In The Room. Then along comes Iroha. What follows is not technically her fault, but…

We’re only a couple of volumes from the end of the series by now, and one thing I’ve noticed is how easy it is for Hachiman to walk up and have conversations with everyone now. Sure, he still has his inner monologue of snark, but it feels disconnected with what he’s actually doing or feeling. If this *is* due to being codependent on Yukino and Yui, I can only call it a good thing. He’s also aware enough of the love triangle he’s in to CALL it that, if only when talking to Haruno, but he still can’t quite admit the real reason he wants to help Yukino with the prom. And then there’s Yui, who is the most aware of how everyone feels (especially when she gets her proof early on in the book), but is also the one who least wants to do anything, possibly as she knows that she has “romantic runner-up’ tattooed on her forehead.

I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better, but it will be interesting to see how Hachiman takes on Yukinoshita’s mother, and for that matter tries to help recover Yukino’s self-worth, which is probably buried somewhere below the floor by now. If you were reading this to see Hachiman push back against the “normies” of the world… well, you’ve likely dropped it by now. For everyone else, still good soao opera.