By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu ZERO” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Sarah Burch. Adapted by Melanie Kardas.

Well, here we are back in the past again, with six-year-old Serafina. We’re still quite a few years away from her death, but the series has been teasing that it’s going to get dark, and this book continues that trend… though in an odd way. We open with an ominous scene of a demon waking and finding someone who smells “quite delicious”. No prizes for guessing who that is… and then we have the entire rest of the book, with the demon’s actual meeting with Serafina coming right at the end, in order to provide the cliffhanger ending. In between that… well, in between that is a typical Secret Saint ZERO volume. Serafina is cute and ludicrously powerful. The knights are all weirdos. Sirius is deeply in love with a six-year-old girl but in a pure, non-sexual way. The same old “this is good but Japan, why you gotta do this?” sort of stuff.

A meteor has fallen, and thus everyone is predicting terrible things. Serafina wonders why portents always have to be bad, and wishes we’d have dire portents of cake and meat raising from the sky. (The portents, unfortunately, are correct in this case – but not immediately). She then finds out that the knights have opened a “knight cafe” for the month… which is basically a butler cafe, with the hunky knights catering to young women. And at night it becomes a knight bar, which is basically the same only sexier, as they open up a swimming pool and the knights dive into it for fruit and other ingredients. Serafina wants to see them… so Sirius comes along. In disguise. That’ll go well. Elsewhere, she goes to a show and accidentally gets proposed to, she plays a game of straw millionaire which reminds us she has no concept of what is normal, and Ludo rescues a child who I’m sure will be more relevant in the next volume, as they sure aren’t here.

There’s an interesting bit near the end of the book, where Serafina meets the spirit of wind, who has come to see her after he found out she speaks spirit languages. This leads to a bit of conflict with Seven, who we’ve always seen as a cute, child-like spirit… and it’s now very clear that Seven is staying that way deliberately, and does not want to grow up. Serafina brushes off Seven’s worries, saying she only wants to be contracted with him no matter his apparent age, but to the reader, choosing not to grow up makes me immediately think of Peter Pan. It’s not really a good thing. It also reminds me that, unlike the main series, this spinoff has, theoretically, a shorter shelf life. How many cute mini-stories can the author wring out before they’re forced to have Serafina grow to her teenage years and face her cruel destiny?

As ever, for fans of the series, but it does remind me, kind of like Kuma Bear does, what a juggling act it can be balancing “adorable children” and “this world is kinda dark”.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Kevin Ishizaka. Adapted by Michelle McGuinness.

I’ve talked before about the series’ biggest draw, which is that Fia is a complete airhead who runs on instinct and misapprehension of everything. The big reveal over the course of these ten books is that it’s not due to her having the memories of someone who lived 300 years ago, but that 300 years ago she was exactly the same – no common sense, head empty. But it’s important to remember the other half of this, because when you have one of those ditzy, strong women protagonists, invariably they amaze everyone around them with their goodness and niceness, and that’s been the case here as well. We meet several new saints, most of whom are either doing the saint gig because they have been forced to, or are trying to use the saint gig to get a good husband. And then they run into Fia, and they’re reminded no, wait. I forgot what I felt when I first gained powers. I forgot that healing people and making them happy is wonderful. That’s Fia’s greatest strength.

We pick up where we left off, with the Evil Queen Hyacinthe being told that Fia will be entering the next Saint Competition. Hyacinthe is against this, but Cerulean is determined to have Fia put Hyacinthe in her place. He does this without bothering to ask Fia, who keeps insisting she’s a knight, and has very good reasons why she does not want to be recognized as the next great saint. (Her backstory of her first death, mentioned in the first book and then quietly dropped, is alluded to here, mostly as to why she’s still viscerally afraid of meeting another demon.) Plus for some reason Fia still can’t really think of Hyacinthe as evil, even after we get backstory of Colette, who is of course sweet as pie and tragically ill. As for the Saint Competition itself… well, that’s where we get back to the funny part of the series.

It is a sign of how desperate everyone is in regards to Colette that they decide the answer is simply to let Fia do her Saint stuff and just tell her to be careful, which is sort of like pulling the pin off a grenade and telling it not to explode. They give Fia a veil to hide herself… except her red hair is immediately recognizable, and in any case she takes it off almost immediately. She realizes that some folks may regard her as Fia the knight, so she decides to skip instead of walk. During the saint ceremony. In front of everyone. She skips. I laughed till I cried. She explains that she’s dropping out as she doesn’t have a lot of mana, but she heals people almost instantly and never feels tired. The only time I was surprised is when she met the guy who lost both legs and didn’t magic them back, and I then realized the only reason she didn’t do that is it’s probably being saved for Book 11. She is an adorable, sweet, all-loving menace to society.

Unfortunately for Fia, I think she is going to attract attention, and that demons will show up again. That said, this is the slowest light novel series out there in terms of dribbling out its plot, so it could be Book 20 by the time that happens. In any case, this is fun.

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu ZERO” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Sarah Burch. Adapted by Melanie Kardas.

I sometimes feel that I’m the only one who tries to keep bringing back the dark beginnings to these series that suddenly turn out sweet and fluffy. Kuma Bear is not going to be reminding us of the darker side of its world much anymore. Likewise, A Tale of the Secret Saint is probably going to continue to gloss over the events that occurred after Serafina’s capture and before her murder. But it does sometimes make this prequel, featuring the adorable six-year-old Serafina and the knights and royalty who love her, a bit darker than it necessarily wants to be. A chunk of this book is dedicated to trying to get Serafina to live the life of a normal child… or at least a royal child. But that’s not who she is. She’s the one who will grow up to the the Greatest Saint, and is barreling towards that future full speed. And we, the reader, know where that future ends. (Yes, reincarnation, but let put that aside for now.)

We pick up where we left off, with Serafina’s terrible brothers in danger. As it turns out, this is a plot by the King to try and make them be a bit less lazy and take things more seriously. That said, there are an awful lot of monsters here, and with Serafina watching it all there’s no way she won’t leap in and help. Then it’s time for the other outstanding plot point from last time, the Galle Gold Leaf, which has been impossible to find for the last twenty years, but once Serafina is involved all the issues proceed to fall over like a stack of dominoes, and we even get all the past conflict with the village (and conflict within the knights) resolved. And then we have the third plot point from the last book – Serafina got a key from Oligor to Luntia’s secret room. Which turns out to be astonishing to absolutely everyone, but also promises this series may get darker in the future, tying back into its origins.

The other dissonance in this series is that between Serafina and every other saint. Fia, in the main series, is astonished at how little power the saints have, and that certainly seems to be true, the saints in her past incarnation seem to be more powerful. But even they pale in comparison to a girl who is beloved by the spirits, who is the descendant of spirit lords, and whose power is off the charts when she tries to do anything. In the main series that’s mostly used for comedy, because of course she’s the SECRET Saint, but even here where everyone knows who she is… mostly… it’s ridiculous. And I should also acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that most of this prequel involves knowing that a grown man and a six-year-old girl are made for each other and destined. It’s not helped here by two other underage girls in the village grabbing one of the knights and saying he’s their chosen one. As always, reading light novels requires tripping over the whole “it’s not sexual it’s just moe” annoyances, and we don’t even get the usual “she’s really 900 years old” excuse here.

That said, this remains a sweet and fun prequel, free of “fanservice”, and does not appear to be in any hurry to get to Serafina’s teenage years, so I think things should remain that way.