By Ryo Shirakome and Takaya-ki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Rei” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

If a spinoff of Arifureta was going to be done, the Liberators were the only obvious choice. And, despite the novel starting out trying to make us think that Oscar was going to be the main character (which he is to an extent), this is all Miledi’s plan and all Miledi’s book. As such, enjoyment of this book will depend on how much you enjoyed Miledi in the second novel. She’s deliberately written to be annoying, and even though we get a tragic backstory here to explain why she does that it can still make you want to grit your teeth at times. That said, her drive to try to change the world and go up against the gods is laudatory, and her recruitment of Oscar (and later on Naiz) also allows plenty of scenes of her getting physically and emotionally abused for comedy purposes. (She reminded me of Shea a bit, to be honest, without the trolling that Miledi does all the time.)

(The author wonders if we were surprised at Miledi’s appearance, but honestly, this is pretty much exactly how I imagined her.)

As I said, Oscar is the focus at the start of the book, a synergist (much like our hero in the main series) trying to keep a low profile to avoid the Church. Said low profile falls to bits once Miledi arrives and starts harassing him, but honestly the church is so evil anyway that it was somewhat inevitable that it wouldn’t last. We also get a pile of adorable plucky orphan children, and once Oscar and Mikedi team up to find Naiz we get two more plucky adorable children, all of whom are put in deadly danger by events of the plot. And do you want tragic backstories? You’ll love Miledi’s, whose childhood was pretty crappy and then got much, much worse. There are also several very cool fights, as you’d come to expect from Arifureta, involving clever manipulation of gravity, creating impossibly hard shields via a cool umbrella (apparently a reference to Kingsman, though I kept thinking of Ryouga Hibiki), and teleportation badassery. And, as I said before, Miledi being really, really annoying.

This actually came out a mere 4 months after the Japanese release, so I would not hold your breath for the second volume right away. That said, I can’t imagine fans of Arifureta not enjoying this, even though the regular cast are nowhere to be seen. You get a good sense of the three leads and why they made the dungeons that they did. It also reminded me that Miledi’s spirit is technically still around in the main series, and I wonder if she’ll do anything else. (I also wonder if she and Oscar will ever hook up. Probably not, I suspect.) Basically, this is exactly the sort of thing you’d like a spinoff to be, and I will definitely enjoy more of it whenever it comes out.

By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

After a few volumes of pretending to be your standard “reader surrogate gains immense powers and a wide variety of women” isekai story, Arifureta has settled down as it finally realizes the type of story it wants to tell, which is a messianic narrative. I’m not actually being facetious here, we have seen seeds of this before, but they come to full flower here. Hajime is here to save the world by being badass at it. Those who believe will be rewarded, those who do not believe will get their asses kicked. We see one of his believers doubt herself in this volume, and Hajime makes it very clear that this is no easy task – believe in him and stop stewing in self-hatred, or get out. Needless to say, we know which choice she makes. We also see Hajime go up against the powerful Church, which regards him as a heretic, and a demon who may as well be filling in for Lucifer. Subtle this ain’t.

Shizuka’s on the cover, but doesn’t appear much, though we do see her bonding with the princess of the royal family, who I had honestly forgotten. Most of the book is taken up with Hajime getting Myu back home, which also involves conquering not one but TWO of the remaining dungeons. Kaori is left behind for one of them as support, which seems quite sensible given that this is the MAGMA DUNGEON, but she comes along on the water dungeon crawl, which leads to her crisis of faith I mentioned above. Said crisis of faith is resolved by Hajime showing that he cares about her by threatening an entity that’s possessed her – indeed, most of the harem’s self-esteem issues are resolved by simply having the undemonstrative Hajime pat their head or vow to protect them or somesuch. In all honestly, as Hajime notes, he’ll basically do whatever they say, but I suspect the typical “I hate OP harem guys” fan won’t mind as Hajime is stoic rather than friendly.

We get a lot more background on the past of the world Hajime and company have been brought to here, and find that if we’re headed for a massive Holy War, it won’t be the first. I suspect the next volume will have Hajime’s group divert their plans to save Aiko, who is being imprisoned and tortured for believing in Hajime. No, really. As I said, if you don’t accept this as a messianic narrative, it may be hard to get past its inherent ridiculousness. Oh yes, we also meet Myu’s mother, who the author admits is straight up a ripoff of Alicia from Aria, and who clearly would be quite happy to be an addition to Hajime’s harem, though I’m not sure it will actually happen. It would be nice to have an “ara, ara” sort in the harem. In any case, the next volume will be as action-packed as this one, I imagine, thoguh knowing Hajime, he is unlikely to be crucified and die for anyone’s sins. Recommended for fans of ridiculously overpowered guys and the women who adore them.

Also, “Fish-san was a fishmancer.” I’ll just leave that there.

By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

We’ve been waiting for some time for Hajime’s path to intersect with the rest of his high school class, and it finally arrives in this volume, which appropriately has Kaori on the cover. It also provides us with a nice comparison between the two lives the groups are currently leading. Hajime, at the start of the volume, is trying to date his rabbit girl (with Yue’s permission, of course), but cannot help but accidentally get caught up in a string of ludicrous situations that end up with him semi-adopting a small mermaid-ish girl and also casually destroying an underground slave ring and mob over the course of, oh, an hour or so. Meanwhile, his class has gotten down to the 90th floor, and suddenly run into a demon with a bunch of monster minions, many of whom are invisible, and get their clocks absolutely cleaned. It’s serious and dramatic and… you’re counting the pages waiting for Hajime to show up again.

There are a few interesting characters among the class herd, of course. Kaori is still just as obsessed as she ever was – in fact, we get a hilarious extra story showing off how obsessed with Hajime she was from the moment she first saw him – and it’s no surprise that the volume ends with her joining Hajime’s party, though not without difficulty – it’s hard to topple Yue from the top, and she doesn’t, but like all the other girls, Yue’s absolute strength of love for Hajime gives her the courage to confess her own. Shizuku rises from “snarky best friend” to top-tier in this volume, proving smart, capable, and wielding an amazingly sharp tongue. The way she gets Hajime to promise not to mistreat Kaori is the funniest part of the book, and I won’t spoil it. She also gives excellent advice to Kouki, the actual cliched “hero called to save the world”, though I’m not sure it will stick. Kouki sounds like the author will always want him to be teeth-grindingly wrong in a Dudley Do-Right way, so I suspect the next time he meets Hajime things won’t go well – particularly after that cliffhanger.

But yeah, I had a lot of trouble remembering who was who in the rest of the class, and those I did remember didn’t appeal to me (sorry, Suzu, you need more in your quiver than “comedy lesbian”). And to a degree that’s the point. Interesting as it was to see the class struggle and mostly fail against a string of monsters far beyond their abilities, and deal with the idea that they’ll actually have to kill enemies, that’s not what we’re reading Arifureta for. The reader wants Hajime impaling monsters with one blow, Yue burning everything in sight, and Shea swinging her hammer around (and also riding Hajime’s faux motorcycle, the other contender for “funniest moment” in the book). Like other ridiculous isekai series (hi, Smartphone), it works best when it’s ridiculous. That said, the contrast between ridiculous and desperately serious here made this an excellent volume.