By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ian Sacks.

Because I didn’t get into this series until 9 volumes down the road, and I still have to keep up with everything else coming out, I’ve been reading volumes piecemeal, about 25 pages a day or so. This works well to get me caught up, but can make reviews tricky, as I try to recall what I was reading three weeks earlier. Fortunately, the bulk of the interesting things happening in this book are in the back half, so I should hopefully be OK. It also helps that the biggest nerd series J-Novel Club is putting out still includes things to appeal specifically to me. Miyoshi doing her press conference dressed as Yomiko Readman from Read or Die – no, really, she even namechecks her – just gave me a big smile. She and Keigo may not be able to escape being famous for much longer, but at least their attempts to avoid it are hilarious. They may want to lay off the huge discoveries, though.

Keigo and Miyoshi continue to try to set things up so they can do what they want without several nations attempting to kill them – again. They’re forming a company to be their business front, they’re starting a course in how to increase your stats for dungeon exploration (including a drill sergeant who finds herself in way over her head when she has to increase her agility via rhythm games), and they’re trying to see if they can grow crops in the dungeon (so far, limited success). The press conference itself goes very well, though the religious cult that was mentioned in the 2nd volume seems to recognize D-Powers as a threat to their livelihood. They also make another trip to the “haunted mansion” part of the dungeon, but end up being joined by their actress and model friends, leading to a very dangerous escape – one that gets filmed.

The mansion reveals a big secret, and I suspect that secret will continue to be relevant. We probably could have guessed that this is not a series where “and then suddenly, dungeons appeared one day” would be allowed to stand, and sure enough, the scientists who all “died” that day may have been trying to create something – and may not actually be dead. This leads to the other wonderful nerd reference in here, which is that part of the dungeon language appears to be written in pIqAd, which is to say Klingon. (The fact that they figure this out because Saito happened to be a “minor trekkie” and picked up a big of the language is perhaps one coincidence too many for me, but it’s not as if I expect anything else in this series to be realistic.) This actually makes things MORE difficult – it’s a lot easier to give out “dungeon translation” orbs than to say that the secret dungeon info is written in Star Trek. You’d lose credibility.

Next time I expect we’ll get the “dungeon training courses” going full blast, which will be nice. This remains ridiculous fun.

By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by JCT.

I mentioned before how this story is written by and for nerds, but really, I don’t think I emphasized it enough. Miyoshi is obviously a massive math nerd, and while Keigo tries to present himself as “the everyman”, every time he makes a reference to books that the author has to add a footnote for, his true self shines through. Moreover, the actual author is the same, getting distracted by explaining things like how curry restaurants work or taking a detour to Comiket. This book, the third in the series, seems to be the last of the “setup” volumes, as Book Four promises they’ll finally step into the spotlight. Yet the part of the book that has everyone the most excited is when D-Powers discovers not only that telepathy exists, but is something that ANYONE with a dungeon card can do. The ramifications of this have zero to do with how it will work in the dungeons – instead, it’s National Exams that are the concern. Cheaters!

Kei and Miyoshi continue to experiment in the dungeons, along with occasionally defeating god-tier enemies with Kei’s tricked-out stats. Meanwhile, the government wants a stat-measuring device, which would be able to quantify the strength of explorers and thus prevent accidental deaths in the dungeon… but further divides the haves and have-nots, making D-Powers worry about a class war. There’s the telepathy, which I mentioned above, and which manages to panic almost everyone. There’s the fact that they’ve released the translation of the dungeon inscriptions for free online, which has America and Russia a bit grumpy. Heck, even Keigo training his actress/model pair is causing them to attract the wrong kind of attention. If they were trying to deliberately cause as much chaos as they could, they still might not have done as well as this.

This can occasionally get a bit dark, but it’s always in a vaguely amusing way. Miyoshi’s treatment of the entertainment guy sent to spy on Saito verges on cruel… OK, no, it *is* cruel, as she tries to deliberately drive him a bit mad in order to scare him off of trying to go near them again. And there’s Asha, who returns to Japan to hang out with her crush and his partner, and ends up getting addicted to BL and asking her baffled father what “topping all the bottoms in an all-out attack” means. Actually, I said BL there, but there’s even a discussion of the sort of doujinshi she’s buying – it’s made clear it’s porn, “yaoi”, rather than the milder BL that is seen in bookstores. As I said, nerds. I will admit there is slightly less food and drink in this volume, but that’s only a matter of degree. But by the end of it we get a minor cliffhanger that seems to imply that D-Powers are going to have to be slightly less anonymous to survive. The government is putting pressure on again.

If you saw “dungeon title” and backed away slowly, rest assured that this series does still have OP fights and a harem that the male lead is oblivious to. It justifies its stats, though. Recommended for the converted.

By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by JCT.

Probably my favorite thing about this series so far is how it’s content to just ignore all the obvious plots that people (and indeed a lot of the cast) expect to happen when there’s a series about dungeon diving and killing lots of monsters. This book does have a lot more dungeon diving than the first book, along with a few moments of peril, but for the most part no one is in danger and no one stresses. There is a lot of political wrangling behind the scenes, which our heroes ignore, with the exception of their liaison with the government, who they basically bring into the team full-time here. There is even a brief action sequence near the end, featuring Keigo literally putting Miyoshi under one arm and leaping out of danger. But that’s irrelevant, as what this book is really about is rambling conversations, nerd analysis, food, and cute puppers. Yes, they’re hellhounds. But they’re cute puppers!

Keigo and Miyoshi need to actually go further into the dungeon than slime level, and that means tricking themselves out with all the bells and whistles. They buy an RV and put metal plating all over it. There are multiple kinds of steel balls for Miyoshi to toss. So they should be pretty safe against most of the harder monsters the dungeon has to offer them. Miyoshi ends up taming found monsters who are basically black death shadows in the form of large dogs the size of her. She adores them. They are also very good at keeping her (and, reluctantly, Keigo) safe from assassins. Because the main reason they’re down there is to get another language comprehension orb, which will upset the balance of power in the world. As a result, almost everyone is watching them like a hawk. Well, Russia is trying to kill them.

Despite trying to avoid the politics, the end of this volume makes it clear that they can’t do that for much longer. Staying quiet and anonymous is very difficult with the information they manage to find out. Not that they won’t stop trying. It turns out the person who’s getting the language orb is a 14-year-old genius girl who will be locked away in the US and made to translate. She’s resigned herself to this, but Keigo emphasizes that she has he power to defy that fate and make her own life. Even though we find out that the dungeon can, if used (and abused) properly, give out infinite gold and infinite food, they are still doing their damndest to make sure no one knows who they are for the most part, and that they can still go to nice places and order really good booze. I hope that keeps up.

As with the first book, the more this fights just going from level to level and killing monsters, the more I enjoy it. For nerds who like to ramble.