By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

I’ve talked before about the sort of series that has a clear ending but keeps going as the publisher wants it to. I’m not sure that’s what’s going on here – the author seems to indicate they had this in mind at the start – but it’s pretty blatant, complete with an “End of Part One” at the finale. Yulucia spends most of this book marching towards the demon lands, where the demons are getting ready to invade humanity, and where her not-quite-ex-boyfriend is currently being held after being summoned. Once she gets there, she’s quickly so insanely powerful that everyone else just immediately agrees to do what she says – well, almost everyone. But she still has to go after a really tasty soul, and ends up dimension hopping, which does not have an easy fix. So while I have no doubt we’ll end up back in this world eventually, for now Yulucia looks to be playing around in one far more familiar to readers.

This series remains mostly half-horror half-comedy, and the funny bits still work well. Yulucia’s description of her entourage that goes with her to the demon lands is hysterical, and Nia’s accidental slaughter of 1/3 of the demon forces is darkly funny. That said, there are a few bits here that are even emotionally heartwarming. One of the bad guys is (like several people in this series) isekai’d from Japan, in this case via truck, and he’s made a deal with a demon so that he can get a chance to return to his newly wedded wife before she moves on and marries someone else. The resolution to this, which I was sure was going to be about as cynical as this series can get most of the time, proved touching. Even Yulicia’s “taking care of” her sister, which is kind of appalling, is at least appalling in a kind of sweet way?

If that sounds ambiguous it’s because this is still, at heart, a series that wants to be horror. Yulucia is after tasty souls. Some of her friends are also. Her relationship with the Demon Beast could be defined as “toxic” even in the most romantic sense. And the reason the series works well at showing this off is that she really is also the Saint who heals thousands at a time, or the goddess who can stop a major war just by talking to the other side, and be so gorgeous that some men just faint when they see her, and both her main love interests feel incredibly inadequate when they try to stand by her. (Oddly, the other sweet romance in this book ends up being between two of its most pathetic people, who decide to simply abandon the plot of this series and go be pathetic but happy together.) As for Yulucia? She’s a nightmare, but she does love her family… in her own way.

So next time we start… a new life? Transfer students? Not sure, but I’ll be here to see what’s next. A dark fantastic comedy.

By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

One reason that this series works so well is that, no matter how dark or serious the climax of each volume gets, or how many corpses pile up, the start of each new book is mostly fun and often funny. Yulucia spends some time in this volume at the standard noble academy, and her quest to make friends, or at least interact normally with people, suffers from everything about her presence. There’s a great side story about a young girl who also has memories of a past life, and knows that this is a “dating sim”, and is there to game the system… and runs into Yulucia, after which she reforms and we never hear from her again. You can almost hear the sad trombone. Alas for people like the second prince, they are too important to vanish from the narrative, and the second half of this book gets substantially darker, as we learn why it’s a bad idea to poison the saint and use her body to summon God.

This volume, like the others, takes in a 2-3 year period in the life of Yulucia, who is dealing with normal light novel things like “I can’t understand why this tsundere guy keeps hanging around me it can’t be love it must be something else” while also doing things unique to this book, such as eating souls in order to gain power and trying to cultivate evil people, who have the most delicious souls to eat. She also runs into the “so-called hero’s party”, which not only contains her two sisters, but also an elf, whose name is unfortunately a Japanese pun and so she can’t stop laughing. In the back half, though, she’s invited by the evil rival to her mother to come visit, and please bring the prince along as well to visit her sickly daughter. And it turns out the mother’s soul is just what Yulucia likes.

Yulucia literally eating souls is pretty evil, of course, but I will admit to loving my favorite part of the book. Cordelia is the daughter of Isabella, the evil rival woman, and she’s been trained by her mother to be a standard jealous catty bitch… till she meets Yulucia and witnesses her doing super powerful healing magic, at which point she undergoes a conversion and decides to be the best “big sis” ever to Yulucia. The funny part is Yulucia’s reaction to this, as Cordelia’s yummy evil soul has now turned all good and yucky. This author really loves playing in the “rooting for the bad guy” sandbox, and while Yulucia is not quite on the level of Karla from Otome Heroine’s Guide to Survival, she’s still pretty bad. That said, it is notable that even when she’s become a mindless monster lashing out and killing all around her, she tries to avoid killing people close to her. She’s not completely evil.

Which, as it turns out, may be the plot leading into the fourth book, where she’s likely to reunite with the demon who made her what she is today. If you like dark comedy, with the emphasis on dark, this is a good one.

By Harunohi Biyori and Geso Umiu. Released in Japan as “Akuma Koujo” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Julie Goniwich. Adapted by Emlyn Dornemann.

I got startled 3/4 of the way through this book, but this time it was more because I forgot the premise than for any “what a twist” reasons. I was so distracted by our little evil princess’ “reincarnated as a villainess” style storyline that I forgot about the first part of Volume 1. And so when we got her four lazy, eccentric and just plain awful retainers, I was expecting it to be either the standard “she whips them into shape with the power of intense training”, or, later on, “she whips them into shape by putting the fear of god into them”. Then the actual plot kicks in, and each of the four retainers gets a lovely little “this is why I am a terrible person deep down” flashback, and I realized that this was not the direction this series was going. And then I was surprised, and reminded of the first part of Volume 1, which explains everything. Gotta pay attention to things.

Over the course of the book Princess Yulucia goes from four to six years old, and it’s an eventful time. She has her debut at a ball where everyone is absolutely overwhelmed by her (or terrified of her), but her sisters still manage to act just like wicked stepsisters always do in these sorts of books. She gains the aforementioned attendants, who are, respectively, bad and obsequious, bad and lazy, bad and angry, and bad and ditzy. She heals people with crippling diseases (yay), and cures the early male pattern baldness of various loser nobles (less yay). Unfortunately, another very striking young noble is inviting girls to her own nighttime tea party… and some of them are not coming back. Time for Yulucia to investigate… and do something about her sucky servants.

The last quarter of this book is not quite as striking as the first volume, but Yulucia makes it very clear that she does not suffers fools gladly, and if they don’t improve, well, their souls will be destroyed. That’s how it rolls with demons. Fortunately, she’s able to save their bodies, and it turns out she has some very capable folks to inhabit those bodies. We also see some innocent lesser nobles get invited to Miss Mylene’s tea party, and we never see them again, so clearly this is not a case of “and then we found them in the attic and returned them to their parents” but “and then we found their corpse with the others”. As with the author’s other series, this is not for the faint of heart, and gets pretty horrific… but it can also be very funny at times. Sometimes at the same time. As for Yulucia, her stepsisters may be a bigger issue going forward, as the older one seems to be the one person who sees her true self.

I hear that future volumes go even further off the rails, so I’m not sure where this will end up. For the moment, though, I’m happy to be following along.