By Asato Asato and Shirabii. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Roman Lempert.

This ended up being a bit of a headache for me. I didn’t mind the parody. Look at that subtitle, I was expecting a lot of goofball antics. The trouble is that it’s also trying to tell a serious story in there, albeit less serious than the main 86 story. I didn’t mind when everyone was talking about using the star grapheme when shouting the name of their colossal killer weapon, but it feels a bit off when it’s in the middle of a dramatic reunion between family, one of whom is the enemy. Which, I note, happens twice in this book. That said, for the most part this Alter is a bit different than the first one, which was essentially a short story collection. This is basically telling one big alternate universe story that combines magical girls and Macross-style space battles, where men and women get to have cute nicknames, and the 86 get to be cute l’il fairy companions. Will everyone live happily ever after? They certainly have a better shot here.

It’s 86… in… SPAAAAAACCCCEEE! Our heroes have been fighting a hundred year war against the Legion, most of whom are, as the main series indicates, the rampaging grudges of dead wartime soldiers. They’ve got huge battleships, and can use huge beam cannons. However, they also fight in person, in space, in magical girl armor. No, the guys get to wear pants, but they do have to have the ridiculous names and poses. The first chunk of the story shows us Lena and Annette as they fight their magical girl battles with the help of the 86, cute fairies that used to be soldiers. Including her new fairy Shin. In the second part, Shin is now the 86 for Frederica, who is part of the plan to end the war once and for all, despite her young age, immature ideals, and tendency to lake the star grapheme. The third story gives Vika and his family something to do, and can easily be skipped unless you love Vika and Lerche.

As noted, this is far more serious in places than I was expecting, in that it’s not a 100% parody. The basic concept is ridiculous, but it takes its worldview seriously, and when the 86 “die”, which they do (though note the quote marks), people get upset about it. That said, overall, this is very much a yay, happy ending sort of book in the end. Most of the named cast we care about are brought back in some way, shape or form, even a couple of the Legion, and the war is over. Certainly that’s wishful thinking for the cast of the main series. And while I found the tonal dissonance jarring, some of the humor was pretty funny. I liked the fourth-wall breaking noting how little we’d actually seen Vika’s family, and that one of them only appeared in an online only story. LOL.

There aren’t any more Alter novels out in Japan, but the good news is that the 14th volume of the main series came out last fall. Expect less cute magical girl names.

By Asato Asato and Shirabii. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Roman Lempert.

Yes, the “Dear” in the subtitle is spelled correctly, as the author states in the afterword. As for the book itself: I would like to remind readers, before I continue, that I do think this is an excellent series and I eagerly await reading the next book. That said, reading this was like being punched in the face for 318 pages. Each of the volumes has built on what has gone before, and here it reaches a crescendo, as everything completely falls into chaos, leaving our main cast in a situation exactly where they were at the start of the first book. It’s not quite “everything is for nothing”, but it’s close. The book has never been subtle about choosing kindness over prejudice, but here it reminds everyone that choosing to be kind is hard and requires constant vigilance, whereas being prejudiced is easy, and if a person is under stress or furious, easy is what happens. In among this, we do have time for another part of the secondary romance in the series, but even that is dramatic and bittersweet.

We open the book with a group of young girls preparing to go on a journey. They’re all part of a group, and we find that some of that group aren’t joining them. We then discover that this group are girls who were experimented on by Republic scientists and turned into living human bombs, who will go off at certain times. As this comes to light, along with the fact that it was Republic scientists who were responsible, rumors start flying. The “human bomb” thing is contagious. Everyone from the Republic is a secret enemy. Everyone who is foreign in any way is a secret enemy. And, of course, the Eighty-Six are secret enemies. As this goes on, the military falls apart, as all the soldiers turn on each other. Now Shin and company have to try to at least make sure there’s a base for them to come back to, as well as try to stop the Legion, who are helping all this along. And they have to do it without Lena and Annette, who have been “detained”.

In the middle of this nightmare is the story of Anju and Dustin. Dustin, as it turns out, is the childhood friend of the girl who is the “head” of these human bombs, and was unaware what happened to her until it’s revealed. The obvious narrative choice would be for him to desert, making a dangerous trek over the battlefield and reunite with her right before she does so they can have a tearful reunion. But not only would that go against literally everything that the Eighty-Six series has ever done, it also would not be fair to Anju, who has finally managed to acknowledge moving on from her first love and finding a new one with Dustin, and now there’s all this. I did wonder if Dustin was going to die, and spark the final chaos. It doesn’t work out that way, but an Eighty-Six *does* die, and that leads to the cliffhanger, and to the final arc, where everything has to be fought for all over again right from the beginning.

Yyyyyyyeah. Really well-written. Great philosophical points. Feels very relevant to today’s world. But also: A BUMMER.

By Asato Asato and Shirabii. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Roman Lempert.

On the bright side, this is one of the short story volumes coming out in the same order it came out in Japan – this book was released after the 12th volume. So I don’t have to worry about events in this book spoiling future volumes of the main series that came out here first (Re: Zero, Index,. etc.). On the down side, I doubt I’ll have to worry about that anyway, as I think this is definitely one of the short story books you do NOT have to read in order to appreciate the main series. It’s made up of various stories that were released as bonuses when you purchased books at a specific bookstore, or a DVD/Blu-Ray release, etc. There are one or two stories new to this book, of course, but for the most part the ‘Alter.’ of the title is meant to show that this is a volume where we don’t have to worry about characters dying. That said, we do get a lot of dead characters in it. It’s just they’ve already died.

The book is largely divided into five chunks. The first bit deals with the cast back in the Republic, around the time of the first light novel. The second has events after getting to the Federation, both before and after Lena joins them. The third has a few stories set in the United Kingdom during those volumes, and the fourth has short stories that take place after that arc, basically filling in bits of Books 8-10 or so. The final story is a bonkers fourth-wall breaking paintball battle royale featuring every single character in all the novels, alive or dead, and can best be described as “what if Among Us relied on being able to pick out the right perfume?”

So this is fine, it’s just very hard to review. Leaving aside the final story, which is not meant to be taken remotely seriously and thank God for that, the stories can be divided into 1) Funny slice-of-life; 2) Sweet, heartwarming slice-of-life; 3) The 86 are just like this; and 4) Melancholic dream sequences involving the dead. The last of those probably hit the best for me. I really liked a story showing Shin celebrating a sakura festival by drinking sake, joined by Kaie and all the other comrades who were killed off over the course of the first book. It’s pointed out that if this had really happened while the team were alive, it could have been water, but in Shin’s imagination he can have a full-scale viewing party. And this is followed with a very funny scene where Lena, after drinking some of the sake, shows she’s a very bad and clingy drunk. The weakest part of the book was probably the birthday stories, which felt the most like they were being written to order.

Still, I would not mind a second one of these. Perhaps after the main series itself is over, though. Luckily, we’re back with 13 in a month or two, ominously titled The Deer Hunter. Please, let’s NOT have Lena and Shin playing Russian roulette.