By Harunadon and raemz. Released in Japan as “Replica Datte, Koi o Suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

There are spoilers for this book, at long last, as it becomes impossible to try not to give everything away like I’ve tried in my previous obfuscating reviews.)

Last time I mentioned that we could all guess what Nao’s decision is, and I was absolutely correct, but that’s not what makes this book so interesting. What first surprised me is how long it takes Nao to avoid having to answer the question, first telling Sunao that she’ll answer her before the end of the year, and then essentially trying to cram in as much life as possible into those days, even as she continues to worry about how Sunao is doing. There’s a great scene in the book where Sunao gets a bloody nose during a sports event, and everyone completely panics, even as she grumpily insists that she’s fine. It helps to underline the idea that Sunao is fragile, especially when Nao is out and about, and that Nao’s decision is entirely about her, rather than about Aki or her own love. And then she takes Aki and Ricchan on one last big blowout date, on Christmas day, to an amusement park. SHE may not make her decision till 3/4 through the book, but WE know it from page 1.

Now that it’s apparent that when the original and the replica are both “out and about”, the replica generally can’t be seen, Nao is trailing along with Sunao more often. This allows her to see the aforementioned game where Sunao is injured, as well as look at all the photos from the class trip, which she is burning into her brain. She’s also talking with Satou about things, because one thing that might make Nao hesitate in her decision is she has no idea what will happen to Sunao, or how she’ll be affected, after it occurs. There’s just no way to know, especially if you’re Nao. And of course there is Aki, who knows what her decision is, and respects her own autonomy, but spends most of this book brutally sad and depressed, and you can see why. In the end, Nao chooses to… well, what DOES happen?

The other big surprise for me was the last quarter or so of the book. Where Nao winds up in Replica Heaven, basically, and meets up with Ryou, who explains that after they have “finished their work”, replicas come here to essentially live an afterlife. They’re in a school, and though they can’t leave it (there are dorms), and time doesn’t really pass, they can learn, and read books, and even date other replicas. And they all seem pretty content with this… except Nao. It was very hard for me while reading this section not to think about the Talking Heads song “Heaven”, which its chorus “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens”. Nao can’t get over how the entire thing is essentially in muted greyscale, but as it turns out that’s not the Replica afterlife, it’s HER. She gets remonstrated for not only making the wrong decision but making it badly, trying to do the most dramatic thing ever in order to burn herself into everyone’s brain. And more importantly, she needs to go back.

This is, for all intents and purposes, the end. But we’re not done, as we’re finally going to get what I’ve wanted from the start: Sunao’s side. She was just as big a part of the finale of this book as much as Nao, and her “I no longer hate myself” made me well up a bit. This is really good, folks.

By Harunadon and raemz. Released in Japan as “Replica Datte, Koi o Suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

When I’d finished the first volume of this series, I felt it was very much a done-in-one, and felt a little wary that there was more of it. Then came the second volume, which had a couple of nasty cliffhangers at the end that made the reader desperately want to pick up the third, so I figured the author got a hold of where it was going. Having now researched it a bit, it appears that there are four main volumes and an “after story” volume. Which is good, because egads, that ending of the third book. But it’s also a bit of a shame, because if the third book had indeed been the last, the ending we get would have been an absolute banger, making desperate readers write into Dengeki Bunko saying that there’s a missing page and to find out how it actually ended. But, that’s not what’s happening. And honestly, that’s probably good, as there is still stuff to deal with.

As the book opens, Sunao has been doing the “going to school” thing, and is interacting with her classmates almost despite herself, as they prepare for the class trip… which is still going forward, despite the Student Council president vanishing in thin air in front of everyone and then ending up dead a week earlier. As for Nao, she is back at the house, unable to do anything except sit there every day and mourn Ryou. Fortunately, Aki and Ricchan stage an intervention and remind her that she is more than just a replica… or is she? As the book goes on and Sunao goes off on the class trip, Nao and Aki go on their own trip to the town where Ryou lived with her grandparents… and end up staying with said grandparents, where they get told something very shocking but also very obvious if you know what replicas REALLY are.

As with the first two books, it’s very difficult to talk about what’s really great about it without spoiling the whole thing, but let me once again take a whack. This volume gives us the biggest dose yet of Sunao, and we really get to see what’s making her tick and what she’s trying to do here. Her relationship with Nao is slowly killing her, and while I don’t mean that literally there are a few literary references in this book that allude to a story where it is taken literally. Sunao is not in a good place now, nor is Sanada, who is also back living everyday life while his replica stays home. Do we get to meet another replica in this book? No, bjut we meet someone who once had one, and that proves to be the key, as it shows not that Sunao and Sanada having replicas isn’t as unique as they think, but that the way they have replicas is uniquely wrong.

All this leads to one belter of a cliffhanger… sort of? Anyone who has read the series at all knows what Nao will say, but it’s the after that’s the important thing, so let’s see what happens next with Book 4. The writing remains excellent, and his is genuinely Harunadon’s best series in English right now.

By Harunadon and raemz. Released in Japan as “Replica Datte, Koi o Suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

I was very curious to see what the author would do with this book. So was the author, to be fair. They’d written a story that wrapped up very neatly in one volume, and they weren’t that enthusiastic about writing another one. That said, fear not, this book is just as dynamite as the first one. And just as gut-wrenching, of course. Normally I don’t really worry about spoiling books in my reviews, as my readers ruefully know. But I need to discuss one of the bigger plot twists in this book a bit below. That said, I will keep the end of the book a surprise. Much of this book is cute and heartwarming, with an odd tinge of dread and melancholy. Which is exactly what I expected given the first. Then we get to the last few pages, which give us a punch to the heart and then a punch to the throat. Which, again, is exactly what I expected given the first.

Sunao has been spending all of her time in her room lately, seemingly doing nothing but study, and is content to leave Nao to get on with everything. Which includes the upcoming school festival. Unfortunately, the literature club gets hit with one of the standard high school romcom plotlines: they don’t have enough members, and will be shut down by the student council unless they show their worth by selling 100 copies of their book at the festival. Which is about 90-something more than the previous festival. Fortunately, one of the student council folks is the sole member of the drama club, which is also in danger of being shut down. So they team up. The literature club (well, OK, Ricchan) writes an adaptation of Princess Kaguya, and will also help perform it… if they can convince Mori, the other student council member, to go along. Oh yes, and someone is dumping paper all over the school that reads “there’s a doppelganger in our school’.

The first volume had me spend most of it wondering what replicas actually were. The second one seems to be digging into the question of WHY there are replicas. In Sunao’s case, it’s because she saw Nao as a convenience to get her out of things she didn’t want to do, and softens considerably at the end of the first book… well, so we thought. But one of the things I am going to spoil, mostly as you likely could have guessed it, is that there’s another replica introduced here, though the word “doppelganger” is used here as well. Replicas are very personal for each person who creates them, and that’s what we have here. But their existence, as we’ve seen, is fragile. The first book shows us Nao literally come back from the dead. The second book runs along a similar track, but that track pulls into a very different station.

So yeah, I’m still bad about not spoiling things. Suffice it to say, if you loved the first, you will love the second. Also, unlike the first, there’s a VERY nasty cliffhanger here. And we’ve got to wait till spring for the next book. (paces around)