By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

For the most part this book is just a straight up sequel to the fourth volume, with the drama club getting together with our heroes to put on a second play featuring the Blue Knight and the Silver Princess. Like the fourth book, there’s a lot of focus on Theia and Harumi, who compare and contrast even more with each other. And like the fourth book, everything gets derailed by Theia’s rival Clan, who’s out for revenge and has a better gun now. Oh yes, and can fly. That said, for about 4/5 of this book there’s not really all that much happening, and it seems to be content to be a Christmas-themed book showing how well everyone gets along now while seeding possible things for future books, such as Ruth pointing out that serving Theia as her Knight would involve Koutarou moving off-planet.

Ruth is on the cover of this volume, so you might expect to see her get a story in Vol. 8. That said, she does get plenty to do here, mostly acting as support for Theia and trying to nudge Koutarou in the right direction, though there is an amusing side plot of her wanting to get stronger so she can defeat the sentai warrior from last book – who was, of course, Shizuka, who feels uncomfortable about all this. That said, neither Ruth or Shizuka are part of the harem (yet), and so the bulk of the development goes to Harumi and Theia. Harumi is still trying to get Koutarou to treat her as less of a sempai and more of a friend – i.e., the way he treats Theia, which she explicitly is jealous of. Theia does not think about Harumi that much, but that’s likely because she’s unaware of the plot twist we all saw coming: Harumi is in some way possessed by or a reincarnation of the Silver Princess from Theia’s past, and as the end of the book makes clear, Koutarou is literally the Blue Knight.

The climax of the book involves the performance of the 2nd play, complete with Yurika as the most pathetic dragon ever (she’s back to being useless here, though smartens up when actual danger arrives, and the fact that she hasn’t realized her feelings for Koutarou yet helps her keep it together more). The play is, as I said above, interrupted by Clan, who remains petty, spiteful, and very easy to dislike. And then comes the climax of the book, which was a big surprise. Not the actual events, those were the least surprising thing ever. No, I was surprised that the book kept going past where I expected it to. Let’s just say there was a really obvious place for a cliffhanger, but the book chose to go a few more pages and actually resolve most of its built-up tension. It actually worked quite well.

I’m enjoying reading each volume of this series as it really puts an effort into showing how each of the characters is slowly maturing and gaining confidence and strength, as well as bonding with each other. Technically it’s a harem comedy, but the harem all get along, and there’s no real rush to confess, mostly as few of them have even admitted their feelings to themselves. It works very well as an ongoing series, doing the #1 thing such series should do: make you want to read more. That said, I’m pretty sure the next volume won’t feature Ruth, as it’s Vol. 7.5, and tells the story of what happened to Koutarou and Clan during the climax of this book. Be careful when searching Amazon to get the right order.

By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

First off, going back to my worries from the last review, I am delighted to see that Yurika’s character development from the previous book is not only kept but noticed by others. Yes, she is still sometimes the butt of the joke – this is a comedy, after all – but she’s far more content with her lot in life now, talking easily with Koutarou and realizing that using her abilities secretly so that no one knows about it may actually be the best thing she can do right now. The other cast members are also keeping their growth – Koutarou is noticeably less formal with Harumi here, and the cast is all starting to realize they’re in love with Koutarou without having it become their defining trait, always a worry in harem titles. Rokujouma may be light as air at times, but there’s more depth here than I was expecting.

Of course, sticking with the ‘heroine is the cover girl of the previous book’ rule, the main focus here is on Kiriha, the last of the ‘main girls’ in the room to be fleshed out, provided you’re not counting Harumi, who’s sort of the plus one in this situation. (I’m not sure if Shizuka is going to do anything but be the landlord who knows lots of martial arts – she certainly gets more do do in this book than usual, but her feelings for Koutarou are not brought up.) Kiriha has been the teasing older woman sort in the series, but naturally we discover that this is mostly a front to disguise her true motives, which are actually pretty pure and noble given she was supposed to be a vanguard for a race trying to invade the Earth’s surface. In reality, what she has in mind is more like immigration than anything else, and Koutarou is relieved to discover this.

She also has a childhood dream she wants to fulfill, as when she was a kid she ran away to the surface and met a young man who she immediately fell in love with. Now, I have been saying how much I enjoy Rokujouma here, but it does have a few downsides, and the biggest one is that it’s about as subtle as a brick to the head. Time travel has not really come up yet in the series, though given the amount of weird tech we’ve seen so far it would be no surprise. Also no surprise is the fact that the boy Kiriha fell for all those years ago is clearly ‘our’ Koutarou, who no doubt will find a way to slip back in time in some future book. Then again, I’m not sure that subtlety and mysteries are what the author is going for here. I think we’re meant to be winking along with the narrative.

Of all the ‘light, fluffy romance series with no real point’ I’ve been reading in light novel form, Rokujouma is probably my favorite. It’s always a relaxed, easy read, and some of its jokes made me laugh out loud this time (particularly Koutarou’s reaction to the five-team sentai squad when they first show up). If you don’t mind harems, it’s an excellent light novel starting point.

By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy Yurika’s role in the novels, being the constantly mocked and abused girl whose suffering is absolutely hilarious. That said, it’s not the sort of thing that you’re going to be able to drag out over 26+ volumes, not if you want to actually develop the characters enough to have people read 26+ volumes. So I was not particularly surprised that this volume of Rokujouma was going to try to give Yurika a bit more gravitas, or at least show us that as a magical girl she isn’t, in fact, as completely incompetent as her personality may imply. I wasn’t expecting this to turn into the best volume of the series to date, though, as Yurika’s frustrations in the first half of the book give way to a battle royale with her evil counterpart, and she finally gets her wish: her friends believe her.

And yes, I can see you raising an eyebrow at me. “Magical reset at the end?”, you say cynically. Yes, yes, magical reset at the end. But that’s not the point, the point is that Yurika is NOT affected by the magical reset, which means that the development she gets in this book will (hopefully, crosses fingers) remain going forward. A lot of Yurika’s issues are self-confidence related, which makes sense given her background which we get a bit more of here – she was an “ordinary girl” attacked for the large amount of mana she had, and her magical girl sempai pretty much sacrificed herself so that Yurika could continue to defend the world, etc. As a magical girl, Yurika is actually pretty damn powerful. It’s just the constant ridicule and denial by her friends that wear her down. But now she’s aware that, memory loss or no, in the end when her friends discover the truth they do support and defend her.

As for the harem, it’s interesting that Yurika does not particularly moon over Koutarou the way that the other girls do. There are a few hints she likes him, but for the most part she’s content to set up Harumi with him. Her attempts at helping that relationship along work much better than her attempts to get people to believe she’s a magical girl, honestly. As for Koutarou, his main issue is that he’s surrounded by a ghost, two aliens, and an “underground priestess”, and Yurika the “cosplayer” is the one normal girl in his life. Once he accepts that his harem are not going to abandon him, I think things can move forward. (As for Harumi, her main issue is that Koutarou puts distance between them that he doesn’t do with the others, and this is relatively straightforwardly fixed.) The other haremettes don’t get much to do, though the ending implies that the next book will feature Kiriha – which makes sense, she’s on the cover of this book. Gotta keep things consistent.

Rokujouma is never going to break any originality records, but it’s settled nicely into doing its thing, and the characters are growing with each book. Well worth a read for fans of battle harems.