By Yuu Tanaka and Nardack. Released in Japan as “Deokure Tamer no Sono Higurashi” by GC Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by A.M. Cola.

Those readers who dislike the frequently seen characterization of a lead as “seems completely unaware of how good/loved/savvy he really is” will have, I assume, dropped this series after the first volume, since that’s entirely what it runs on. Even those of us who enjoy that sort of thing, though, may find this volume trying. We do get the usual share of Yuto trying various recipes and accidentally inventing something amazing, of course, but the back half of this book is taken up with a genuine raid boss fight, which everyone assumes (except Yuto) that he will take part in, and that everyone assumes (except Yuto) that he and his tamed monsters did the most to help win, and then all the NPCs assume (to Yuto’s shock) that he is their leader and the one who they should give all the cool new quests. He will never stop being astonished by this, and he will never stop immediately forgetting it within five minutes.

The first quarter of the book is mostly Yuto puttering around, figuring out you can get medicinal plants when they’ve been trapped in amber, etc. He then meets up with Akari, one of the front-liners he (and we) have not seen for some time. They’re trying to befriend yokai, which you can’t tame per se but you can summon after befriending them. They also (thanks to Yuto’s really high NPC favorability) find a beastgirl who leads them to a village of beastpeople… and a huge, raid-sized monster, which is blocking the way to the sea village they trade with. Realizing that this is likely the way to open the next level that everyone has been searching for, they quickly gather allies and prepare to fight. Though Yuto also makes sure to do those little wandering things he always does, and as such gets all the good info about defeating it.

There’s minimal Alyssa in this book, but that’s mostly a setup for a gag. When Yuto wants to discuss dyeing and miracle herbs, Alyssa is offline, so he goes to someone else in their group, Maple. (No, not that one.) At first she’s fairly blase about what he’s brought, but when she runs across a major find, she quickly explains that he can only speak to Alyssa about this. Sorry, sacrificial meat shield Quick Cat! Only you can overreact to Yuto’s ridiculousness. I was also amused, though a bit annoyed, at Yuto’s anger at the cute couple that’s making eyes at each other while he and Akari are investigating… especially since he’s walking next to a beautiful girl at the time! Yuto is presumable mid-20s, given he’s an a=office worker, and this series is not doing romance, but his occasional “not gay!” or “damn normies” personality quirks seem out of character compared to the rest of him.

So a fairly decent volume of this series, and it gives people what they want. Unless they want Yuto to gain animal traits, he’s said no to that.

By Yuu Tanaka and Nardack. Released in Japan as “Deokure Tamer no Sono Higurashi” by GC Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by A.M. Cola.

These books are always fairly long, but this one didn’t feel that way, mostly as it packed a lot of stuff into its pages. Alyssa even screams at one point about how Yuto keeps accidentally discovering vital, game-changing information every single day, and for the most part it’s not on purpose. (She almost has a complete breakdown when for once he arrives to sell information and says she’ll be shocked. He’s normally so blase.) As usual, we get Yuto gaining a new tamed monster here, and we also get him accessing places no one has been before, going to areas no other players are allowed, and accidentally helping to awaken ancient darkness a lot sooner than the game developers planned. That last, at least, is worrying. Oh, and his celebrity status also helps struggling musicians trying to sell their real life songs as game characters to sell out just because he bought them. It’s a good thing this is so G-rated, or we’d be in trouble.

The first part of the book is mostly Yuto doing Yuto things, like having his tamed monsters evolve in odd ways, planting special fertilizer in his garden to see whether it will lead to fantastic plants (it does), and making Alyssa scream. He also gets help to get to Zone Ten, a huge city which, among other things, has a continuation of a quest he did a while back that leads him to get a new monster… a horse! No, wait, this is Yuto, everything he does is extra, so it’s a super rare Moon Pony. After learning the riding skills necessary to make his new monster (Carro) useful, he then accidentally stumbles into another huge quest just by staying at an inn with nice stables, and this one leads to an NPC whose sword seems to interest a mysterious figure shrouded in black fog. Could this be one of the rumored demons?

I’ve joked before about this being the male Bofuri, but it really, really is. Especially when it comes to its lead characters. Neither Bofuri nor Late-Start Tamer would work if Maple or Yuto were in any way doing this deliberately, or planning it in any way. Likewise, the main reason they aren’t insufferable (well, mostly – Yuto can occasionally make you roll your eyes) is that they’re such ditzes. Seeing Yuto still – STILL – unaware of his own reputation and playstyle, as he stuns Alyssa over and over again and accidentally turns a minor music festival by poor artists into a huge moneymaking thing by just… wandering by and seeing his cute monsters get into the music. And I mean, come on. If I was into death metal and I saw that it had cute adorable creatures headbanging to it, I might get a copy as well. The power of cute is strong.

But is the power of cute strong enough to stop whatever this new event is, one that seems to have NPCs interacting with each other only for the benefit of the reader? For those who wish Bofuri was about a bishy guy but otherwise exactly the same.

By Yuu Tanaka and Nardack. Released in Japan as “Deokure Tamer no Sono Higurashi” by GC Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by A.M. Cola.

I’ve mostly given up on trying to make sure these reviews don’t repeat themselves. I can manage it with books where the plot is “awkward teens in love” or “Guy with a +2 Sword of Awesome and His Catgirl Maid Harem”, but this is one of those slow life books that genuinely IS a slow life book, and it doesn’t even have the decency of being a reincarnation or an isekai. This is a game, and the only reason we know that the series will eventually end is that Yuno took two weeks off his job just to play it all the time, and eventually those two weeks are gonna end and he will presumably go back to being a salaryman. The goal here is to find new awesome things to use in the game and cute things to gawk at in the game. Well, that and to rubberneck as Yuno ends up doing ridiculous bullshit without realizing it. Let’s face it, most light novels have the reader imagine they’re the hero. We can’t even. We’re one of the schlubs gushing about the hero.

Yes, that’s a new tamed monster on the cover. After leveling up the bit of the sacred tree that he planted at his farm, he finds it summons a demon… a demon who is immediately, and really easily, tamed. She’s called (of course) Lilith, and she’s just as goofy as she looks, but she also helps Yuno with some fairly useful skills. He also manages to figure out a really obscure way of evolving his olive treant, who now becomes another wood nymph, which is to say a cute… well, a cute non-binary child. (There is a literal debate about Olea’s gender on the series’ equivalent of Reddit.) He manages to traumatize Alyssa even more just by telling her about the completely ordinary things that he’s done, which of course are anything but. And he has five of his tamed monsters create things to put up for an auction… not realizing that they will sell for ludicrous amounts to fans of Yuno and his crew.

There is a cliche in light novels that all a romantic lead has to do is be nice to a girl once and she will immediately fall madly in love with him. Here, in a series with no romance at all, we see how it actually works when you have a genuinely nice, selfless hero. At one point Yuno triggers an event where he’s thanked by the Gnome Chief for being so good to Olto, and that they should help each other grow. No one else got this event ending, and we find that’s because no one has raised the affection level of their tamed anything more than Yuno has. And he does this by involving everyone in his daily life, helping them when they need it, helping them fight, and caring about their opinions more than his own (except when they try to dress him in tacky yukatas). He cares about his tamed monsters and sees them as a family, not as cute NPCs, not as pets, and not as glorified fetishes. It makes a difference.

So yeah, still enjoying this series that is nothing but watching a guy game real good the only way he knows how.