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.

Another day, another attempt to squeeze 500 words out of “Yuto sure is a main character”. I’ve even compared it to Bofuri before, but the obvious comparison comes up again here. The designers of the game suddenly find that Yuto has done several random things that, when taken together, accidentally open up a boss battle well before they’re ready for it, so they have to make the boss more powerful, then they have to also give the players an out so that they don’t get too discouraged. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the help they give, and where the event takes place, and the connection means that guess who saves the day and gets the biggest bonus? Honestly, it’s a good thing that everyone adores Silver-Haired (some a bit too much), because they’re right, this game’s balance is always in danger of collapsing. Sorry about your daughter, my technician guy, it’s probably doomed. On the bright side, Yuto isn’t eating poison… yet. And romance is unlikely to be even one-sided here.

Yuto has always done things his own way, sometimes deciding to just relax and take it easy, so it should not be a surprise that he finds an area where he can literally weaponize being “chill”. (Later, he finds another one for being “rowdy”, with opposite yet comparable skill sets.) This allows him to do what he does best, which is make friends with NPCs, do things that make you smile, and then suddenly find he’s actually unlocked the key to the universe again. Then he’s asked by his friend Hamakaze (who seems like the sort of person who’s an overly stressed class president in the real world) to help her defeat some yokai… which ends up getting him more cute monsters. That he can play with in his new additions to his house, or take out on monster hunting quests, or break Alyssa’s mind again.

I do appreciate how we get the standard Alyssa breakdown here, but we’re also dragging in her co-worker… whose name, possibly deliberately, is Maple. It doesn’t matter who he tells, because he lacks the gamer common sense that everyone else has. This actually leads to the funniest joke in the book, where, during the final boss battle, he sees some of his weirder friends going all out, and asks Hamakaze if the more eccentric players are more powerful. She stares at him like he’s in The Office, and I get it. Yuto being oblivious to his own eccentricity is great. But it also underscores the other point of this series (and Bofuri), which is that there’s no way to play a game wrong. Just do what you want to do. Well, provided the designers agree with you. We do see in this volume that the folks who invented a game to be the complete opposite of this one bombed badly.

This series is in no danger of ending, and in no danger of having character development I could talk about. It is what it is. Relaxing fun.

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.