By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Veles Svitlychny.

Increasingly reading Haruka’s narration in Loner Life is sort of like trying to solve a puzzle. Class Rep actually lays it out for us midway through the book: Haruka simply is incapable of seeing anyone’s actions except in the absolute worst way – and that includes his own. It’s especially true of him, in fact, because – with the exception of Angelica, who he has a very different kind of relationship with – he does not want to have anyone get too close to him or even like him all that much. For all that he complains about constantly getting lectured or having no money, it’s a situation he deliberately engineers himself. And I hate to break it to him, but the ship has definitely sailed with some of the girls – Class Rep, if no one else, certainly has feelings for him. But it gets to the point where even a spy sent to see what Haruka is like gets the absolute worst impression of him… at least till everything blows up.

After getting back from the Ultimate Dungeon, Angelica in tow, Haruka and his friends now have to go around trying to clear out all the other, lesser dungeons that lie around their town. Haruka’s casual, vicious approach to this makes everyone feel incredibly sorry for the monsters who just happened to be in his way. That said, he’s also casually doing things like saving the livelihoods of a dying hamlet by getting rid of the dungeon (and also giving them medicine and food, something he fails to mention in his tortured narration) or converting the general store in town into a 5-story department store with the latest fashions (also created by him, which prompts the girls to wonder when exactly he read so much about fashion). But when the “Stalker Girl”, aka spy, arrives from the noble city that financially cripples their town, it’s Haruka who sees the larger picture as to what’s going on.

It’s not quite as jaw-dropping as the speech from When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace, but Haruka’s breakdown near the end of this book is startling in how (seemingly) out of character it is, as for once he briefly breaks his facade to try to convince the girls that they’re all in serious trouble here. The corrupt lord ruling the area is not above sending soldiers to wipe them out, and he’s also certainly going to kill the spy once she gets back and delivers her report. He spent the entire time he was dungeon crawling with the spy at his absolute trashiest and worst in order that she could go back and say that he’s not worth caring about, but when this didn’t work he finally snaps and has to fix things. Class Rep and the others get it, even if Haruka doesn’t want them to – she says he and Angelica “destroy tragedies”, and that’s as good a description as any.

One last thing: yes, this is the one with the vibration magic. Between that and Haruka’s “nighttime activities” with Angelica, the light novels are 200% hornier than the manga equivalent. The manga is still probably a safer bet, but the light novels remain a fascinating but flawed experience.

By Shoji Goj and booota. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Veles Svitlychny

It’s been almost a year since the first volume of this came out, and honestly I think I had forgotten how annoying Haruka’s narration can be. And trust me when I say that GOD, it is annoying. There’s only so much stream-of-consciousness you can take before you want someone to settle on a thought. That said, in this second volume, as a consequence of trying desperately to seek depth in this series, I am starting to notice a few things. Haruka’s blase discussion of how he effortlessly takes out every single monster disguises the fact that he pretty much immediately comes up with a very clever plan (based often on his Japanese memories) and executes it. We also see him refer to someone by their actual name. In the first volume it was because we were meant to know they were a Bad Guy. Here it’s for the opposite reason. Sorry, Class Rep, but there’s a new girl on the cover and she’s taken a lot of Haruka’s firsts. And he calls her, once or twice, by name.

After a few random chapters where Haruka tries to avoid getting lectured by the rest of the class, he winds up falling to the 100th floor of the dungeon by accident. (Unlike Arifureta, there are no classmates trying to kill him – indeed, all twenty girls in the class are clearly in love with him, especially Class Rep). There he meets and battles the Dungeon Emperor, a Dullahan, Lich AND Deathling whose stats are so high even Haruka can’t see them. That said, of course he defeats them anyway… and then accidentally used Servitude on her. Yes, her, the skeleton emperor is a girl, whose name is Angelica but who Haruka tends to call ‘Miss Glare Armor Rep’. Now the two of them have to fight their way UP through the dungeon, battling insanely powerful monsters, while the rest of his class tries to fight their way down to get to him.

Given that you see her as a pretty young girl on the cover, I kept waiting for the big moment when Haruka would find something that would magically give her body back. Instead, due to the fact that the POV is entirely from him and some textual/art trickery, it turns out that it had been happening right under our noses and we missed it. This was very clever. He also gets lucky with her at the end of the book, which also surprised me. I admit the servitude thing bothers me a bit, but it doesn’t seem to really influence Angelica all THAT much – the humor of half the book comes from his seeing Miss Glare Armor Rep staring at him with, he thinks, the same look he gets from the rest of the cast, but it’s really just her being in awe of him – and falling in love with him. That said, the rest of the cast (who are increasingly showing themselves to be, if not as eccentric as Haruka is, pretty damn eccentric) also are not glaring as hard as he thinks.

So yes, plowing through the narrative diarrhea is still worth it, and I must admit I wonder what’s going to happen next. The poor little town with a dangerous dungeon they were in is now a rich little town with a former dungeon. Will we see other cities now? Will this mean the town will stop having everyone carry around clubs? And will Haruka call anyone but Angelica by their actual name? The third volume may take as long to come out as the second did, but I’ll be reading it.

By Shoji Goj and booota. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Eric Margolis. Adapted by Veles Svitlychny.

I can’t say I hadn’t been warned. Indeed, that’s the only reason I decided to read the book in the first place. I’m trying to stop reading “I got the worst powers when isekai’d, but it turns out they’re secretly the best” light novel titles, and that’s exactly what this is. The manga was already coming out via Kaiten Books, and I hadn’t read it. But then I heard that the original novel was apparently something of a legend in Japan for being hard to understand and difficult to parse, and that most fans agreed the manga was the way to go. Really, I thought? Now I’m intrigued. And so I picked up this very long book, and started it. About 1/3 through the book, I felt I’d made a mistake. Sure, our loner hero rambles – a LOT – but there wasn’t enough of the comedy I’d heard about to justify reading more. And then he runs into the girls in his class, and the book promptly falls off a cliff while screaming and flapping its arms.

No, that’s not our hero on the cover, as this is in the light novel genre of “why have a guy on the cover when I have so many heroines?”. Our “hero” is Haruka, an eccentric loner who likes to skulk in his class and read. One day his class is transported to another world, but Haruka, familiar with this plot device, leaps up, jumps onto the bookcases in back, and crawls up into the ceiling. This … did not stop him getting isekai’d, but it means he was not transported with the others, and by the time this world’s “god” finds him, well, there are no good skills left. Just a hodgepodge of ones no one wanted. The old “god”, feeling guilty about having Haruka separated from the others, and having trouble dealing with Haruka’s basic personality, gives him ALL the skills left. Including the negative ones. Can he survive as a loner?

God, I hope not, because the parts of the book where he’s by himself are the worst. As I said earlier, he rambles, he’s obnoxious and rude, and he has no common sense, but these things alone do not really separate him from other isekai weirdos we’ve seen before. It’s only when he runs into the 20 girls in his class, fleeing from an event that drove the class apart, that the book really takes off, because Haruka is SO bad at interpersonal skills that it’s almost magic. This is not something he gained from a skill, by the way – he’s called the head of the girls’ group “Class Rep” for the last 11 years despite them having always been in the same class, and in general it’s implied he’s just like this. This allows for the girls to become 20 varieties of tsukkomi (sometimes in unison, which is a trip), and also makes the book far more entertaining, as you keep waiting to see what bullshit he pulls next.

The book can be hard to parse at times, but that’s by design, as that’s how Haruka is. I think the translators did a fantastic job showing off stream-of-consciousness blabbering and how annoying it can be to everyone around you. The book… is not good, to be honest. Because Haruka refuses to think of his class in anything but their “roles” (Class Rep, mean girls, nerds, etc.) his narration does as well, and so there is a certain Goblin Slayer feel to the characters that I didn’t like in that book either. (It doesn’t help that it’s infectious, and Class Rep herself starts thinking in terms of those roles.) The denouement at the end of the book feels out of absolutely nowhere, with very little buildup from Haruka before it’s over. And, of course, it’s still a book about a schlub of a guy who amasses 20 pretty girls around him who are somewhat devoted to him but also yell at him all the time, which means that it won’t attract the sort of fan who also gets mad at Kirito.

But… there’s just something about it. I spent a lot more time screaming at this book than I have with any light novel in the past year or so. The lead’s lack of ANY sense makes your teeth grind. And… it is pretty funny in that regard. It also, honestly, had far less fanservice than I expected from a genre like this, even leaving aside that he names one of the class “Nudist girl”. It makes me want to read the second book, even though I know it will be like getting slapped in the face with a paper fan over and over again. If you want to read a series that dares you to read it, look no further.