By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

While this series has tried, at times, to be a cute girls doing television things series, or a magical academy-type series, at its heart it’s a battle manga. And for several volumes now, we’ve been building up to the thing that every battle manga has to have: a fighting tournament. Now, to be fair, we don’t get the tournament itself: that looks like it will be the next volume. But we get all the build up to it, as Nia has earned enough money for the King to put everything into position, and she finds that everyone is ready for this – and not just because of the money, either. She created a monster in the powerful adventurer Leeno, and everyone wants to measure themselves against her. Unfortunately for the reader, Leeno has another identity, and that identity is a creepy lolicon. We’ll ignore that for now, though.

So yes, the tournament is gearing up, but Nia has bigger problems. She’s finally starting to realize that the other two channels run by her friends are stomping her own into the ground, and racing dogs is not going to cut it anymore. She needs a new gimmick. She gets some help when Char, one of the school’s video crew we met last time, asks for her help with getting parts so he can repair a broken skiff. When she goes to see what he’s been doing, she not only sees how his drive to repair and ride the skiff will make for a great new TV show, but also that skiff racing may be something that she can put her money and power behind. It turns out that she’s not alone in thinking that, and in fact the ground floor is rapidly filing up – but fortunately, the contacts she’s made in previous books help her out. Now if only there’s not a little… accident.

If you worry that the tournament being next volume means there’s not as much beating people up as usual, fear not. Gandolph beats up a bunch of people, Nia then goes and beats up the SAME bunch of people, and there are also some assassin goons who are less mature than their assassin bosses and get ahead of themselves. There’s also Anzel, who has rapidly become almost the second protagonist of this series. Once again, he gets a subplot in the second half of the book where he has to prevent sabotage and act cool. He also gets beaten up a lot. Hopefully he can recover by the next book, as he, like so many other people, are in the tournament, and they have to win it no matter what. Fortunately for everyone involves, Leeno seems to be the pinnacle, as Nia is not participating. Yet. Can’t wait to see how that changes, cause I can’t imagine her sitting this out.

So, aside from the unfortunate “comedy” of young women leering over literal children, this remains a fun shonen fight series. for fans of such things.

By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

Last time I asked for less of Nia hitting things, and that’s what I got – Nia’s antics being super overpowered are confined to the final quarter of her part of the book (the last fifth of the book is a short story starring Fressa), and most of the rest of it is devoted to what I’m actually here for, which is the magivision stuff. Admittedly, I’m more worried about Nia on that front. After the first couple of books talked about her programs, each successive one has cared about them less and less, which this fifth book in the series only noting that she’s filming a lot and that it makes her tired. It’s even pointed out point blank that Reliared and Hildetaura are having far more popular shows and are coming up with far more innovative ideas. Nia briefly worries about it, and thinks they need to come up with some ideas in her own domain, but then goes back to earning cash. Maybe her “downfall” is due to low ratings.

The start of this book has Nia hired by the second prince to film the wedding of Zackford and Phyledia, so that he can better show off the strengths of magivision to his kingdom. This requires a ridiculous amount of prep, as filming is still brand new, so there’s all sorts of rules to follow and contracts to sign. It ends up coming off perfectly, though. Back at school there’s now a junior magivision club, which our heroine is not a member of, but her advice is sought out when it turns out that their ideas and actual filming experience are subpar. She also continues to train her underlings in chi… and is very angry when she finds out that one underling has been training others without her permission. Finally, she’s accosted by space pirates, which allows her to do the overpowered Nia Liston things that are increasingly difficult to hide as being her own invention and not her “master”.

It will not surprise folks that I find the quiet character moments in this book more interesting than child whupass time. The best scene in the book is when Nia takes the newlyweds into a side room so that she can show them the magivision video they spent the previous day flying all over to record – greetings from all their family and friends who were unable to attend the wedding. They’re brought to a side room as Nia knows they’ll cry and she doesn’t want that to be public. It’s very sweet. We also meet new supporting players who I suspect will get more to do later, but I did like the surly punk-looking one who, after observing the art of magivision, realizes that not only does this actually interest him but he could probably be really good at it. We’ve all had those “eureka” moments when we find something that we love and can achieve. It’s nice to see here as well.

Is Nia still marching slowly towards her doom? Is her doom a late-night cable magivision show where she sells pocket fisherman and veg-o-matics? Is this the era of Nia Popeil? Probably not, as long as she can keep punching things.

By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

I will admit, as I was reading this new volume about a small little girl beating the absolute hell out of things she has no business beating, I could not help but think of Do-Over Damsel, which has an anime running this fall and also features lots of this sort of thing. They even have similar “this is vaguely creepy but doesn’t quite cross a line, but I’m watching you” characters. That said, whereas with Jill I tend to really enjoy it when she finally lets loose and lets violence be her answer for everything, with Nia there’s no question that the magivision has become more interesting to me. There’s simply not much about Nia murdering ancient giant crabs by punching them a few times that I can say anything about, beyond “nice punch”. But if she’s being manipulated by royalty (again) or trying to think of things to get ratings besides outrunning dogs, I’m intrigued. And, so far, those are the two plots – though that may change soon.

Nia is a bit grumpy at the start of this book. Relia has stolen Nia’s thunder with the paper play show, and everyone in the school is talking about it. That said, she’s not frustrated enough that she won’t help Hildetaura come up with her own popular show – even if the extent of Nia’s help is “let me ask my brother to be clever for me”. Her greater concern, though, is earning that one billion. Adventuring is earnin g tons of cash, but tons is not enough. As a result, she and Lynokis take a trip over the holidays to a different country filled with expensive monsters that Leeno – or rather, Leeno’s child assistant – can murder without destroying their value as a carcass/magic corpse. Unfortunately, doing feats no one has been able to do in a hundred years attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Possibly the most interesting part of this book was the occasional “had I but known” hint that implies things are going to go very badly for Nia at some point in the future, implying she may have to flee the kingdom. Certainly, while she can quickly take action when her future is definitely being threatened, she is otherwise completely uncaring about being manipulated by the two royal princes in order to get what they want – and, let’s face it, Nia’s best resource is her position as Nia Liston, not her secret super strength. She’s a celebrity, and outrunning dogs is all very well and good, but that’s just more important than punching crabs. Unfortunately, a lot more crab punching may be needed to get that tournament, so I suspect we’ll be getting more fighting next time, though it’s also possible that the politics that threatened in this book overflow at last.

This was a decent volume, but again, I’d like a bit less “Nia hits things”, please.