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.

When I have a book where there are things I liked and things I didn’t like, I generally like to start with the bad stuff and work my way up to the good. And there’s definitely stuff I enjoyed here! But we have to address the elephant in the room, and it’s an elephant that every series starring an adorable six-year-old, past memories/abilities or no, seems to have to deal with. The author finds people creeping on Nia hilarious, and assumes the reader does as well. We’ve already had the first two volumes, where her maid is constantly trying to get into her bed. Here we get Reliared’s older sister (yes, another one) wants to paint Nia in the nude (she’s an artist, but it’s also framed deliberately as “this is a skeezy creep”. And the king essentially saying “you will be mine once you’re old enough.” It’s designed for a very specific light novel audience that isn’t me, and I hate it. Anyway, onward.

It’s summer vacation for Nia, but of course that means ENDLESS FILMING FOR MAGIVISION. Once that’s over with, fortunately, she can visit Reliared and her lovely family (and creepy sister), and then head off to the princess’ private royal island… which also has the king, who is also vacationing, and turns out to be not quite as royal as you’d like… or is that just a facade? As for those of you who follow Nia to see her punch things, well, here’s not as much as the previous two books, but she does discover a new dungeon. And what’s more, she assigns her protege (and maid) Lynokis to go out adventuring and hone her new techniques. And earn money. A lot, a WHOLE lot, of money. Which Nia will need in order to realize the next part of her grand plan.

The best part of this book, aside from the ending, showing Reliared for once winning against Nia, if only indirectly, is her discussion with the King. Aside from his creeper tendencies (again, see the rest of the book), he turns out to be one smart cookie. Indeed, he’s much smarter than Nia, who presents an idea of having an annual fighting tournament but can’t think of more than two reasons why it would benefit the kingdom. The king thinks of eight other reasons, tells her how mind-numbingly expensive it would be to do properly, and sets her a goal of two years to raise that ludicrous amount of money. In just two pages he shifts the entire goal of this book from “let’s watch Nia race puppies” to “let’s watch Nia finance a shonen manga”, and I think it’s a good pivot. More of smart king, less of lecherous king.

So yes, a big asterisk next to this title. Assuming you can get past it (and it’s always used for humor, not seriously), this is a good entry in the “overpowered elementary school girls beat up the world” genre.

By Umikaze Minamino and Kochimo. 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.

One of the things that I did not touch on in my review of the first book in this series is how funny it is. And by funny I mean that Nia Liston is a horrible, horrible little gremlin and her thought process is hilarious. I started quoting some of her more batshit moments on Twitter as I read, and it might have seemed as if I was complaining about the book. No… well, if you’re the sort who is not a fan of 6-year-olds who have a thirst for a little old ultraviolence, than yes but honestly, if that concerns you you probably didn’t start the second volume anyway. It also helps that she gets her very own tsukkomi in this book, as Reliared, the girl we briefly saw in Book 1 who decides to make Nia her biggest rival, meets her and immediately becomes the only one in the group with any sense, which means she’s the comeback queen. I mean, it can’t be Nia’s servant, who’s just as bad as she is.

Nia is starting her first year at Altoire, where all the kids go to school, be they royalty or commoner. That said, her core friend group rapidly becomes Reliared, another noble, and Hildetaura, the third princess. Nia is here to find strong people, but is also there to help promote Magivision, and finds two strong allies in her fellow classmates, who both want to get everyone owning a TV set… erm, a Magivision tablet. The idea they come up with is a martial arts tournament among the elementary and middle school students, to be filmed on campus by other students with the three girls acting as “hosts”. This interests Nia not at all, as no one is strong enough for her, but when she finds out about an illegal underground fighting tournament, nothing can keep her away.

I am starting to wonder if the punchline to all of the many and varied sword styles, martial arts styles, and other weapon styles that everyone is obsessed with at this school is that she was responsible for all of them in the past. She remembers nothing about her own past self except in little bits (she seems to imply that she eventually lost control and fell to ruin), but she definitely remembers other strong people in the past… none of whom are as strong as her, of course. That said, I think she has to admit that at times she definitely has the emotional maturity of the 6-year-old that she is now. Not realizing that Lynokis would follow her to the illegal tournament and indeed enter it in order to protect her was *so* stupid that Nia spends a page and a half berating herself for it. That said, her “I apologized, so we’re back to normal and I learned nothing” is also very six-year-old. She’s an immature kid, she just… is ludicrously strong.

The next volume continues to be about half livestreamer, half “let’s punch everything”, judging by the synopsis. That should do find, as long as Nia continues to be the arrogant asshole we know and love.

By Umikaze Minamino and Kochimo. 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 appreciate a book that can subvert expectations right off the bat. The cover of this book features the titular heroine sitting on a throne, with blood spilled at her feet. The subtitle is “The Merciless Maiden”. The narrative explicitly says she’ll grow up to be absolutely terrifying. And the start of the book shows us her origin: in order to save his own skin, a disreputable mage, hired to save the life of a sickly young noble girl (who has, in fact, already died), transplants the soul of a fierce warrior who lives only for battle and desires a glorious death. Throughout the start of this book you get Nia Liston casually mentioning how strong she really is. But we very, very rarely see this. This book is, until near the end, the definition of a slow burn. Instead, what we get are Nia Liston’s adventures in livestreaming. And honestly, if it were “Nia Liston: The Impassive Presenter of a TV Show”, I might not have picked it up.

After being reincarnated into Nia’s 5-year-old body, the nameless warrior (who cannot remember much of anything about their past life aside from battle lust) has to spend much of her time making it so that the body does not immediately die. Fortunately, there’s chi and cultivation and all that stuff that I am thankful we don’t go into too much detail about, and eventually Nia gets healthy again, to the delight of her parents and older brother. She then proceeds to try to learn about the world she’s living in, as subtly as possible (i.e., not very) asking her maid about who the Liston family are and what they control. The answer, for the most part, is “magivision”, which is, of course, magic television. In order to show off their daughter’s miraculous recovery, they decide to have her host a show of her own. But… will she ever get to be merciless?

Yes, it does eventually happen, though I was going to wonder if it would be subverted. Nia goes on so much at the start about how much damage she could do to people with just her pinky finger that I thought the gag would be that she was a mere 5-year-old girl in reality. But no, when she spots her co-star (she ends up acting in a teleplay near the end) being accosted by thugs, we see her gleefully getting in a bit of the old ultraviolence. Nia is not training to do anything but make her body healthier – the martial arts skills are all innate, advanced, and extremely powerful. So, of course, the main reason to get this is to see other people’s reactions to a 5-year-old girl beating up over a hundred mafia goons, which range from terrified (the goons) to intrigued (the co-star, who asks “can I watch?”), to over the moon (her maid, a former adventurer, who basically says “PLEASE TRAIN ME”).

The next volume has Nia head off to boarding school, and I assume will focus more on the fighting than the livestreaming, though I could be wrong. In any case, if you want to know how to do slow burn plotting properly, this is a good example.