Category Archives: reviews

Starting on Hard Mode: God Levels, Got Problems, Vol. 2

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By Hanmenkyoushi and ririnra. Released in Japan as “Level Count Stop kara Hajimaru, Kamisama-teki Isekai Life: Saikyou Status ni Tenseishita node Suki ni Ikimasu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jessica Speed.

I usually refer to this series, when I refer to it at all, by its main title before the colon, Starting on Hard Mode. That said, after reading this second volume, the subtitle is definitely standing up and making sure that it’s counted. Merlin really wants to be a standard OP isekai mooch, going out, killing monsters, then coming back and watching the trio of young women he’s picked up fight over him without actually realizing that’s what they’re doing. The thing is, though, that’s not why God really brought him here. He’s got ludicrous powers for a reason, and that reason also means that he can’t simply try to give everyone else the credit. For one thing, he’s still trying to deal with the prejudice in this world (though here we find that’s mostly an urban problem). More importantly, though, he’s simply not the sort of person who can stand back and let disaster strike just because he needs to hide who he is.

Merlin, Sophia, Sonia, and Noise have been going monster hunting around the city, but there really haven’t been very many monsters around lately. Elsewhere, we see various demons talking about an attempt to resurrect the Demon King, and what would be required in order to make it happen. At the same time, a new girl has shown up in the city, and she seems to know who Merlin is. She also has guards around her, and is very bad at hiding her identity. She’s Auriel, the fourth princess of this country, as well as the country’s Saint. She’s an outgoing, teasing young woman who starts in right away on trying to hit on Merlin – she doesn’t get anywhere, but he’s at least a bit quicker to notice it than with the others – and also makes it clear she’s happy to be a part of any harem they have going on. But is that really her true self? And when these plots all come together, will Merlin be able to stay just another adventurer?

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this is standard isekai stuff, and I rolled my eyes at the cheesecake color page of Aurelia designed to lure in the average LN reader who wants sex. (There is no sex.) But I think this is a step up from the first book. I particularly liked the relationship between Sonia and Aurelia. Sonia doesn’t dislike Aurelia, per se, but she knows that her entire persona is false, and so is wary of her. As for Aurelia, she’s a standard light novel type – no one ever saw me as anything but a tool, so I have turned into a doll rather than a human – but because Sonia sees a lot of Aurelia’s self-sacrificing nature in herself – let’s remember this is the girl who wanted to die so that her sister could move on with her life a book ago – Sonia is willing to help her as a friend, which includes taking the bullet. Something that horrifies Aurelia, but also forces her to get stronger and hopefully move on from her past (and her awful family, who we may meet in Book 3?).

So yeah, still not a must-read, but I found this pretty solid. And it’s Drecom, so you know it won’t be 17+ volumes.

The Bladesmith’s Enchanted Weapons, Vol. 5

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By Kazuma Ogiwara and CARIMARICA. Released in Japan as “Isekai Toushou no Maken Seisaku Gurashi” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ryan Burris.

While there are still bouts of humor in this series, it has not escaped my attention that each volume seems to be darker than the last, and this one was particularly dark. Dead adventurers, dead women and children, bandits everywhere, lots of justified hatred of nobles, and the realization that the city that our heroes live in really does have a lot of issues, and they’re desperately trying to force it to become a place that people might actually want to go. Which, frankly, it isn’t at the moment. The cast is also pretty static – we’ve met potential new characters, and one of them even returns in this book, but for the most part once we get to know them they leave the city. Hell, even Claudia threatens to take Lutz and go somewhere more welcoming. Though I suspect a lot of that is that she’s tired of Lutz throwing himself into deadly situations.

We open on a party of adventurers running from a zombie, and when one of them trips, the others… run away. She’s saved by Lutz, who happened to be in the dungeon and is also the main character, but she can’t rejoin that party. Fortunately, she finds another party… and then the exact same thing happens, only she is the one who runs while her new party are killed by a flame demon. She’s a mess. This flame demon has also massacred a village of carpenters Lutz worked with, and their village leader, Kevin, wants revenge. He’s a mess. And then there’s Djoser, head of the knights, such as they are, who is dealing with a bout of self-hatred, not at all helped by coming across bandits butchering everyone except an old merchant. He’s a mess. As for Lutz? He’s fine.

Well, OK, he’s not ALL fine. His beloved axe gets destroyed, but this allows him to make an even better katana with the remains. His main worry is that he keeps worrying Claudia, who loves Lutz a lot and very much does not want to keep being the good wifey who waits for her man to come home and worries he never will. She gets only one really good scene here, but it’s a pip, as she points out exactly how valuable she and Lutz are to the city and how much they’re starting to rely on him magically solving all their problems. We’re starting to see the Count trying to do something about it – creating a knight unit that not made of of noble rapists will help, though notably, even then they have to create a SECOND knight unit and leave the dissolute first one, as they all have connections. Better roads would help, but the bandit problem is not going away, and since the bandits just seems to be “those damn nobles”, it may take a more complicated fix than any of our leads can do. There’s good worldbuilding here, but the world is hard.

This remains one of my favorite new light novel titles, but it can be very grim. There are no easy solutions.

The Dorky NPC Mercenary Knows His Place, Vol. 5

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By Toryuu and hamm. Released in Japan as “Kimo Ota Mob Yōhei wa, Mi no Hodo o Wakimaeru” by Overlap Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Josh DM.

Last time I mentioned that even if we saw the occasional good noble, we always had tons of evil nobles to go around. That also applies to mercenaries and military. John does meet the occasional good person, and gets along with them. But his power of being the main character means that assholes tend to flock to him, because this series has an agenda and that agenda is “stop saying you’re going to tell your mom”. Every terrible noble in this book seems to have one go-to out, which is “I am the child of an important person and if you don’t do everything I say, I will tell on you and your life will be ruined”. The sad thing is this usually works, as it’s very easy to punch down in the world John lives in. Fortunately, in this volume we also see a few who see how well that works and try to do it WITHOUT the actual family connections. They just lie. It doesn’t go well.

Despite taking up so much of the cover that she starts to obscure the title, the Empress only gets a side story at the ed of the book, possibly to justify the art. For the most part, though, this book functions like the other one does. John takes a job, does the job, sometimes has to have a cool space battle, dumb arrogant assholes hate him, smart people who don’t judge by appearances are impressed with him, then he goes home and buys up otaku stuff. Two things stand out in this book: first, after a near miss where his dad almost ends up in debt again, John goes to visit his family, who are mostly what you’d expect. The other is that starting from the 6th book, things may take a different turn. The anti-imperialist pushback has been getting louder every book, it’s being helped along by enemy agents, and now we’re finally arriving at war.

There was an amusing yet also educational part of the book, reminding me a bit of the “People’s Front of Judea” part of Life of Brian, where John and Gonzales discuss the different anti-imperial factions and how they all have slightly different aims but also all have the same “the Empress must go” endgame. The book also does “having your cake and eating it too” better than most – as with other entries in the series, the art is very much showing you how many women orbit John’s life, how many of them have huge breasts, and how often they like to shower or bathe. The art is here to draw in readers. Then they get there, though, they find a world where any woman who tries to do her job ends up harassed by endless guys asking for sex wherever they go. Even teaming up with other women may not help, as this means having to deal with women who also fall under the ‘asshole’ umbrella. The Empire may be a poor way of running a world, but I have no confidence any of the other factions would run it any better, and they’d likely be worse. It’s tough to be a woman in this series.

All this plus a SURPRISE REVELATION, which I will leave unspoiled. Will John be drawn into war? Will he be forced to have an emotion? Will he realize how much Fialka wants to jump his bones? We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy your not-safe-for-public-transit volume.