Category Archives: reviews

The Tale of a Little Alchemist Blessed by the Spirits, Vol. 1

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By yocco and Junsui. Released in Japan as “Outo no Hazure no Renkinjutsushi: Hazure Shokugyou datta node, Nonbiri Omise Keieishimasu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Andria McKnight. Adapted by Lex Reno.

Welcome to Scientific Method, the light novel. Hope you like stats! That said, I did enjoy this book a create deal despite the main character using appraisal over and over again to make sure that her creations are perfect. On the face of it, this is a bog standard “atelier” series, which usually involves a young girl starting up her own shop. Indeed, the Japanese subtitle of the series roughly translates as “I got a bad skill, so I’ll open my own shop”, meaning that we also have the ever-trendy “the gods gave you a job and it’s not popular, so you’re useless now”. This one though succeeds partly due to its main character’s utter charm, but also as it does a few things slightly differently to make it stand out from the rest. Notably, and this may come as a huge surprise, our lead is not an orphan! And trust me, this makes “I desperately want to work a 9-5 job at 8 years old” much more acceptable.

This book starts off sounding like it will be dark. The daughter of a baron gets “Maid” as her chosen God Occupation, and this so horrifies her family that they leave her in a hut to get an illness and die. She’s reborn as Daisy, the daughter of a Viscount, and when her God Occupation is “Alchemist” rather than the expected “Mage”, she panics that the same thing is going to happen. But in this world her family all adore her and are ready to do anything to support her, even if it means building her a laboratory and watching as she quietly invents potions that can regrow limbs, defeat any poison, and force confessions. In fact, she’s the Beloved Child of the Spirit King. Oh, and she has appraisal too. Oh, and she can ALSO use magic. That said… she just wants to run a shop, because in the end this is an Atelier series.

One thing I found very interesting is how quickly the “reborn with my memories of my bad old life intact” is abandoned. The old reincarnation basically sees Daisy’s loving family and happy life and goes “well, nothing for me to do here, bye” and goes off to the afterlife, leaving Daisy only with the worry that she may get a bad God Gatcha Roll. Likewise, as I said earlier, it’s amazing how much more tolerable hardworking children wanting to run a business are when they have their parents and actual adults looking over everything, rather than someone just setting up a restaurant and leaving them to run it in exchange for money (or worse, just food) while they go off to be the protagonist. Not naming any names, though they may rhyme with Nile and Runa. Most importantly, Daisy is cute as a button and sweet as pie, which really helps to take your mind off the act that she is, like so many light novel protagonists, OP as hell.

By the end of the book she’s ready to open her shop, which I imagine will take up the bulk of the next book. This is six volumes in total, which seems about right. I’ll definitely read more.

Reforming an Icy Final Boss: Getting Back at the Self-Proclaimed Villainess with the Power of Friendship, Vol. 1

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By Takamedou and Nemusuke. Released in Japan as “”Jishou Akuyaku Reijou” ni Korosareta Last Boss no Yarinaoshi: Bocchi na Reitetsu Koujo wa, Dai Ni no Jinsei de Riajuu wo Mezashimasu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

Just as a lot of isekai titles lately throw in so many common tropes and themes that they start to rememble an isekai stew, this new series seems to want to use several of the common shoujo plot devices that are popular right now, including villainesses having to fix their reputation, traveling back in time to an earlier period to do so, and an antagonist who is so otome game-pilled that she literally doesn’t care if she talks about the game to the actual inhabitants of this world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad. Stew can be tasty. And for the most part, I found this a fun and delightful book… with a couple of exceptions, which I’ll get to later. Its stoic heroine tries to let tragedies wash over her, and that fails. So why not try to do something else?

Milly Asteara is having a very bad time, though she’s coping with it mostly by reading in the school’s garden. Her father has just been executed for treason, which of course means no one wants anything to do with her. And now this arrogant count’s daughter, Angelina, walks up and talks about how she’s the “villainess” and that Milly is the “final boss”. Worse still, when Milly barely reacts to any of this Angelina proceeds to murder her with a spell. Then suddenly Milly wakes up three years in the past, right before she’s supposed to go to school. She realizes that she has to fix things so that she’s not killed, and decides the best way to do this, since she was so isolated and had no friends or allies, is to open up and make friends and allies. Unfortunately, she’s the most awkward girl out there, and still pretty stoic, but that won’t stop her.

The author say s in the afterward that they added content for the print version of this webnovel, and I was unsurprised to find they’re the parts I found most jarring. At times in this book Milly decides to act like a “Bakarina-style” protagonist for no reason at all, doing things like squatting down in her house and pretending to be a delinquent. It’s annoying, and doesn’t fit with the rest of the book, when she’s just a socially inept quiet girl who also tends to get fired up when someone mentions something that upsets her. Like her late mother, who she loved. Or, y’know, accusing her of murder. There are also a few good plot twists here. Angelina also going back in time and getting frustrated things are not going the same as before was expected, but I did enjoy that there’s another isekai’d person here, just trying to quietly live a better life than the awful one she had in Japan, but sadly she ran into the wrong girl. Fortunately, in this new timeline Milly is nice. Oh yes, and there’s her dad, who everyone hates and who is a terrible person, but who we rapidly realize is just like his daughter, and also smarter than he lets on. I want to see more of him.

Aside from the author trying to add things that didn’t need to be added to, this was quite good. I’ll read the obligatory 1-2 more volumes before it wraps up, as this is a DRE series.

Long Story Short, I’m Living in the Mountains, Vol. 4

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By Asagi and Shino. Released in Japan as “Zenryaku, Yama Kurashi wo Hajimemashita” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by N. Marquetti.

The author reminds us once again in the afterword that this is not a romance nor is it going to turn into one. And no, the chickens are not going to become cute girls either. I get it, as I imagine that the audience for this series is looking at the cute girl in the cast, joined in this volume by her younger, also cute sister, and shipping is just happening naturally. That said, if the author really didn’t want any romance I think they could shut things down a bit more. Sure, here Sano states outright that he’s not interested in Rie (good, as she’s underage), but much of the relationship between him and the Katsuragis consists of him basically being a perfect catch except for his horrible depression and self-loathing, and the two of them noticing it. And that’s not even considering the ho yay he’s ignoring between him and Aizawa. Or hell, the fact that he has a chicken wife and a jealous chicken mistress. Romance kind of worms its way in anyway.

As noted above, we get another cast member in this volume. Katsuragi’s younger sister Rie is dealing with a stalker who went from “let’s date” to “what are you doing right now?” to “I need to know where you are 24-7 or I will kill us both” very quickly, so her parents agreed that having her stay with her sister is for the best. Rie is a gyaru in Sano’s eyes, but I think “normal 17-year-old who possibly bleaches her hair a little” is more accurate. Elsewhere in the book, there’s a lot of killing of boars; Sano goes to the very top of his mountain and finds a dilapidated shrine, which he tries to fix up a bit; he learns how to get lotus roots straight from the source, though he doesn’t enjoy it; and he begins to prepare for the winter, which given his remote mountain will mean going to ground, possibly for a month or two.

There’s a very interesting bit about 2/3 of the way through the book where Sano realizes that he hasn’t really prepared for winter fast enough or done enough, and thinks ruefully that he’s always slow to pick up on things like this and maybe that’s why his old fiancee left him. About five pages later, he’s hearing how Rie is finding Katsuragi’s place too cold and worries over it, workshopping solutions and eventually coming over and helping the two of them to insulate it. Sano’s depression is all internal – he still hates it when people tell him not to pay them back – and anytime he has to deal with something that affects only himself (see: his chapped hands), he puts it off or ignores it, but when it’s about anyone else, he basically becomes the perfect boyfriend. Something Katsuragi is deliberately ignoring, and which Rie does not ignore but she’s still 17, so…

The book implies that Sano is going to be alone for several months – given this cast is doing its level best to make sure this fragile guy is part of a community, I highly doubt that. Next time: more now, more chickens, and probably less not-romance.