Category Archives: reviews

Sasaki and Peeps: Betrayals, Conspiracies, and Coups d’État! The Gripping Conclusion to the Otherworld Succession Battle ~Meanwhile, You Asked for It! It’s Time for a Slice-of-Life Episode in Modern Japan, but We Appear to Be on Hard Mode~

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By Buncololi and Kantoku. Released in Japan as “Sasaki to Pi-chan” by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Alice Prowse.

The joy of this series is the genre mashup, of course, but that can also make it very hard to take at times. When the author does a genre, they go all in. This means the fantasy world is filled with throne wars, elves, dragons, and last minute plot twists. The “psychic” part of the story involves people using powers to control others and create chaos all around them. It also veers into a sentai show here, and it’s very deliberate. The Neighbor Girl’s supernatural part is very much standard “death game”, even though she and her demonic partner don’t get to wipe out anyone this book. But Neighbor Girl (who we get a last name for at last – Kurosu) also brings another sub-genre to the plate, which is hideous abuse. That’s the “slice of life” in this volume’s subtitle, and it absolutely goes off the rails when she, Sasaki and Futarishizuka attend the wake from hell. This is getting an anime soon, and I imagine making this all cohere seamlessly will be a nightmare.

Sasaki has a lot on his plate. He’s attending the aforementioned wake, where we learn that apparently Neighbor Girl’s family has money, but also that literally everyone in the family despises her; he’s dealing with the aftermath of the sea monster from the last book, as he and Hoshizaki are almost lured to America with the promise of a ton of money, stopped only by their complete lack of English skills. An unknown enemy decided to mind control people into causing a riot near Hoshizaki’s apartment, presumably to do to it what they did with Sasaki’s old place; and there is, of course, the fantasy world, where it appears that the first prince has betrayed the nation and is collaborating with the enemy. Can he even find time to settle down and get some actual sleep? He can in the fantasy world, but certainly not in Japan.

I tend to go on about Neighbor Girl too much in these reviews, and her story vanishes after the first third of the book, so I will just note that that slap made me scream out loud, and also that she is a ticking time bomb that Sasaki is ignoring but Futarishizuka certainly isn’t. We do get to learn a lot more about Hoshizaki in this book, though I suspect she would not be happy with that fact. Unsurprisingly, at school she seems to have no friends and looks the stereotypical bookish nerd – her overly made up face on the job is the attempt to look “grown up”. Her younger sister straight up thinks her part-time job is sex work, and Sasaki has to reassure her while also giving nothing away about what the job actually is. She’s also clearly got a crush on Sasaki, but is sadly running a very distant third, behind Futarishizuka (easily the front runner) and Neighbor Girl.

This is a good book, and has an excellent plot twist near the end I did not expect. It’s also a book that rewards close character analysis, which I like. If you can put up with the occasional lolicon joke, it’s a definite winner. And it appears next book we’re adding aliens.

Days with My Stepsister, Vol. 1

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By Ghost Mikawa and Hiten. Released in Japan as “Gimai Seikatsu” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Eriko Sugita.

I’ve read two previous light novel series written by Ghost Mikawa, and I’ve enjoyed both of them. The author sort of has a type for his main character. Someone who’s a bit overly intellectual, very logical, tries to understand things and put them in boxes. The fun of My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In For Me is seeing this character try to deal with a love triangle that cannot simply be resolved by a game of addition and subtraction. With Looks Are All You Need, it was seeing the main character and his sister immersed in a ‘academy for the performing arts’ environment, and how to navigate an industry that requires emotional heft. This new series also has a very logical, matter of fact protagonist who tends to consult self-help books to understand people, and he now has to deal with his new stepsister, who is – seemingly – exactly the same. This shows a bit of promise, especially as we see the two are not as matter of fact as all that. Sadly, it’s not done well.

Yuuta lives alone with his father, as his parents got divorced after his mother was having an affair. He is thus rather startled that his father has decided to get married again. Even more surprising, he’ll be getting a stepsister in the deal, who judging by the photo the mom sent is a cute little kid. Of course, when they actually meet we find that the stepsister is in fact his age, and simply hates having her photo taken – that’s the one photo the mom had. Saki, though, turns out to want from this new relationship exactly what Yuuta wants – nothing. No requirements, no expectations. There will be no “big brother” names here. And honestly, this works out fine at first. But as the awkward, introverted Yuuta learns more about his new stepsibling, he ends up trying to help her anyway.

The big issue with this book is that the two leads tend to talk to each other like they’re reading out of an encyclopedia. There’s a scene where he walks by her room and sees her underwear drying (it’s raining that day), and gets embarrassed. The way the two resolve this feels like they’re not looking at each other, but reading out of a textbook. It’s meant to show us that both of them have been deeply wounded by the breakup of their parent’s first marriages, and how they have difficulty trusting others or getting close to people. In reality, it just makes me grind my teeth. Yuuta’s co-worker at the bookstore he part-times at, a college woman, is sadly exactly the same, so that doesn’t help. I was so happy when a happy, genki girl from their school came over to play video games with them, as it was a relief to hear someone with real human emotions out of control.

Still a fan of this author’s other series, but I have no desire to continue this one. Consider this review the essay I’m handing in to the author as to why I’m terminating our reading agreement for the foreseeable future, in a way that benefits both parties.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Vol. 7

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By Natsume Akimoto and Kakao Lanthanum. Released in Japan as “Sentouin, Hakenshimasu!” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Noboru Akimoto.

It’s been over two years since the last volume of this series came out in English, but honestly this one doesn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things. There’s rarely a lot you have to remember with Combatants Will Be Dispatched! except for the one maxim “everyone is horrible”. If you remember that, you’re good. So we have Six saying that he needs to sexually harass a woman just in case doesn’t know what sexual harassment is when bad men do it, Alice and Six gleefully sending their “colleagues” all around the world and not bothering to bring them back, and a new nation where a new princess competes to see if she can have as black a heart as Tillis seems to. Oh yes, and as the cover might tell you, we also have Belial, one of Six’s three bosses, whose idea of how to solve a problem is “punch it”, but whose backstory comes as a big surprise to both Alice and the reader.

After the events of the last book, Six and company are enjoying a bit of downtime while they work on building their new city. This downtime is occasionally interrupted by Little Bashin, who is a native tribe girl who can’t speak the language… supposedly (we may have another chuuni here) and a large dragon which is too much for everyone to handle, except maybe Belial, who is asked to to come over to help out Six. She then proceeds to make her way across all the nations, cowing them into submission with sheer firepower and blackmail, and unites most everyone under the Kisaragi banner. Which… makes you wonder about the competency of Six and Alice. Was brute force the answer all along? That said, they have one problem that can’t quite be solved by punching it: Tiger Man has kidnapped a nation’s princess. Who is a little girl. And it’s Tiger Man. Uh oh.

So yes, the usual word of warning for this series, pedophilia is used as a joke for “hilarious” laughs, though the little princess is not in any danger herself and in fact asked to be kidnapped. That said, everyone being a terrible person is the vibe here, and if you enjoy that there’s a lot to like. Six is a terrible person, but he’s smarter than Kazuma, and Alice is smarter than both of them. The Belial focus is appreciated, as is her backstory, where it reveals she was a yamato nadesico sort who Lilith’s enhancements “accidentally” brainwashed/mindwiped, though it’s fairly clear by the end of the book that she remembers who she was but is not particularly inclined to return to that. The main question is what happens now, as Belial has pretty much finished 95% of their “to do” list.

Expect another long wait before we find out, as the eighth book is not out in Japan yet. If you like KonoSuba but wish everyone was scuzzier, this is still your go-to series.