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Love & Magic Academy: Who Cares about the Heroine and Villainess? I Want to Be the Strongest in this Otome Game World, Vol. 2

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By Toyozo Okamura and Parum. Released in Japan as “Renai Mahou Gakuin: Heroine mo Akuyaku Reijou mo Kankeinai. Ore wa Otome Game Sekai de Saikyou wo Mezasu” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor.

This was the second book in a row I read where the narrator is essentially a very powerful, emotionless void who casually breezes through everything. Fortunately, with this book, we do get the occasional hint that the author is going somewhere with this other than “isn’t he really cool?”. Now, a lot of this is the standard romance novel shtick of “the girls all like him but he is too dense to notice it”, though with Arius it’s less dense and more does not even understand the emotion at all. He once realized he liked a girl, discovered she was engaged to someone else, and since then the part of his brain devoted to love was simply turned off. But there’s also a sense that Arius has to remember that just because he can do everything himself so the others don’t have to endanger themselves doesn’t mean that’s always the best choice. That said, he can be dull sometimes.

Eric is still trying to find concrete evidence to prove that Duke Jordan is evil, but hasn’t quite got it yet. To help things along, he’s asked the duke’s hotheaded son to participate in the upcoming fighting tournament – third-years normally don’t – so he can beat him, force him to throw a tantrum, and see if the Duke then tries to kill Eric. This works incredibly well, of course, mostly as Arius is not the only one who is trying to make it through this world while depending on absolutely no one. Arius, of course, wins the tournament itself, and in his spare time also solos extremely hard dungeons and teaches his friends and not-quite-love interests how to fight. Unfortunately for Arius, the legendary battle between the hero and the demon lord is about to start again – and they both want him.

This world appears to attract reincarnations like flies. We’ve already got Arius, whose childhood friend was obsessed with the otome game he finds himself in. Then there’s Milia, who is doing much better now that she’s had it explained to her that she does not have to try to do exactly what the game said. And in this volume we get Alisa, who is the power behind the new hero (an arrogant idiot who wants to rule the world – we know the moment we see him we don’t have to care about him). She reveals to Arius that she’s not only reincarnated, but knows he is as well. I’m not entirely certain if there’s some sort of driving force behind all these isekai’d Japanese folks messing up the plot, but if so it’s working but also it’s not – this volume ends with the new Demon Lord kidnapping Arius and spiriting him away to their territory. Which means, much as I do think the other characters get to have lives of their own and concerns of their own, that the book itself still has to revolve around him. He is the main character.

Despite the narrator being another of those poker face/poker voice sorts, this is an improvement on the first book. If you like otome game narratives and don’t mind that it stars a guy who can do literally everything (except understand that women are attracted to him), it’s a good one.

Re: Monster, Vol. 1

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By Kanekiru Kogitsune and YAMAADA. Released in Japan by Alpha Polis. Released in North America by Hanashi Media. Translated by Harris Hayes.

Another day, another review where I have to start by saying “Yeah, yeah, I know”. A classic example of a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat series, I remember this got a fan translation when it first came out almost fifteen years ago. At the time, light novels from the POV of the monsters were a relatively fresh concept – even Overlord was only a year old. It’s not really the fault of this series that its grim and gritty, mature because it has rape and violence-style novel series feels a bit tired now after so many others that came after it. It *is* the fault of this series that it manages to take such a dark, edgy concept and make it terminally dull, starting with its hero, Gobrou, who is at his most interesting before he’s isekai’d and over the course of time gets more and more dull as he spends this first volume killing, getting skills, killing, getting skills, and having sex with a harem of women. He may be a goblin, but he’s still a faceless isekai guy in the end.

Kanata Tomokui is living in Japan, but not quite our Japan. He has telekinetic powers, and gets powerful when he eats whatever he defeats. Unfortunately, he once saved a teenage girl who became obsessed with him, and when she sees him helping a drunk co-worker home, she gets the wrong idea and stabs him to death. When he comes back to himself, he finds he’s a newborn goblin living in a cave. That said, he’s not just any old weak little goblin. For one thing, he still has his esper powers from his previous life. This means that, as he goes around killing monster rabbits, monster snakes, monster dogs, and monster bears, he gains more and more abilities and grows stronger and stronger, rapidly becoming a hobgoblin and then an ogre, till he’s de facto leader of the entire group. Basically, he’s hot stuff.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot of “problematic content” in this book, but I’m pretty sure most people reading it do not really need to be warned. There’s a couple of goblin women who grow close to him. They capture a party of five human women, and Gobrou stops the other goblins from raping them. Naturally, over the course of the book, they all fall in love with him and sleep with him, and the girl on the cover (who he calls “Redhead Shorty” – what is it with these dark books and ignoring people’s names?). They later capture some elves, and since the elves try to kill them first he’s fine with giving them aphrodisiacs and having the goblins rape them. Basically, he’s exactly the sort of person you’d write about if you were a teenage boy who wants to imagine they have cool powers and a large penis. The fights can sometimes get interesting – Gobrou versus the red bear was the highlight of the book – but for the most part it drowns in his matter-of-fact, “well, I won again” narration.

If you enjoy teenage power fantasies, go search AO3, you’ll likely find better than this.

The Condemned Villainess Goes Back in Time and Aims to Become the Ultimate Villain, Vol. 6

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By Bakufu Narayama and Ebisushi. Released in Japan as “Danzaisareta Akuyaku Reijō wa, Gyakkō-shite Kanpekina Akujo o Mezasu” by TO Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Alyssa Niioka. Adapted by Vida Cruz-Borja.

Last time I felt that the series got a bit too dark, and I’m pleased to see that this one is not quite as bad. Despite the fact that this volume contains ghosts, ritual sacrifices, and the like, Claudia’s worries are far more about the fact that she’s getting bullied by all the older women in the kingdom – at the request of the Queen, of course. Let’s face it, if you’re going to be the future Queen, you need to be better than everyone at everything, and that includes how to handle petty bullying. If there’s just one issue with the book, it’s that these two plots don’t intertwine as well as I wanted them to, and it felt at times as if the author had two books that they couldn’t quite make work and so decided to combine them into one. It’s still a very readable series, and I like Claudia, but I am starting to tap my fingers a bit.

Claudia continues to go on her Princess Training World Tour, with several stops organized by Lady Sunset, whose husband is the Queen’s older brother. Lady Sunset is there to ensure that Claudia does not wilt under pressure, or (even worse) snap and get angry under pressure. We see Claudia attend a tea party, an embroidery party, and a ball, all of which feature catty middle-aged nobles whose job it is to belittle Claudia and hit her where it hurts – which usually means talking bad about her stepmother. In addition to all this, she and Helen go off to a monastery for two weeks, to learn asceticism and see how difficult it can be for people who don’t have servants to do everything for them. Unfortunately, the remote castle where the monastery is has a small problem… ghosts.

There are as always some things here I found quite interesting. The embroidery party shows off how each of these catty women trying (at the orders of the Queen) to bully Claudia has territory of their own, and that territory naturally has specialties. Claudia being Claudia, she’s able to tell that the tea “accidentally” spilled on her embroidery is from the spiller’s own land, and praises it. As for the embroidery itself, she praises the wool being used, and wouldn’t you know it, the woman whose territory specializes in wool is struggling to find buyers right now. Claudia doesn’t need to make connections with these women – she’s hella powerful already – but she knows by doing so it makes the country stronger. I also liked the ghost story’s suggestion that a woman in the past may also have been living a second life, and her “precognition” was just her not being quite as good at Claudia at hiding that. Perhaps this world just does time-looped villainesses every so often, as a treat.

This was a decent book, though I felt it didn’t pull together as well as it might have. The bigger issue may be that I’m checking to see when the series is scheduled to end, and the answer is “not for the foreseeable future”. Where’s my wedding cover art?