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7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!, Vol. 4

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By Touko Amekawa and Wan*Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Loop 7-kaime no Akuyaku Reijou wa, Moto Tekikoku de Jiyuukimama na Hanayome (Hitojichi) Seikatsu wo Mankitsusuru” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Amy Osteraas. Adapted by Vida Cruz-Borja.

The 4th volume in the series decides to lean a little less on “why is Prince Arnold so determined to go to war with everyone in the future” and focus more on “why are Prince Arnold and Rishe not admitting they’ve both completely fallen for one another? Well, they have, sort of. In their own way. The trouble with agendas is that it can be very difficult to admit explicit feelings of love when you know that eventually you’re going to destroy several countries. Or, in Rishe’s case, when you’re trying to juggle six prior lifetimes and solve each issue with them one by one to get a golden ending. That said, this book is far more explicitly romantic than the previous three, even if it does throw in the cliched “heroine is scared of ghosts” subplot. To be fair to Rishe, though, she has looped over and over. Given that’s possible, anything is.

While the romance at the start of the book is still theoretical, the wedding plans are trucking along anyway. In particular, they’re starting to get foreign visitors who will be there for the wedding, including the prince of Siguel, Curtis, and the princess, Harriet. Harriet is currently preparing for a political marriage in the neighboring kingdom of Fabrannia, a fact that Rishe knows all too well. She was a hunter in Siguel in her 5th life, and remembers Queen Harriet as an evil spendthrift who was executed and led to Siguel being forced to go to war against (who else?) Prince Arnold. As with previous books, Rishe has to fix things so that events don’t turn out that way. This time, though, there’s an added twist: Harriet is a fluffy hamster of a woman, and is highly unlikely to have been remotely evil.

There are several points in this book where Rishe is thrown off her game, but frankly they all involve Prince Arnold. Around him she gets flustered and stammering. Away from him she is, as the antagonist of the book Raul notes, “a monster”. Hell, even Raul isn’t a real antagonist, because here she actually can use all the info from her past life to save him. Harriet is trickier, but Rishe still manages to act as a sword-wielding guardsman, show Harriet that proper skincare is a great way to gain confidence, and fake being poisoned to let everyone think that she won’t be riding to the rescue with Prince Arnold, shooting down enemies with a bow and arrow and dramatically crashing through a stained glass window. Frankly, I think it’s Arnold who should be terrified of her. But this isn’t really that sort of genre.

I can’t wait for the next book. Alas, I may have to. This is the last to date, and a 5th is on Amazon Japan with a release date of “2100”. Let’s hope we can get the end of Rishe’s story.

To Every You I’ve Loved Before & To Me, the One Who Loved You

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By Yomoji Otono. Released in Japan as “Boku ga Aishita Subete no Kimi e” and “Kimi o Aishita Hitori no Boku e” by Hayakawa Bunko JA. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Molly Lee.

First of all, I will note a couple of things. a) I am reviewing two linked novels here, so the titles are separated above by the & sign. b) there will be more spoilers than usual. Even summarizing them destroys the surprise. When I first saw the solicit of these two titles, I had assumed they were part of a multimedia project like so many of Yen and Seven Seas’ novel licenses these days, and that it would be another slight variation on Your Name. But no, this is instead more like Otherside Picnic or Last and First Idol, a science fiction series with a heavy helping of theory mixed into its plotlines. Get ready to understand a lot more about parallel universes than you did before. The books were advertised as something you could read in either order, and I read them in the order I give above. I recommend that order too, for reasons I will lay out later in the review. Did I enjoy it? Kind of, in a detached sort of way.

In the first book, we meet the protagonist, Koyomi. He’s a smart kid, with a father who’s an expert in imaginary sciences. They’ve discovered that we’re constantly shifting between parallel universes, and developed wristwatches to let you know when it happens. In high school he meets Kazune, a classmate and rival, and becomes friends with her one day when she tells him she’s a different Kazune from a different universe. The book shows their life together. The second book has the same premise, but here the imaginary sciences are not as developed as they were in the first world. Koyomi and his father work with another brilliant scientist and her daughter, Shiori. Koyomi and Shiori grow close, but when tragedy strikes Koyomi finds himself going down a dark path that may not have a solution.

I can see how the final scene of the first book would be a lot more impactful if you’d read the second one first, as opposed to my own feeling, which was mild puzzlement. That said, I think if I’d started with the second book I’d have dropped this halfway as being too dark and angsty. The first book is a cute romance between two nice people. He falls in love relatively quickly, she takes a bit longer (“You’ll do” was the funniest line in both books), they get married and have a child, they grow old together. The drama near the end is character-based, involving grief and how parallel universes might lead one to commit a crime over that grief. The second book is almost entirely ABOUT that, as Shiori’s death comes before the novel is even halfway finished, and we see a Koyomi who would sacrifice anything to save her. The second book also has a lot more scientific theory to talk through than the first.

Did I like them? They were both good, I had moments of emotion reading them, but ultimately all I can come up with is “yeah, they were pretty good”. This happens a lot with concept SF and me, though. There’s a book that came out last year focusing on Shiori, though, and is this does well maybe Seven Seas will pick it up.

Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Body Swap in the Maiden Court, Vol. 4

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By Satsuki Nakamura and Kana Yuki. Released in Japan as “Futsutsuka na Akujo dewa Gozaimasu ga: Suuguu Chouso Torikae Den” by Ichijinsha Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Tara Quinn.

Sometimes when you’ve lived a certain way your entire life, and are suddenly shown that there are other ways to live, it can be very very difficult to go back to what you have always done. That’s what Reirin is dealing with in this book, as a consequence of the body swaps. For the most part, she’s held this in, because, well, that’s the sort of person she is, but the stress of the situation in this book and the fact that, for the first time, someone might be dead because of her actions, makes her have a breakdown and admit – she hates being in constant pain. She hates being at death’s door. She never used to worry about not waking up every time she fell asleep, now she does. And it terrifies her. It terrifies her so much that she misses something else – why is her sickly, dying body now so utterly healthy whenever Keigetsu is in it? I mean, this is new, right? It wasn’t the case in the first book. What’s going on?

We pick up right where we left off with the previous book. Reirin, in Keigetsu’s body, is trying to deal with the outbreak in the village, while she and her allies also try to figure out how to stop the entire village, AND the maiden, being burned to the ground as a “necessary measure”. Meanwhile, Keigetsu (in Reirin’s body) is having to deal with her reputation being tanked so hard that there will be no way for her to come back from it, and now she has to give a tea party with three of the other maidens, including the one behind all of this. Fortunately for both of them, they have actual allies this time around, including the Emperor. Which helps a lot, let me tell you. But is it going to be enough?

There are three scenes in this book which should make every reader sit up and cheer. The first is the tea party itself, where Keigetsu finally manages to apply al of the observational skills she’s never really tried to use before to manipulate the conversation away from the master manipulator and swing things back her way. The second I mentioned above, where Reirin (who is noted beforehand to have never cried before) breaking down, a scene which is probably the first time I actually though that she and the Emperor could be a good couple after all. But the final scene is magical. Everyone is doing their best to stop Reirin’s roaring rampage of revenge, and they fail miserably. But it’s actually Houshun who’s the MVP here, as all this has done is make her FAR more interested in Reirin than she was before. She’s clearly one of those “anything but a boring life” villainesses, and now that Keigetsu is effectively a dual heroine, we needed a really great bad guy. We have one now. “I’ve taken a liking to you” is like a white glove thrown to the ground. Let the duels commence.

That said, our dual heroines may be in trouble with Book 5, which promises (in the author’s afterword) to break them up. This remains one of the best series I’ve read this past year, and is recommended to everyone, even if you think you’re tired of villainess books.