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Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind, Vol. 4

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By Kiri Komori and Yamigo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Zetsumetsu Sunzen no Kishou Shuzokudeshita” on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Roman Lempert.

It’s two years after the previous book, and there’s a lot of bad, heavy things going on. Tina is now living at the captured fort, being flown around to various dangerous places to purify monsters. She’s referred to as “the holy woman” by basically everyone, and has almost come to accept it. She’s also coming to accept the fact that she’s in love with Renge, and debates confessing to him, though world events kind of put a kibosh on that. But the Sugula keeps coming closer and closer to them, and it needs to be destroyed soon. We’re getting into “this is the passing of an era” style fantasy, where one mentor close dying and another mentor actually dying off screen (how rude!). And, of course, there’s still the occasional enemy attack, and those are getting more and more dangerous. What on earth can Tina do to help things? If your answer was “have a fashion show”, then congratulations, you too may be able to write web novels.

To be fair, the fashion show *is* a side story, where Tina tries to solve the problem of newly freed slaves who still have tons of issues working them out by bullying each other. There’s also two side stories, which focus on the non-Tina romances in this book, and show off that just because a character SEEMS dense and oblivious it doesn’t necessarily mean they actually are. Unfortunately, the two side stories and the extra story run to just over half the book, leaving only the first half left for the actual plot to bubble up. This is also a problem with web novels, which are rarely written with the author thinking “now, I’m at about Page 220 if this were a Kadokawa book, time to have a cliffhanger”. But it can be very frustrating if you’re invested in how the world is going to be saved.

Tina doesn’t really have a fun book. We don’t even SEE the inn that she and her father used to tend here, and she’s pretty much resigned herself to being the savior of many (though her sister and others also yearn for a day when she can just lie around and make incredible healing potions, something she doesn’t have time to do anymore). She gets more information on her parents’ background, but this comes at the cost of losing a new found family member just when she realized she was a family member. And of course there’s the revelation that falling in love with Renge may actually produce a stone that could lead to a war that lasts centuries – again. As plot macguffins to stop a confession go, it’s certainly a strong one. That said, I think that the 5th book is the last? So we may not have more to go before an actual confession.

This is the second book in a row that felt like it was just marking time, and as always YMMV on the romance between a 15-year-old with the mind of a 30-year-old inside her and an immortal who rescued her as a baby. Still, I’ll soldier on. This was OK.

My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex: “Childhood Friends No More”

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By Kyosuke Kamishiro and TakayaKi. Released in Japan as “Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Motokano datta” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Gierrlon Dunn.

Given that I’ve said how much I don’t care for Akatsuki, and how I prefer it when the series focuses on its main couple, this third volume was always going to be a hard sell for me, as it gets into the nitty gritty backstory of her relationship with Kawanami, how it changed, and her own personal issues, with Mizuto and Yume once again being pushed to the background. That said, it does a decent job, showing me that Akatsuki is aware of her dangerous personality issues and is doing her best to change them, even if she thinks of it as “wearing a mask”. And frankly Kawanami has just as many issues, some of which were brought on my his tortured past relationship but most of which are his own damn fault, and he seems to be as obsessed with his friendship with Mizuto as Akatsuki is about her friendship with Yume. They have a lot more baggage than our two leads, and I’m not sure they need to get back together.

The first half of the book focuses heavily on Isana Hagashira, who has now been rejected by Mizuto but oddly takes that as an invitation to be even more blatant around him, since she knows he’s not interested in her romantically. Essentially, she still has some difficulties working out how normal girls react around normal boys. And she’s probably not getting any help from the people around her – for one thing, Kawanami takes an instant dislike to her as she says she’s Mizuto’s best friend – that’s his job! The second half of the book gets into the backstory of Akatsuki and Kawanami when the group all go on a “study camp” sponsored by the school, and we discover, as Hagashira points out, that the “childhood friend” trope is something best reserved for fiction.

Explaining the backstory of those two is pretty easy, actually: they’re both latchkey kids who lived next to each other, and Kawanami was naturally extroverted anyway, so they simply grew together. Unfortunately, Akatsuki’s lack of boundaries proved to be crippling – we saw a lot of that in the first volume, and it creeped me out. Here we see Akatsuki acknowledge she was backsliding, and she really is trying not to get so obsessed with those around her (Yume as well) but the sheer loneliness that settles in when she does this is crushing. The intervention towards the end of the book that led the two of them to break down in front of each other is good for catharsis, but I’m not sure it will lead them to grow closer again just yet. As for Hagashira, she’s pretty hilarious, but I do think her shtick only works, as she knows, because of Mizuto’s lack of interest. As for Mizuto and Yume themselves… the biggest romcom thing that happened to them takes place entirely offscreen.

The anime of this has started, and the verdict so far seems to be “OK but flatly animated”. We’ll see how it goes. Till then, this remains a decent romcom but I wish we would return to our main couple.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 14

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By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

I will note that the ending to this series feels very much like you’d expect. The whole thing has involved people avoiding the subject, ducking the real issues, and trying to take care of everything without getting anyone else involved – all things that are impossible if you want to be an actual romantic couple. So somebody is going to have to take a step up here. It’s not going to be Yui, who communicates her feelings to Hachiman in the best “Hachimanese” she can, but he knows and won’t say anything. It’s also not going to be Hachiman, who will never do anything the honest, straightforward way if he can possibly duck out of it. No, it’s going to have to be Yukino, still trying to get the approval of her mother, and putting on a very nice compromise prom that has no problems… but still is not good enough. It’s going to require working together to get a happy ending… and possibly an actual confession.

So yes, they have the prom, and it goes well. Yui gets to dance with Hachiman. Yukino gets to validate herself in front of her family. Iroha gets to feel important and be really annoying. It’s good… but is it good enough? There was a bigger, cooler prom that got shot down, right? Shouldn’t they have fought harder for it? What’s more, it involved another high school, and they’re busy asking “hey, what about that joint prom?”. It’ll take a lot of work to fix this, as well as some brazen lying and bluffing. Fortunately, they have someone who is fantastic at hard work and someone who is fantastic at brazen lying and bluffing. Unfortunately, they’re both acting as if, once this is over, they’ll drift apart and never see each other again. Can Hachiman and Yukino be kicked in the ass enough to confess to each other?

This doesn’t spoil too much (if you think it’s a spoiler Hachiman and Yukino are the final pairing, I urge you to reread Vols 1-13), but it feels absolutely right that Yukino is able, after the 2nd prom, to finally come out with a sincere “I love you”, but Hachiman’s confession to HER is about as oblique as “the moon is beautiful tonight”, basically saying that he wants to continue to get involved with her problems and be in her life. But that’s huge, for him. He wants to be close to someone. He even admits he’s going to get a job after college, rather than the bullshit “househusband” thing he’s always said before. As for Yui… I’m sorry, this is not the sort of series that was going to end with an OT3, though at least she is still trying to stay friends with them. In the end, the only one who exits the story here is Shizuka, who gets transferred to another school, but not before one last dance with her favorite student.

This is the final volume… except there’s a short story collection coming after this. It’s mostly “bundle up the short stories that came out with Blu-Ray boxes”, but has one taking place after this book. In the meantime, this feels like a very appropriate ending for the series.