Category Archives: reviews

The Beauty’s Blade: Mei Ren Jian

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By Feng Ren Zuo Shu, Xiao Tong Kong (Velinxi), idledee and Gravity Dusty. Released in China on the Jinjiang Literature City website. Released in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment. Translated by Yu. Adapted by Aysha U. Farah.

This is, I believe, the first baihe novel to be published in North America. From what I can gather, it wasn’t the most popular to be found (those ended up with another publisher who has not yet released them), but it had a small but devoted following. I can see why: the two leads are excellent, and the reason to read this. Watching the push-pull between the fiery, emotional, vengeance-driven Fu Wanqing and the cool, icy, and very emotionally masked Yu Shengyan is like watching a long, drawn out dance, and while it may be frustrating given how long they take to admit feeling for each other out loud, I found their relationship very satisfying. I wish I could say the same thing about the book. This may just fall under “not my genre”, but I ended up lost and uncaring in this tale of various sects with an axe to grind and a treasure map that turns out to connect to a past rather than a future.

Fu Wanqing is the heir to the House of Valor, the strongest of the five families that stand on the side of “good” in their community. She’s met one day by Yu Shengyan, the high priestess of the demonic guild, whose skills with a sword are apparently legendary. Fu Wanqing wants to duel her. Yu Shengyan has no interest in dueling, as once her sword is removed from its scabbard it has to kill. She’s there for a rare medicine that can heal her underling, who was permanently crippled in a sword battle… by Fu Wanqing. Fu Wanqing, who is also immediately attracted to the other woman, makes a deal: Stay by her side for three months, and she’ll let Yu Shengyan have the medicine. Of course, it’s not just them: the rest of the plot goes on around them, as a statue with a map is stolen, and everyone wants it.

There are some other subplots in this that are vaguely interesting, particularly the other “yuri” one involving the heir of one of the families and their burgeoning crush on, frankly, a cipher. The biggest issue, though, is there are simply too many characters to keep track of, and most of them are quite unlikable. To a degree this includes the two leads at times – sometimes you want to smack Fu Wanqing for being a smug asshole, or Yu Shengyan for closing herself off. That said, the times I was most invested in the book was watching the two of them flirt off to the side while the rest of the plot exploded around them. Seeing various family faction scream at each other and fight while these two feed each other orange slices can be hilarious. The other annoying factor for me was the writing itself. Chapter breaks feel entirely arbitrary, which I should have expected from a webnovel but it’s still annoying. Sometimes the POV shifts without a marker to tell us it’s now someone else. Another edit would have been good.

If you like baihe, I’d get this. I’d like to see more from this genre, and hopefully better.

I Want to Be a Saint, But I Can Only Use Attack Magic!, Vol. 2

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By Fuyu Aoki and Bodax. Released in Japan as “Seijo-sama ni Naritai no ni Kougeki Mahou shika Tsukaenain desu kedo!?” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Kashi Kamitoma.

The first volume was also very funny, but this one really, really leans into broad as hell comedy, to the point where I felt it was overdoing it a bit. That’s for a very good reason, though, as frankly this world is very dark, and if it weren’t for Yuffie doing her Bocchi impersonation we’d genuinely worry for her. The school is being attacked by demons who think nothing of killing everyone in order to find Yuffie. Her burdock root buddy Catherine finds out her secret and is honestly terrified for a bit, as she points out that it’s scary seeing Yuffie casually breaking the laws of magic physics. And when the powers that be discuss what to do about her, their first thought is to expel her and basically put her under their control. Thankfully they choose not to do this, but there are very good reasons for Yuffie to continue to hide her powers beyond “because it’s funnier that way”.

After the events of the last book, Yuffie is trying to double down on learning how to improve her healing magic, though it’s slow going. Very slow going. She ends up getting some good pointers, though, when she meets up with Jack, who after the events of the last book wants her to train him in how she uses attack magic. Unfortunately her advice amounts to “use your magic till you run out of mana, over and over again, for nine years”. This actually does end up helping him, as he realizes that his determination was as nothing compared to HERS. And she’s going to need it, as they’re going to do a demonstration of healing magic, and have paired the best student (Erina) with the worst (Yuffie). Is she going to be able to be a saint when it takes her an hour to heal a small cut?

As with the first book, I could do without the “ha ha, it’s funny because she’s a predatory lesbian!” jokes. Other than that, though, this is a solid book, once again giving Yuffie a bit of character development. We meet both her parents, which helps to explain some of her apology tactics if not her introversion, and I get the feeling her mom being a former student council member will come up in a future book. And much as I spent most of the book annoyed at Erina, she does give us the book’s most heartwarming moment, when she says that Yuffie’s pathetic healing attempt did help prevent a man dying till Erina could get there and actually heal him. This book is still dark, though. Yuffie kills demons, and is not feeling upset about it at all. These seems to be Frieren-type demons, no sympathy here.

So this is a lot of fun, and I’m not too worried about Bocchi the Mage, but she has a long way to go before she’s accepted by anyone other than her own generation.

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.