Category Archives: reviews

Proud to Be the Villainess: If My Doom Can Be Her Happily Ever After, So Be It!

Leave a reply

By Mary=Doe and Kuga Huna. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijou no Kyouji” by SQEX Novel. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Bérénice Vourdon.

It’s always interesting seeing a Villainess title on the Club side of J-Novel rather than the Heart side. Usually it means that the romance isn’t the point of the exercise, and that is the case here, though that might surprise you after you see what the plot is, as there is an awful lot of romance in this book. But in the end this isn’t a romance as much as a twisted caper film. Our protagonist has a goal, that will take years and involves lots of moving parts, and eventually everything comes together until she’s able to pull off the goal… or at least, she hopes that’s what happens. Heck, since she’s not reincarnated from Japan, this doesn’t even have to involve a game world at all, and there’s no pesky heroine either. There’s just two sisters, with one of them being noble and abused and the other being arrogant and haughty. All is as it should be… except, as you may have gathered by the title, the other sister is the main character.

We open the way a lot of villainess books open – with the seeming romantic lead cruelly breaking off his engagement to his poor fiancee. However, we see this from the perspective of Iora’s sister Wellmy. While Iora has been abused by her parents, barely fed, forced to live apart from the main house, and essentially tortured, Wellmy has had it good. The best dresses, the finest jewely. She even has fantastic grades… which also happen to have her forcing her sister to write her papers for her and sign Wellmy’s name. She is every inch the terrible stepsister we see in these books, and she even manages to get Iora married off to the horrible Marquis, rumored to hate women. It is therefore no surprise whatsoever that, six months from now, Wellmy arrives at a party only to have Aides, the Marquis in question, reveal all of her horrible deeds in front of everyone. Just as Wellmy planned.

This book does have its flaws. It’s horribly overbalanced towards the front, having its climactic and best scene (the slap) only 1/4 of the way through, with over half the book devoted to looking at the “other side” of what’s been going on. It’s also clearly written as a standalone, and it is hard to see how it has 7+ volumes in Japan now, which it does. That said, I loved this to bits. Not a surprise, everything in it was designed to be catnip to me. It’s not as dark as I expected, frankly – there is a lot of funny business here, especially when Wellmy discovers her inner submissive – but there is a core of despair that falls over the main events. Wellmy’s grand plan means that she’s never considered what to do with her life besides “die”. Iora is forced to watch from afar as her sister deliberately destroys herself. Even their mother, who is written off for most of the book as a scheming woman who loathes her adopted daughter, turns out to have a terrible backstory. There are definitely reasons why Wellmy had to go so far, though in the end she and Iora reap the rewards… even if Wellmy does so reluctantly.

All this plus casual verbal abuse of a crown prince. What’s not to love? For all fans of this genre, and I hope the author can figure out what comes next.

Heroine? Saint? No, I’m an All-Works Maid (And Proud of It)!, Vol. 6

Leave a reply

By Atekichi and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Heroine? Seijo? Iie, All Works Maid desu (ko)!” by TO Books. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Matthew Jackson. Adapted by Michelle McGuinness.

A lot of these “we’re in the world of a game” series tend to fall into two categories. Either the game just goes off the rails immediately but the main character doesn’t realize it and is determined to fight against a fate that no longer exists (e.g. Observation Records of My Fiancee), or the game has a malevolent mind of its own and is determined to make sure those pesky villainesses die and heroines save the day. This title is firmly in the second category, and while the bulk of most of the book is fairly light and maid-related, it does not let you forget it. The climax of this book does feature the “heroine”, Melody, but because she’s already derailed this game as far as possible, even she cannot save the day in the end. And it’s not going to be the tsundere duke’s daughter either, who comes a lot closer but falls short. No, in the end it’s past tragedies that will have to win out.

Despite the fact that you’d never imagine it with a culture like the one we have, it’s school festival time, and thanks to the dumbass Prince Christopher suggesting something anonymously assuming no one would go along with it, their class is doing a maid cafe. Since Cecilia is currently convalescing back home, Melody will of course not be participating (yet… the festival will be in the next book, and I have my suspicions), but she can advise folks on what works and doesn’t work when it comes to a practical maid uniform. Celedia would like to be getting closer to the capture targets, but alas all she’s doing is secretarial work related to the festival, and she thrown a hissy fit that goes wrong thanks to the evil lurking inside her. Unfortunately, said hissy fit is stopped by Christopher, and even though he and Anna-Marie have done their best to avoid having the plot impact them, it’s time for him to turn evil.

Christopher and Anna-Marie have been around since the start, usually complaining about the fact that they’re trying to stop the plot of the game but that it’s been stopped before it gets to them, but they’ve been relatively minor characters. Here they get more to do, though I’m sure they wish they didn’t. I feel bad for Christopher, who didn’t do anything wrong, really, but ended up almost destroying the world, because thanks to Celedia’s extra added evil Melody is NOT strong enough to head him like the game says. The final scenes are really dark and horrific, both because Christopher is slowly being mind-controlled and also because we get a flashback showing Maika’s reaction to her brother and his “childhood friend’s” death, and how deeply that affected her. It’s pretty heartbreaking, and Christopher and Anna-Marie are appropriately heartbroken. It also allows the Maika that’s HERE to accidentally save the day, though she’s unaware of it. I really enjoy the way this series interweaves everyone’s past lives into the mix.

As I noted earlier, we get all the buildup to the festival but not the festival itself. And by the time the next book comes out, the anime will have aired. We’ll see how that goes. Sometimes it helps, sometimes you’re Private Tutor to the Duke’s Daughter. But the books are good.

The Bladesmith’s Enchanted Weapons, Vol. 4

Leave a reply

By Kazuma Ogiwara and CARIMARICA. Released in Japan as “Isekai Toushou no Maken Seisaku Gurashi” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ryan Burris.

This remains a series written almost entirely for teenage boys, but it’s worth noting that this isn’t just one aspect of things teenage boys like. Obviously there’s the stuff about the swords, because teen boys love swords, and fantasy authors love treating the swords like they’re women, which this book absolutely does. It’s also written for teen boys in terms of the sexuality – Lutz and Claudia remain very sexually active, and a princess of another country’s city/tribe is mostly described by her large breasts. But there’s something else teenage boys like, and that’s grimdark, and this series has that as well. It never quite spills over into actual tragedy, but there’s a lot of bleak, depressing stuff in this series, ranging from the start with Claudia being saved from a fate worse than death (more on that later), to a clan leader who has let the love of a sword turn him evil, to a vengeful knight seeking to atone for past sins by killing his fellow sinners. It’s not fluffy.

This story essentially consists of two parts. In the first, Lutz, Claudia, and Ricardo head to the federation to see what’s going on there after the death of their king. Turns out things aren’t great. They meet up with Gwynn, the guy who asked Lutz to create a katana he could give painless death with, and together they head to a wretchedly poor city where the chief seems to really, really hate them. He has a daughter who’s far more sensible, but he also has a bewitching katana that has killed three of her brothers when they challenged dear old dad. Maybe an unbewitching katana from Lutz can help. When they return home, they find that there’s a masked avenger going around killing the lazy knights, and while Lutz and especially Claudia have no love lost for those guys, Lutz decides to investigate just in case this turns out to be the fault of one of his katanas, like almost everything else in this series.

There is some humor in this, of course. The darkness of the village chief and his bewitching sword is offset by the adorableness of the first love between Gwynn and Melty. There’s another subplot about Ricardo asking for a second katana to be used with Tsubaki as a dual wield, and it’s up to Lutz to show Ricardo that dual wielding is something mostly done by fictional heroes for good reason. But we see slavery here, and a village whose people are starving to death just because its chief wants a second priceless katana to go with his first. There’s also the entire plot with Donaldo, who worships Lutz for all the wrong reasons. Lutz has to secretly meet with Donaldo to resolve this, because much as Claudia likes to pretend that she’s over the terror of what the knights did to her in the first book, she’s really not, and he knows that he needs to handle this away from her. The darkness of this world leaks in whether you want it to or not, and it’s impossible to get rid of.

It will be interesting to see where this series goes next – especially given we’re now seeing Enchanted Weapons by people other than Lutz. I’m still really loving it.