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The Reincarnated Princess Spends Another Day Skipping Story Routes, Vol. 2

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By Bisu and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo wa Kyou mo Hata o Tatakioru” by Arian Rose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Tom Harris.

Generally speaking, most reincarnated folks who end up in the body of a little kid do NOT act like they’re an adult. This even applies to Rosemary, the protagonist of this series. Sure, she’s talking and making decisions that are far beyond what a child her age should be doing, but her emotional maturity remains at about the right level. There are many times this comes up in the books – her inability to get that other kids are in love with her is baked into the genre, but certainly her tearful confession to her crush and the scene that follows shows her as having the easily broken heart of a 10-year-old girl. This most applies, though, when she’s dealing with her father. Who, to be fair, is the King. But the reader recognizes the type that he is, and what he’s actually doing to help her – or at least test her – and I don’t think she sees this as the tough love it’s meant to be. It makes Randolf the most interesting character in this new volume.

Rosemary is still doing her best to try and avoid the dreadful fate her country is going to be in in a year or two, but it’s not easy, especially since she’s changed things so much that she can’t rely on her memories of the game shoe once played. She needs to research the Demon Lord, who possessed the body of a young priest… who she then runs across, pre-possession. She also discovers that most Demon Lord books are kept in the King’s personal library, which means she has to ask to read them and put up with his cold, calculating attitude. And, of course, she’s still in love with the Captain of the guards, Leonhart, who is quite a number of years older than she is – and also she’s ten, yes, a fact that definitely influences her thoughts on her crush. Worst of all, if she doesn’t figure out how to be incredibly useful to the King in the next two years, he’s going to do the obvious thing – marry her off to another country’s royal.

Rosemary remains the best reason to read this, especially when we see her (relatively low) opinion of herself versus everyone else’s (very high) opinion. This comes out best in a scene with Randolf, who castigates his daughter for thinking herself stupid for being unable to catch every possibility in advance. She’s not a God, even though she does have the knowledge of the game from her past life. Fortunately, she does reveal this (in a way, she treats it as a prophetic dream) to Leonhart, so at least has one ally she can turn to. Unfortunately, she’s falling more deeply in love with him by the day. And is, as I said, ten years old. So nothing’s gonna happen, but the emotional turmoil is still there.

The ending of this book implies the next one will likely be Rosemary’s tour of various lands, as she tries to discover more about what’s around her so that she can be a better person and of use to her father. I look forward to reading it, this is in the upper end of the Reincarnated Villainess charts, despite Rosemary not technically being a villainess.

Unnamed Memory, Vol. 4

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By Kuji Furumiya and chibi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sarah Tangney.

As I predicted, the afterword of Vol. 3 was not, in fact, telling the truth. We are still following the story of Oscar and Tinasha. Indeed, the story may start to seem a bit familiar. Oscar and his aide are still traveling to try to find a way to end his curse, and they run into Tinasha, who says she will do it in a certain amount of time. The trouble is that this is the changed timeline. In the last book Oscar changed history, and so he is not quite the Oscar we know. Tinasha is also different, though at least we’ve seen her before – the young queen who Oscar saved put herself in stasis for 400 years so that she could meet him again. As such, the main amusement with this new volume is that it’s Tinasha who’s instantly lovestruck and talking marriage, and Oscar who is the reluctant one putting her off. That said, they’re still clearly made for each other. Unfortunately, a lot of the same issues that were problems before are back, and still problems.

One thing that I find hard when I write about this series is that it really is a pure fantasy, with virtually none of the standard “Japanese light novel;” schtick we’ve gotten so used to. A lot of my reviews write themselves because I can talk about the standard tropes and how well they work, or how this character is slightly less bland than the norm. With Unnamed Memory, though, the plot and writing is so well done and the book so immersive that I can’t use that crutch. What’s more, I don’t really want to spoil the plot twists (aside from the one that, well, happens right at the very start of the book) because they’re good twists. So what am I supposed to do? Talk about how Oscar is a really good fighter and that Tinasha is cute when she’s angry? You already know that.

I could talk about the deaths. There are an awful lot of assassination attempts in this book, mostly against Oscar but also against Tinasha, and all of them involve finding the culprit and their accomplices and killing them. While Oscar and Tinasha are trying to move the world they live in into a more modern and peaceful age, this is not that age, and there are quite a few characters who are captured, forced to talk, and them killed – or kill themselves before that can happen. Indeed, one of the few surprises I will talk about is one where a villain is, in fact, NOT killed off – mostly as he was clearly trying to do this in order to help his country and their somewhat meek ruler, rather than because of evil power grabs. If you’re going to assassinate someone, you’d better have a damn good reason for it, it can’t just be “they obstruct my path to all-encompassing glory!”.

So yes, sorry to be a broken record, but this is still excellent. My one major complaint is how long each book is. This is going to be six volumes total, and there’s no reason why it could not be twelve normal-sized books.

Cross-Dressing Villainess Cecilia Sylvie, Vol. 1

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By Hiroro Akizakura and Dangmill. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijou, Cecilia Sylvie wa Shinitakunai node Dansou suru Koto ni Shita” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sarah Tangney.

All novels, to one degree or another, require a certain suspension of disbelief by the reader in order to make the book function. If you pick too hard at things, you’re never going to enjoy anything. Or, as MST3K put it, “it’s just a book, I should really just relax”. Sometimes, though, it can be hard. We’ve seen enough villainess titles by now to know how they usually go down, and it’s always interesting to see what variations our heroines make to avoid their tragic fate. Cecelia’s answer is to pretend to be an invalid for 11 years, then go to school disguised as a boy, without telling her parents, so that the “villainess” doesn’t even exist in the story. Which… why is that what she thought of? We hear once or twice that she was a theater geek in her old life, but this goes above and beyond. That said, she has very sturdy plot armor on, so it mostly works fine.

Our heroine loves to play the otome game Holy Maiden of Vleugel Academy 3. So much so that she and her BL-loving friend go to see a movie based on the game… and tragically die in a fire at the theater. Now she finds that she’s Cecilia Sylvie, a duke’s daughter and the villainess of the game who’s doomed to die on every route! (And yes, before you ask, her fiancee is the prince and she has an adopted brother who dotes on her. Bakarina fans will be right at home here.) Cut to 11 years later, and we see her solution: disguising herself as Cecil Admina, a young man attending the same academy. After all, bad things can’t happen to Cecilia if she isn’t there. That said, the plot is still going to happen, and the heroine of the game, Lean, is still around. Only… why does Lean not seem to care about the other romance targets? In fact, why is Lean more interested in the romance targets ending up with each other?

This is not *quite* a BL title – Cecil is definitely Cecilia in disguise – but there’s no denying it has BL elements. Her adopted brother Gilbert knows her secret and is in love with her, and that comes out regardless of how she’s dressed. Her fiancee Oscar is rather disturbed to find how attracted he is to this young man who he’s supposed to dislike, especially when Cecil does things like crawl into his bed at night on a camping trip because of fear. And then there’s the fact that Lean and her childhood friend Jade have started up a robust line of spicy novels featuring romance between two men who are a LOT like Cecil and Oscar. This is probably the biggest reason to get these books, because honestly as a villainess book it’s not great – Cecilia’s not particularly clever, as you can probably tell by her solution to her problems, and tends to get by with strength and guts.

If you really like this genre, then you’ll probably want to read more. For fans of Hana-Kimi.