Category Archives: reviews

The Ideal Sponger Life, Vol. 5

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By Tsunehiko Watanabe and Jyuu Ayakura. Released in Japan as “Risou no Himo Seikatsu” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by MPT.

As promised at the end of my last review, this volume does NOT have Aura on the cover, choosing instead to focus on the newest arrival to the cast. A boat shows up containing a Northern princess-cum-captain and her crew/bodyguards. They need help getting their ship repaired… a ship whose technological advances are far beyond Capua’s own. As a result, Aura is very happy to have their shipwrights help to repair the ship, and also learn valuable things along the way. Unfortunately, she can’t go to the coast to greet them, so Zenjirou is sent – supposedly as a figurehead, but once again the book is taking its title and crumpling it into a little ball. That said, he’s got this in hand, and is getting along with the foreign princess. Everything would be great were it not for the pesky raptors from the previous volume, who have gotten away from the soldiers sent to kill them and are now laying waste to the coastal town. Can Zenjirou find a politically adept solution?

I’ve said before that this series is for those who love political wrangling, but it leaves a bit to be desired for folks of the other potential things that it promised. The romance between Zenjirou and Aura is still fine, but we don’t see any of their bedroom antics here, mostly as Aura is back at the capital most of the book. Likewise, the fights with the raptors are pretty good, but it’s clear the author doesn’t really excel in battle – some of the best parts of the battle are showing off Zenjirou’s plan to disguise their scent in order to throw the raptors off their trail. The best parts of the fight scenes come from Princess Freya’s bodyguard Skaji, who can kick a spear hard enough to pierce the head of a sea dragon, and therefore is completely badass. As for Freya, she’s more of the tactician of the group, seeing faster than the others that Zenjirou is both smarter than he looks and also more in charge than it would appear.

The highlight of the book is seeing him try to get out of the political disaster that Aura accidentally set upon him. After sending a message to her that seemingly described the situation without requesting help, she sent help anyway, meaning that he has to thread a needle as to who gets to be in charge of the battle and who gets the glory without pissing off too many factions. His solution is adept, but also unfortunately makes it so that he himself also gets a lot of the attention, something they’re also trying to avoid. Aura is quick to praise his solution… if it weren’t for the fact that it put him in danger, so she makes him promise never to do it again. (Spoiler: he’ll probably do it again.)

The raptors seem to finally be taken care of, leading to the start of a new arc in the next book. We do seem to have an excess of foreign nobility in Capua, though, so it’s not clear who will get the focus… oh wait, the cover to Vol. 6 has Freya on it, showing off her booty to the reader. No doubt we will continue to focus on her. In any event, this is still a good read if you like political wrangling.

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 38

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By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

It can be hard to thread the needle when you’re writing a story that actually *is* being published in light novel form first, as opposed to the usual these days, where a publisher picks up a series published originally on the web. The author admits that, after getting past the ‘we’ll end this in three books’ and ‘we’ll end this in 7-8 books’ hump and getting to the proper ending with Books 28 & 29… they STILL did not have the room to tell everything they wanted to tell. Which is why, even though it’s a 2-volume arc, those books felt a bit rushed. With this book, and its reveal about who their new Big Bad is, we get to go back and tackle the plot-related bits of the ending that were sacrificed for the greater theme. And we get to do that in a way that Rokujouma has become very accustomed to lately… though massive battles. This time in space, as after dealing with villains with fatal flaws up the wazoo for a while, Koutarou and company finally have to take on smart bad guys.

This book starts off with plot and does not really let go of it – any fluffy moments are now pretty much reserved for the short story volumes. Our three magical girls, out on patrol, come back with a surprise… Sanae! But it’s not Sanae-chan, our lovable ghost, or even Sanae-san, the shy but spiritually powerful human. It’s a Sanae from an alternate world… one where things went very badly. The Grey Knight, their mysterious new enemy, has progressively spirited away or killed off a good deal of the cast, and so they sent Sanae to a different dimension to try to warn our heroes about him (and get help if she can). This leads to the back half of the book, which is a battle between our heroes on one side and Ralgwin, the Grey Knight, and the mage Grevanas, back from the dead and experimenting with modern technology. What is the shocking secret identity of the Grey Knight?

…OK, it’s not that shocking. Given Koutarou has spent 30-odd books gallivanting around as the BLUE Knight, and that we have a Sanae from an alternate universe now, the identity of the Grey Knight is actually pretty easy to guess. I did enjoy seeing alternate Sanae, who is exactly what you’d expect her to be: a mature Sanae who is at peace with the fact that she had to fuse her two “selves” together but is still “Sanae” at heart. There is also some amusing romantic progression… amusing because, as you’d expect, it’s unconscious, with Koutarou saying that he hasn’t married Theia “yet”, a definite step up from the previous “we’re not getting married” denials. The dam is starting to crack.

The book ends by implying we’ll be returning to Forthothe soon, and catching up with our team of former evil magical girls, who now work for the Crown. But yeah, I suspect this alternate universe will play out over the next few volumes, though I’m sure we’ll get short story ones as well. Rokujouma may meander a bit these days, but it’s still worth reading.

Re: ZERO ~Starting Life in Another World~, Vol. 17

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By Tappei Nagatsuki and Shinichirou Otsuka. Released in Japan by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Borque.

Well, we knew this was going to happen. Given that the previous book had, with the exception of the final scenes, been a delightful and mostly lighthearted volume showing off the entire main cast, it is no surprise to see that in this next volume, Everything is Terrible. This is not to say that Subaru is doing dumb things out of stubbornness – we’re long past that stage. Heck, he can even participate in battles now, wielding a whip he received training in (I suspect this training was in another unlicensed short story, ah well). But yeah, by the end of this book we have a ton of corpses, an even bigger ton of transformed monstrosities, and even those who are not dead or turned into something else tend to have wounds that constantly bleed and the like. If your idea of a fun Re: Zero book is seeing terrible people doing bad things to good people, well, good news! That said, there’s also a bit of non-violence here that’s fun to read.

When we left off, Subaru was having to deal with the shortest “return by death” he’s ever had to experience – he has fifteen minutes to figure out and fix things. Needless to say, this leads to quite a few Subaru deaths in the first quarter of the book, and he’s not alone. He tries solving the problem himself – he fails. He tries getting Reinhard to solve the problem – this fails. He tries asking Beatrice for help – this actually succeeds, but it doesn’t mean things so well, as we have not one, not two, but THREE Witch Cultists to deal with. Now Emilia is missing, Beatrice is in a coma, Subaru is heavily wounded, and a number of the cast are absent. Oh yes, and Capella, the Witch Cultist who has control of City Hall, says to get her “the Witch’s Bones” or the city is doomed. There is, as always, too much on Subaru’s plate.

I was at first vaguely annoyed when, halfway through the book, the focus shifted away from Subaru and focused on Garfiel. Don’t get me wrong, Garf is a fine supporting character, but given everything else that was going on I did not feel in the mood for “I’m not the strongest in the land woe is me”. And indeed we get that to start, but things quickly become FAR more interesting after Garfiel rescues some children from a potential boating accident. When returning him to their family, he runs into someone whose existence is impossible and yet is also the thing he wants more than anything in the world… but he just can’t actually reach out and take it, because, well, circumstances. Honestly, it’s really refreshing to see something that devastates a character that is a POSITIVE thing, and I really hope that this goes somewhere in future volumes.

As the book ends, everything is even more terrible than it was in the last book, as we deal with the worst of all possible enemies: an arrogant incel who only cares if girls are virgins. Hope he dies! Till then, enjoy the suffering that is this series’ bread and butter.