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The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, Vol. 1

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By Hirukuma and Namako. Released in Japan as “Murazukuri Game no NPC ga Namami no Ningen to Shika Omoe Nai” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

One of the more interesting surprises of 2018 was a light novel series that, on the face of it, looked like the stupidest premise in the entire world. It was called Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, and its plot was exactly as you’d expect. And yet it not only proved far, far more entertaining than anyone could imagine, but also very good at keeping this a realistic and well-thought out world starring a guy who is a literal, non-moving, vending machine. The reason I bring this all up is that I was not planning on giving The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real! the time of day till I saw that it was by the same author as the vending machine story. Can lightning strike twice, I thought? Well, good news there. It wasn’t just a fluke, this is a very good author. This book, about a 30-year-old NEET bum watching a group of five ex-villagers trying to survive, is excellent.

Our protagonist is Yoshio, a man who’s spent the past ten years living at home with his family holed up in his bedroom. He won’t leave the house, he won’t get a job, his parents and sister are seemingly disgusted with him. Then one day he gets a game in the mail, asking him to watch over a sim group of villagers fleeing from monsters trying to survive in the wild. There’s Gams, the soldier defending them all; his sister Chem, a healer; and a normal not-very powerful family: Rodice, Lyra and their 7-year-old daughter Carol. As Yoshio plays the game, he begins to notice that these NPCs are far too natural and well-written to actually be computer generated. What’s the game part? Well, he’s God, and once a day he can write them a prophecy, as well as perform a miracle if he amasses enough Faith Points… which mostly come from spending real-life money. Well, typical game.

As you can see, the plot description makes a reader go “meh”, but as always the execution is where it matters. We spend just as much time concentrating on Yoshio’s home life as we do on the NPC villagers, and it turns out there are multifaceted layers as to exactly WHY he gave up on life and is being a NEET in his room. His family, too, are all dealing with their own issues. The game, therefore, serves as a way to get Yoshio to start caring about life and other people again, and it works quite admirably. By the end of this first volume, he’s opened up to his parents, re-bonded with his sister, and gotten a regular job (if only to pay for the game). The villagers are not quite as interesting as the Yoshio side (the one bit of humor in the book, which features Chem being a brocon and competing with a 7-year-old girl for her brother’s attention, I could have done without) but they also have their nuances, and I appreciates that they really do need Yoshio’s help to survive, but not because they’re innately weak or anything – this world is dangerous.

There are several hints that this may not quite be a “game” at all, mostly due to the offerings the villagers send him by sacrifice every day being then mailed to Yoshio from an address in Hokkaido. I expect the end two books in the series will go deeper into that. (Like Vending Machine, this seems to stop at Book 3.) Still, once again this writer takes a seemingly flat premise and expands on it beautifully. I will absolutely be reading more.

Slayers: The Mystic Sword of Bezeld

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By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

At long last, we are reading Slayers novels that are new to North America… though honestly, sales for the Tokyopop version of later novels in the series were pretty tiny, so I suspect it was new stuff for a lot of readers. This arc also was not adapted into an anime, as they did their own anime-original arc with Slayers Try, a decision not loved by the author, who hated the relationship between Xeloss and golden dragon Filia in particular. Instead, here we see Lina and Gourry, now a twosome again, trying to find a replacement for the late Sword of Light. Sadly, swords like that cannot be found just lying around, and so they’re reduced to chasing after rumors. This leads them to the titular sword, and also to a young girl being menaced by two mercs, two assassins, and seemingly the narrative. Will the sword turn out to be real? Will the sword turn out to be a trap? Will Sean once again spin out 500 words on super short novels that are fun to read but hard to review?

As noted, Lina and Gourry are by themselves at the start of this arc. That said, somehow Amelia and Zelgadis manage to get the biggest laugh in the book, as Gourry’s seeming inability to remember them leads to the illustrator drawing a spectral version of the duo stomping on his head. Instead we’re introduced to two mercenaries who, while they part ways with our heroes at the end of this book, one suspects we’ll be seeing them again soon, if only as they take up far more space on the cover than the supposed victim being attacked. Luke is, to put it bluntly, an asshole, but his heart seems to be in the right place, and honestly, snarking at Lina, the Queen of snark, is something that she could probably use. Mileena is a mage who seems somewhat stoic and mostly is there to be the sensible one and to shoot down Luke’s romantic overtures, though there’s implication that it’s not a complete lost cause.

As for the plot itself, boy, the average life expectancy of anyone in Slayers who is not a main character must be insanely low, and even if you live, you usually end up being homeless, villageless, or cityless. There’s a lot of wholesale destruction here, with villages set on fire, innocent assassins (erm, well, semi-innocent) getting possessed by mystic swords, and a monstrous demon with insane regenerative ability and also the ability to kill folks and keep them in a sort of perpetual zombie state. Good thing Lina has Dragon Slave… which is not good enough this time. And there’s also Gaav Flare, which… no longer works without Gaav, who was killed off in the last volume. Whoops. That said, the way that they do get rid of the big bad at the end is the second funniest part of the book, and also oh so very Lina Inverse.

So yeah, the usual Slayers novel. Good fights, good laughs, lotsa death, super short. Can’t wait for the next one.

I Shall Survive Using Potions!, Vol. 7

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By FUNA and Sukima. Released in Japan as “Potion-danomi de Ikinobimasu!” by K Lanove Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hiroya Watanabe.

After essentially rebooting the series last volume, possibly the biggest surprise here is how little Kaoru has to survive using potions. They come up a few times, notably when some of the cast need to be healed ASAP, but they aren’t the running gag of “make me an ‘x’ that’s really a potion bottle’ that they used to be. Mostly her abilities have become similar to Mile’s Storage, which is to say she can whip out transport or food when needs must. This is not to say that she’s just sitting around and doing nothing however; she and Reiko are getting a business off the ground, using their two new ex-orphans as employees, and there’s also the occasional muttering about finding a husband, though even Kaoru seems to have realized it won’t happen as long as she looks that young. Indeed, most of the first quarter of the book is about starting the business… and Kaoru finding loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Then they go looking for more employees…

Kaoru, of course, always seems to think that she can disguise her absolutely ludicrous abilities and just be an average, everyday businesswoman, and Reiko seems to be going along with this. Both of them seem to have forgotten what happened 70-odd years ago, and how Kaoru was literally enshrined into myth and legend. The running gag for this book, which is quite amusing, is how all of the young kids working for her know who she is but try not to say anything because she’s clearly avoiding the subject… even as she once again does something that only the legendary Kaoru could do. Speaking of the kids, this is a fantasy world isekai, so I will warn there is a lot of child labor here. That said, they’re paid well, and it’s an improvement on the virtual slavery they were stuck with before. As with Kuma Bear, you’re supposed to regard it as heartwarming.

The other subplots in the book feature Leia, another goddess who has essentially come down to Kaoru’s country so she can see why Celes is so fascinated with it. For the most part, she acts like a somewhat naive ojou, but there’s a very nice scene at the end of the book where she starts to realize what living actually means, and it’s well-handled. The other big event, right at the end of the book, is Kyoko’s arrival, the third of the “KKR” trio from Japan. As far as I can tell, the rule of thumb of their lives in Japan was that, while Kaoru threatened her way out of trouble, and Reiko blackmailed her way out of trouble, Kyoko seems to have simply gotten into trouble – she’s presented so far as a bit of a fluffhead. She shows up in a UFO, as her ability is to be able to create literally any ship – sadly, she can’t create crew for these ships, so she’s reduced to crafts that can be used by one person. She promises to add even more chaos.

For those who miss the old supporting cast, there is a brief after story showing what Francette and Roland are up to… and the answer is “raising kids so powerful that no one can defeat them, along with a Red Sonja-esque desire to marry only someone who can defeat them”. Still, while this wasn’t as world-shattering as the last book, it was a good solid volume.