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High School DxD: Vampire of the Suspended Classroom

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By Ichiei Ishibumi and Miyama-Zero. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.

To a certain degree, all “harem” series (at least those with multiple girls all in love with the same guy) all suffer from the same major flaw, which is that the guy has to be fairly normal and dull. It might seem surprising that I’m saying this about Issei, someone who literally cannot go three pages without talking about tits some more. but it’s true. All the girls love Issei. They get jealous when he’s with another girl. They fight over him. They offer up their virginity to him. And why? Well, he’s nice to them? I mean, with Asia I get it, he literally is her savior. You could say the same for Rias, though it’s a higher bar to clear. But Akeno? Xenovia? Why does this lecherous dipshit who won’t even grope anyone without passing out offer such temptation? Well, frankly, it’s probably what he’s got inside him. The sacred gear, and the dragon that comes with it, make Issei an important player in the battle between the angels, fallen angels, and demons. That is… if there is a war.

No, Akeno is not the titular vampire (and I apologize for having to use the word titular when discussing High School DxD). I thought this might be her “focus” book, but while we do get some hefty revelations about her past, it’s clear her time is still to come. No, the new character here is Gasper Vladi, who is the vampire of the title, and who ticks off several more “light novel cliche” boxes. He’s a boy who everyone mistakes for a girl; he’s got cripplingly low self-esteem and a fear of interacting with others, and he’s ludicrously overpowered, as he can cause people to freeze in time… though, like Issei, his power has more weaknesses than strengths right now. That said, while trying to coax Gasper out of his shell, Rias’ group also have to deal with a peace conference, which risks blowing up before it begins.

Despite the previous paragraph, there’s not a lot that happens in this book compared to the previous three – it’s a lot of setup for the next few books, as we introduce a couple of major players who look like they’ll give Issei trouble (though one of them turns out to be more of a mecha otaku than anything else). Indeed, I was more surprised at things that didn’t happen. The book starts off by telling us about parent-teacher conferences, which will not only feature Issei’s parents going but also Rias’. Any other light novel series would make this a book of its own, but here it takes fewer pages than the pool battle between Rias and Akeno to see whose breasts get to be groped by Issei. The series manages to work for its target audience because it not only assumes its readership are horny teenage boys who don’t have the guts to cop a feel, but that all the women in this series are essentially ALSO that. It’s… weird.

Still, the one fight we got was pretty cool, and if there’s any series you can’t get mad at for staying on brand, it’s this one – there are breasts in High School DxD? Who knew? Recommended for those who read the fan translated PDFs years ago.

Unnamed Memory, Vol. 3

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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.

After a first volume where I had trouble with the characters, and a second volume where I had trouble with the way the story was laid out, here I didn’t have trouble with either, and as a result we get our strongest volume to date, a truly compelling read. Indeed, if it weren’t for the last fifth of the book, you might think that this was also the final volume. It certainly has a wedding on the cover art, but this is a light novel, not a shoujo manga, and I believe we still have three more books to go after this. The question is whether those books will star Oscar and Tinasha, who seems to get a fate that’s going to be hard to overcome at the ending. Before that, though, there’s everything you want in an Unnamed Memory book, and for once that includes requited love and some real sweetness – along with a bunch of sudden death battles, of course. I mean, Oscar and Tinasha can’t escape their own pasts. Or can they?

Tinasha has truly settled into life at the castle now, to the point that she’s truly startled when some little kids try storming her castle (she’s able to dissuade them). That said, villains we’ve seen before and villains who we do not yet know continue to try to make life terrible for her, and after yet another nearly fatal attempt on Oscar’s life, she is willing to give up and admit that OK, she may have feelings for this big lug and sure, they can get married I GUESS. This is actually a bigger deal than you might expect, as spiritual magic works by the age-old rules of “no virginity no strong magic” – fortunately Tinasha is strong enough that she still has strong magic, it’s just not LUDICROUSLY strong anymore. Bad timing on that front, too, as she has to fight another Witch, this one with a grudge.

The back half of the book is taken up to a great extent by one big battle, and it’s very well written, showing off how things go back and forth and also giving us a bit of the backstory of the Witch Who Cannot Be summoned, the one trying to take out Oscar and Tinasha. She’s the classic “I want to manipulate people because I get bored” sort, but her backstory is surprising and also touching. Then there’s that final story, where Oscar picks up an orb that he shouldn’t and is sent back into the past, to Tinasha’s old kingdom, before she becomes a witch. While there’s a bit of the classic time travel dilemma here, and in fact it drives the ending, the main reason this is cute is getting to see Oscar and teenage Tinasha interact, and seeing her falling for him hard despite the fact that this changes history. It’s adorable and bittersweet.

So, not to give away the ending, but now what? The afterward suggests we’ll be looking at some other people in the history of Oscar’s family, but I can’t really believe the author would choose to end things here, so I’m raising an eyebrow at that. That said, no matter what future volumes do, you should read this one.

A Certain Scientific Railgun, Vol. 16

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By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Nan Rymer.

The beloved and sadly very out of print Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga had one of its chapters dedicated to the subject of “power creep” in shonen manga, which Railgun definitely falls under, despite its magazine technically falling under the seinen umbrella. (Dengeki Daioh’s readership is basically “otaku, of any genre”.) If you have a bad guy that you defeat, then the next villain has to be slightly more powerful, and so on and so forth till you’re eventually fighting against the biggest threat in the entire universe, and it all gets a bit silly. Railgun has that issue, but not for its villains – instead, it’s the heroines who struggle with it. We’ve already seen Misaka nearly go out of control when they tried to force her to evolve to Level 6. Now here we see Uiharu, who is supposedly a Level 1 “thermos”, force-evolving her hacking powers to literally rewrite reality in order to save the day, which… I suspect we won’t be seeing down the road.

Of course, that is not the only thing that Uiharu does in this volume. This is her arc, after all, and after spending most of the last volume on ice, she’s back in command here, showing us the same strength that allowed her to stare down Kakine and suffer only a broken collarbone. We even see her – gasp! – use her ability, rather than her hacking, in order to escape from her guards, and it’s a very clever usage as well. That said, the bad guys also know what her weak spot is. Railgun’s yuri poster child may be Kuroko, but I suspect the number of fans who think Misaka and Kuroko will end up together is zero. But Uiharu and Saten have just as much if not more subtext, and this volume really hammers it home. Uiharu is so dedicated to Saten that she’ll suffer great pains to get to her. And when told Saten has been fatally poisoned, Uiharu almost turns evil, to the point where she is literally just a cloud of blackness… until Saten, who is dying but not dead, snaps her out of it, saying that’s not the path she should follow. The Fullmetal Alchemist fan in me was recalling a similar scene, let me tell you.

On the down side, it’s not that I dislike any of the young kids who are being forced by Academy City’s evil science department to become supervillains, it’s just… we’ve seen this backstory about eight different times in Railgun alone, and it’s hard not to have the first thing I think be “here we go again”. Honestly, it’s something of a wonder that Mikoto ended up as well-adjusted as she is, and she’s the one with a super fiery temper. The other problem is that the arc doesn’t end in this book – there’s one epilogue chapter to go… which means we’ll have to wait till (presumably) 2022 to see if Saten survived (signs point to yes) and if Uiharu remains the most powerful being in the world (signs point to no). That said, this volume is quite strong and fans of the series should love it.