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Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World, Vol. 5

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By Kei Sazane and Ao Nekonabe. Released in Japan as “Kimi to Boku no Saigo no Senjou, Aruiwa Sekai ga Hajimaru Seisen” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jan Cash.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. After three straight volumes where I was ready to drop the series as being “ok but not good enough to read more” and then getting blindsided by a cliffhanger that made me want to see what happened next, we’ve finally hit a volume where the cliffhanger isn’t quite good enough, so I’ll be taking my leave of the series after this. It’s still not that bad – its action scenes are fun, its overarching plotline is at least interesting, the betrayals aren’t impossible to explain like a lot of series. No, where Our Last Crusade falls down is when it’s trying to be a romantic comedy. Its heroine is supposed to be a feared combatant and the most powerful Ice Witch around, but when love gets involved she acts like a petulant six-year-old. Her sister is not much better, and the addition of a love triangle does not add to the fun. It should stick to being serious.

This picks up right where the last book left off. Sisbell is now hiring our four heroes to be her bodyguards so that she can safely return to the kingdom. This is easier said than done. Back home, the queen is worried that Elletear, the oldest princess, is an imposter and a traitor. One of these things is wrong. Honestly, the queen herself is also somewhat sus. There’s an assassination attempt, which is set up to look like the most obvious person. And, yes, lots of people are indeed trying to kill Sisbell, and they will be perfectly happy to do massive property damage to see this happen. Fortunately, Iska is still ludicrously overpowered… as is Alice. Unfortunately, as noted above, Alice is currently super jealous of Sisbell but unable to actually articulate this, leading to an incredibly long and petulant pout.

There are a few bad habits that ar3e not in this volume. Mismis gets far less to do… well, OK, she hasn’t done much before this, but she’s definitely kept in the background except for one egregious fanservice scene to remind us she’s still a ditz. The palace intrigue is genuinely interesting, and almost made me get the 6th volume till I decided it just wasn’t quite enough. The third ‘faction’ in the Witch Nation is named Hydra, which is funny for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the book and everything to do with Marvel Comics. One of the villains controls gravity to the point of making black holes, which forces Iska to try a bit harder. It’s just… whenever the book focuses on Alice, her unacknowledged crush on Iska, and her unacknowledged jealousy of Sisbell it’s so immature I want to stop reading immediately.

Obviously, YMMV. If you’re enjoying the “playful back and forth” between Alice and Iska, then you should definitely keep reading, there’s at least five more volumes after this. But a series that runs on Romeo and Juliet had better reach a bare minimum of making me care about the love affair. Sorry.

High School DxD: The Phoenix of the School Battle

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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.

Sigh. The second volume of High School DxD, I’m pleased to say, has the same strengths that the first volume had. Unfortunately, the weaknesses the first volume had are also here, and they’re far more in your face. This is the perfect series for horny 15-year-old boys. There’s a likeable cast, a premise of “which of the many hot women who desire me shall I choose?”, a lot of very cool fights, and smug punchable villains who are basically the ‘evil’ version of your own fantasies. It’s shonen battle manga up the wazoo – in fact, when typing the title of the book I accidentally typed “Phoenix of the Old School Battle”. Unfortunately, its fanservice, which was present but not up to annoying levels in the first volume, has now reached annoying levels. Issei will not shut up about boobs, spends a page or so describing what it’s like to feel up the heroine, has powers that strip the villains of their clothing (provided they’re girls), and declares, and I quote, “Rias Gremory’s virginity belongs to me!”. YIKES.

The premise of this one is fairly simple: Rias has an arranged marriage she’s been avoiding, to Riser Phenex, a high-born noble demon. She very clearly does not want this, and would rather stay in high school with Issei and company. So a duel is arranged between Rias’ group and Riser’s – if Rias wins, she can keep doing what she wants, if Riser wins, they’ll get married. Issei, naturally, is ready to fight for Rias, both because he’s got the hots for her AND because he’s rather upset that she’s not being treated like a person. Unfortunately, Issei, as he is now, can’t beat anyone, as is made painfully clear. There’s only one thing for it: we’ve got to have a training arc. And even after that’s done, we have to deal with the fact that Riser has the abilities of the phoenix, making him basically unkillable. How do you defeat someone like that?

This book is very much content to take as long as it wants to to tell its story. We do get more of the rest of the cast here, but they’re still relatively one-dimensional – Akeno is the ojou and secret sadist, Koneko is the short grumpy one, and Kiba is an odd combination of Koizumi, Shirou and Saika. We are briefly threatened with some backstory for Kiba in the middle of one of the big fights, but threatened is as far as it gets. I assume we’ll get more depth to them in later books, but for now they’re pretty cardboard. As for Riser and his crew, he’s meant to compare with Issei’s own harem dreams – Riser has a harem, who it’s clearly implied he’s sleeping with, and which contains various cute fetishes – twins, sword chicks, etc. – even his own younger sister, because what’s a harem without incest? And, well, that gets me back to sighing, really.

Again, fans of this series will love this. And if you’re a teenage boy, feel free to read this, as the chance of actual sex happening in it is zero. For those of us outside the age range, though, High School DxD is a series with an interesting premise and characters that can’t resist being perverse in the exact way teenage boys are.

The Ideal Sponger Life, Vol. 1

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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.

I had reviewed the first volume of the manga here two years ago, and we’ve had several volumes since then. Reading the light novel shows that the manga compressed quite a bit, probably sensibly. Anyone who is reading this book for the hot woman on the cover and hoping to get some nookie is going to be wildly disappointed by the 20-page discussion of hydroelectric generators, as well as the fact that the book pretty much cuts away whenever there is going to be some loving. That said, when this series first came out as a webnovel, it was SUPER popular, and there’s a hint of why that is here, as there’s some very nice political intrigue and worldbuilding, especially once we realize that our overworked salaryman hero, despite his stated intentions, is going to be proving that title wrong fairly quickly. Indeed, he does so almost immediately, as many of the things he has brought over from Earth are unknown here, ranging from glassworks to Microsoft Excel.

Our hero is Zenjirou, a young man in his mid-20s who works at a very busy Japanese company. On his off day, as he’s biking back home with food, he finds himself in a palace in another world – transported there by the beautiful young Queen, Aura. She’s looking for a husband and father to her children. As it turns out, due to various political reasons, she doesn’t want to marry any of the candidates in her own world. Plus Zenjirou does have royal blood in him, as it turns out his ancestors came from this world in the first place. After some questions and negotiations, he agrees to marry her, and the wedding comes off relatively well. That said, he may not be able to be a layabout for long. His own overly polite and deferential manners are greatly at odds with what people think a royal should act like. And those other marriage candidates aren’t going to stop trying to gain power just because the Queen married someone else.

This first volume is mostly setup, and it does drag a bit in places. There’s a point where Zenjirou returns to Japan for 30 days to settle his affairs (after this, he won’t be able to return for 30 years due to the way magic works), and we see why he would be so willing to cut ties with things, but I would happily have cut most of that to a 3-page montage. The main reason to get this is the worldbuilding and politics, both of which are quite good. Zenjirou manages to bring over a generator and several appliances with him, and so we see this medieval fantasy world getting used to fluorescent lighting and air conditioning. Aura picked an outsider as she wants to actually reign as Queen, and knows that in this patriarchal society anyone who marries her would immediately force her out of power. That said, she and Zenjirou fall in love fairly quickly, and even if he is sharper than she might have liked, I think she’s quite happy.

Zenjirou stays mostly cooped up with the Queen and servants this volume, but that can’t last. I suspect we’ll be seeing lots of ‘lets see how he handles this situation!’ plotlines in the second volume. Till then, this is a decent isekai title, less salacious than the cover and premise might suggest, and definitely worth a read.