Category Archives: reviews

Last Round Arthurs, Vol. 3: The Snow Maiden & The King Who Killed Arthur

Leave a reply

By Taro Hitsuji and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jan Cash.

I must admit up front: I did not enjoy this book as much as the last two. There’s a big reason for that: Luna, who is probably the best reason to read the book, spends most of it sidelined by the latest villain, and the series is simply far less fun when she’s not around being the Big Dumb Girl With A Good Heart. The other reason is an odd one, as the afterword explicitly lays it out for me: Rintarou changes over the course of the book, becoming far more of a shonen hero-type of character rather than the grumpy cynic he’d been so far. The author says this is a common development in manga and light novels, but I’m not sure it’s as common as he thinks, and I’m not sure it fits the character well. I don’t really want to see Rintarou become Touma. Other than that, though, the book is doing what it does best: lots of Arthurian backstory, lots of big shonen battles, and lots of betrayal.

The titular snow maiden is Nayuki Fuyuse, who readers may have forgotten was introduced in Book 1 as Rintarou’s mysterious classmate. The fact that she’s part of all this is not that much of a surprise. The fact that she’s secretly in love with him is also not that big a surprise. What *is* a surprise is that Rintarou, who is usually fairly clever, does not immediately realize who she is when she says the one thing she can’t do is tell him who she is. All he has to do is think of the person who betray4ed Merlin back in the day and bing! There’s your answer. In any case, she’s more support here. The actual King candidate is a whiny young creep named Hitoshi, his Jack Sir Tristan, and a mysterious young woman named Reika, who seems to be a mass murderer but there’s more to her than we think. And, as always, Elaine is pulling all the strings.

Apologies for spoiling a bit, but to be fair, it is in the book’s subtitle: the best part of this book is the subplot with Mordred. There is rare subtlety in the writing at her portrayal, and I particularly liked her own Jack, Sir Dinadan, casually mentioning that all the King candidates she’s supposedly murdering are not actually dead yet. It also reminds us of the story’s Arthurian background, and the fact that Arthur basically fell from grace, as it were. Unfortunately, there’s one more big minus in this book, and that’s the villain, Hitoshi. If Last Round Arthurs is a Fate ripoff, then here’s Shinji, whining, demanding, and threatening to rape the cast. What is it with light novel writers and their desire to make all the villains super, super, SUPER bad?

This is still a quick, easy read, and I might get the next volume, if only to see if Kay (barely in this book) will do anything at all. But I must admit this volume is no more than a C+.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 10

Leave a reply

By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

This may be a first for this series. For the first time, I got through an entire volume without wanting to throw Hachiman out a window. This isn’t to say that he’s all smiles and warm fuzzies, but his cynical “this is what teenage life is really ,like it’s a jungle out there man” monologues are kept to a minimum and his attempts to solve the problem of the book involve actually talking with people about the problem rather than, say, throwing himself under the bus again. This volume was adapted into the final chunk of Season 2, so also is probably the calm before the storm that will be the final arc of the series. Things are moving pretty slowly – you can tell the author wants to wrap this up before they become third years – but we are starting to think about the future, which in Japan means what “track” will the kids be taking, arts or sciences?

Haruno is on the cover, and actually has a significant presence in the book as the “not quite evil but close” antagonist. The main focus of the book, though, is Hayama, who is the perfect boy that everyone wants to hang out with/date, but he’s refusing to say whether he’s taking the arts or sciences track, which has thrown his group into turmoil. Particularly Miura, who has a crush on him but is also concerned for his well-being – nearly everyone by now can see that Hayama is wearing a mask to hide his real self. She asks our heroes to find out what his choice is, which proves to be a very tough nut to crack, and mostly involves Hachiman doing a lot of detective work. In the interim, though, there is an ominous cloud on the horizon, and we see part of that cloud here, as we meet Yukino and Haruno’s mother, who is exactly what you’d expect she would be like. Oh yes, and there’s a rumor that Hayama and Yukino are going out which has spread like wildfire.

It’s pretty clear that Yukino’s family issues are gonna be the series’ endgame (which is bad news for Yui, and indeed she once again doesn’t have much of a role here – this love triangle is a bit imbalanced). For the moment, though, we’re dealing with Hayama, whose feelings for Hachiman are very conflicted – at one point he holds out hope that Hachiman is concerned about him as a friend, only to realize that it’s for his Service Club after all. It comes to a head in the school’s marathon, where Hayama bluntly talks about how he hates Hachiman, who may be Hayama’s opposite but also has managed to draw people to his actual self, crappy though that self may be. I was also very amused at the discussion of arts vs. sciences, some of which is “what am I best at” but a lot of which is also “how can I improve my social image?”.

So yes, this was a strong volume in the series, and I also really love the brother/sister relationship between Hachiman and Komachi, which is realistic and sweet. I am totally ready for Book 11. Sadly, the author is not, so get ready for 10.5, more short stories, next time.

I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Vol. 8

Leave a reply

By Kisetsu Morita and Benio. Released in Japan as “Slime Taoshite 300 Nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level MAX ni Nattemashita” by GA Novels. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jasmine Bernhardt.

There are many times during my reading of the Killing Slimes for 300 Years series that I realize that not only are the characters treating this world as an excuse to relax and do inconsequential things, but so is the author. The author has many, many light novel series under their belt, some of them running simultaneously via different publishers, and you get the sense that this series is the one where the author can just kick back and not have to worry too hard about plot or characterization. It’s essentially a short story collection. The biggest thing that happens in this book is that Beelzebub has finally gotten the side stories that appeared in Books 5-7 farmed out to her own official spinoff (which has already been licensed over here for the spring) and so the last sixth of the book or so is devoted to Halkara, who gets a spinoff, seemingly set before the main series, where she… reviews restaurants. Don’t expect this to get spinoff novels anytime soon.

A breakdown of this book: Sandra goes through a Flowers for Algernon-style transformation after some super fertilizer turns her into a teenager with a high IQ (that said, there’s zero angst here); Pondeli invites the cast to the new Demon Arcade that she’s opening, whose games are hit-or-miss; the hippie pine spirit who does weddings finds that the flaky God who brought Azusa over is muscling in on her territory; that same God tries to reason with a fellow, more traditional God in order not to lose followers (and Azusa ends up leveling up EVEN MORE); they return to the ghost nation’s temple and tell ghost stories, most of which have a familiar bent; Azusa gets stranded on a desert island and meets what she thinks is a native tribe; a strange butterfly woman insists of staying with Azusa a week for no reason whatsoever and not because The Crane repays A Debt or anything; and Pecora starts a Youtube stream service from the demon world.

That last one may drive home the point that, aside from having elves, dragons, and slimes, this series is absolutely uninterested in building its own world, but would much rather leech off of Japan’s own past and present. The ghost stories Azusa tries to tell, common ones from Japan, are also very well known here. the cuisine Halkara samples is essentially variations on what you can get in any mid-sized town, complete with a conveyor belt sushi place. It’s… very low bar, to be honest, but it’s also relaxing for the reader, who might get a bit annoyed at streamers being a thing in this land of Gods and demons, but will likely quickly get over it. The stories are all basically about the same – cute – though I might have critiqued the desert island one more had it not ended how it did. (At least the natives did not go “unga bunga bunga’ a la Bugs Bunny.)

It’s cute, it’s fuzzy, and you will forget about it the moment that you finish it. And sorry, yuri fans, Azusa still insists that her house is home to family, and not, and I quote, “a special, gay dimension”.