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Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 25

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By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

Yona of the Dawn fits into a lot of genres. First, obviously, there’s shoujo manga, and the tropes of a young woman surrounded by good-looking men. There’s trying to save the kingdom fantasy stuff, with a bit of revenge fantasy mixed in, although as we see in this volume, revenge doesn’t really play into it as much as disappointment. Lately we’ve had military fantasy, with the entire plot of the last few books being “can we stop the inevitable war?”. But the last couple of chapters of this volume also bring home another genre that this series falls under: Yona is walking around with a bunch of superheroes, each of whom are using their powers to protect her and help other people. They don’t wear capes, but it otherwise checks out, and really gets hammered home in the last few pages of this book, where Yona’s “can’t we talk this out” plea is met by a bunch of arrows… that fail to hit her. Which, good, because Yona of the Dead is not a genre I want to see.

Yona’s talk with Su-won goes about how you’d expect, though I was very pleased to see Riri step in to defend her and remind everyone around them what Yona has been doing the last few years. (I admit I’ve lost track of the timeline, how long as Yona been on the run now?) The main problem here are the religious fanatics, who, as with almost all religious fanatics in manga/anime, turn out to be power-hungry villains. Killing off Kouren’s allies one by one, their goal is war by any means necessary. Fortunately, though they’re still grievously injured, the dragon warriors are able to step in and help to drive them back, even at the cost of their remaining stamina. And, as always with this series, we see whether idealism like Yona’s or Tao’s – even Tao finds herself wavering after seeing what the priests have been doing – can hold up under pressure.

There are some wonderful scenes interspersed throughout this volume, but my favorite may be Kouren pointing out, as I did, that Yona is running around with a bunch of superheroes at her command – why isn’t she simply taking out Su-Won by brute strength? Yona responds that “they aren’t tools to satisfy my personal grudges”, which is a great moment (though it also amuses me, as I’m pretty sure by now all of them would be very happy to help Yona do exactly that). As for the encounter with Su-Won, once again it’s not quite as earth-shattering as their past would expect, but she does learn that his pragmatism and her idealism are still at loggerheads, and that reconciliation is not happening anytime soon. As I said earlier, Yona could easily slide into revenge fantasy, but Yona doesn’t hate Su-Won enough for that to work.

As for the next volume, well, Yona isn’t full of arrows, so that’s good. We’ll see if she can stop the war, though. In the meantime, this is a shoujo manga, but it’s also so many other things.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 12

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By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

Sadly, my begging to the author did not help, as Machiavelli is cited again in this volume. It was originally written in the webnovel version interspersed with Vol. 11, but they decided to split it up for book publication. Which is fine, but it does mean this book is very short. And what’s worse, it still needs side stories to make up the length… and has to start Book 13, to the point where the chapter numbering actually resets. Basically, in terms of bang for your buck, this is pretty slight. Fortunately, it does a little better when it comes to actual plot, introducing us at last to the Zem mercenaries and finding that they are not QUITE as villainous as the book has painted them to date. More importantly, though, we meet the late Duke Carmine’s daughter Mio, who is determined to get to the bottom of why her father did what he did. Souma had been planning to try to clear Georg’s name anyway, so this works out, but there are some other things to consider.

War is tough, after all, and though Georg did his best to try to keep casualties to a minimum, there are still soldiers who were killed in a battle that turns out to have been part of a massive con game, and their families won’t be happy with that. More importantly, of course, is the presence of Kagetora, the tiger-masked bodyguard who is absolutely not secretly Georg Carmine, no way, uh uh. Mio’s seriousness and general anger is something that Souma tries to curtail by the shortest route, and he does so by having Kagetora and Mio face each other in battle, something that manages to clue her in – and only her – as to what’s going on. (Less successful is Mio after this cathartic moment, when she becomes more comedic and starts throwing herself at Finance Minister Colbert… the author really does want to pair up absolutely EVERYONE, huh?)

The other big event in this book, aside from the cliffhanger that leads into Book 13 (which I’ll just discuss when that comes out) is the first in-person meeting of King Souma and Empress Maria. He needs the Empire’s help with their upcoming war, and knows that such a conversation can’t happen over video conference call. I liked that this showed off Maria being exceedingly clever, seeing what Souma is actually planning immediately, and also showcasing Jeanne’s frustration at being unable to catch up to her genius sister. That said, Maria’s (unheard by the reader) request of Souma is worrying, as it certainly sounds along the lines of “when I die, do this”. And here I was thinking they were going to work out a way to add her to Souma’s wives… oh yes, and the mad scientist group discusses the need to add drills to everything, which I still maintain is just a big Maria-sama Ga Miteru joke.

So, despite its slightness, this book succeeds at what it wants to do, although (like many, many light novel authors) the attempts at humor are not all that funny here. In any case, next time we get mermaids and dragons, and see another clever plan of Souma’s upended by a heroine inserting herself into the narrative.

Monster Tamer, Vol. 1

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By Minto Higure and Napo. Released in Japan as “Monster no Goshujinsama” by Monster Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

I will admit that the sole reason I gave this series a try was the Japanese light novel label it came from. A series from Monster Bunko! Titled Monster Tamer! Would there be… monsters? Rest assured, this book from the monster publisher with monster in the title has monsters in it. You may have guessed from the cover… possibly. Turns out the cute girl in the uniform is actually a monster as well. That said, what this genre really ends up being is the grim and gritty “abandoned by my classmates, I must soldier on, brooding and filled with hate, and monsters are the only ones that understand me” genre. Arifureta fans will find this very familiar. That said, Arifureta also has a heaping helping of humor that this book lacks. It wants to be taken seriously. Which is fine, but I must admit that emo teen’s emo narration made me rub my forehead a bit. There’s only so many times you can talk about how much you hate humanity, y’know?

Our hero (not on the cover as he’s a standard dull light novel protagonist guy) and his entire school are transported to another world one day. Some have cool, strong powers… and some do not. Very soon everyone starts to try to kill each other. Majima is essentially run over by a stampede of fleeing classmates and left for dead. He crawls to a cave and starts to get eaten by a slime… but then discovers he DOES have a power, as the slime is now his servant. His “monster party” ends up being the slime (who eats the corpse of fellow student Miho, which is why she looks like that on the cover), a ‘puppet’ monster that basically looks like a ball-jointed doll (helpfully, she makes armor with ‘breasts’ so we know she’s also female), and a non-monster, Mana, Miho’s underclassman and friend who they rescued from sexual assault by other classmates. Together they try to leave this forest and find other, non-murdering classmates… and avoid monsters that Majima can’t control.

As you can see, this book is the very definition of a high school kid wearing black so that he can be “edgy”. Majima does not let a chapter go by without telling us either a) he’s lost faith in humanity and hates them now, or b) how he has thrown aside his morals and become a terrible person. Certainly he does kill a few people, but as you’d expect with a Japanese light novel by now, they’re all rapists and bastards. Somewhat to my relief, the relationship between him and his monster servants is framed as more familial than romantic, at least on his end. The third monster we meet comes near the end of the book, and is… well, exactly what you’d expect given her monster type, but I assume we’ll develop her more in the 2nd book. I also appreciated that our hero’s power does not in fact mean he can fight at ALL – all the fights are his monster girls fighting to protect him.

That last bit might turn off other edgy teens who subscribe to the “I want my hero to win all the battles and bed all the women” school of thought. And honestly, given this is 16+ volumes and counting in Japan, I feel no need to read more. For those who enjoy this sort of “revenge/found family” story with a dark-ish tinge, this book will serve those needs quite nicely.