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The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy, Vol. 1

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By Yu Shimizu and Asagi Tosaka. Released in Japan as “Seiken Gakuin no Maken Tsukai” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Roman Lampert.

Sometimes trends can be exhausting. Just try asking a hardcore light novel fan what they think of isekais sometimes and you’ll see what I mean. This is especially true when a trend happens so fast that you get five or six books in a row right at once. Magical academies – particularly ones that also teach swordsmanship and other “knight” classes – have been around for some time, as those of you who have mocked Asterisk War are well aware. And lately the trend has been to populate these schools with a demon lord who is reincarnated in these modern times. Not only is The Demon Sword Master at Excalibur Academy not the first of these, it’s not even the first one licensed by Yen On. Heck, it doesn’t even have a hot anime attached to it like The Misfit of Demon King Academy. What it does have is a very readable text that is written by a light novel veteran, one that doesn’t excite much but doesn’t put many feet wrong either. Read this, it’s competent.

As with most novels of this type, our hero is the one in the background there, behind the cute girl. Leonis Death Magnus is an undead king whose lands are finally being taken down by the heroes. (He’s a former hero himself, so knows how tough they can be.) The Goddess of Rebellion, the one he was doing this all for, is gone. And so he seals his soul and waits for time to pass. Which it does. A thousand years later, he’s freed by two students investigating a ruin. There are a few problems, though. First of all, he’s got the body of a 10-year-old. Secondly, the girl who is trying to protect him, Riselia, is one of the few students at this academy who hasn’t woken to her abilities yet, and ends up getting killed as a result. So Leonis is forced to resurrect her as a vampire queen. Now he’s trying to figure out how much this world has changed, try to start a new life at this magical academy floating on the water, and help Riselia deal with her newfound state.

If you’re like me, nothing in that paragraph made you hyped up to read this. But it’s really not bad. The cast isn’t that large yet, and this book focuses squarely on its hero and heroine. The fight scenes are exciting and not confusing. There is some humor that is actually amusing, not always guaranteed in light novels. Of course, it’s not perfect. The hero really wants to tell us that the girls he meets have large breasts, so he does over and over. Riselia’s “it’s OK, he’s just a kid!” naivete beggars belief, though to be fair that’s the opinion of everyone else as well. The fact that Leonis is trying to figure out who the reincarnation of his lost love Roselia is when there’s a girl named Riselia who is his new minion makes him seem a lot more dumb than I think he’s meant to be. And I could do without the guy and his harem of mind controlled sword girls, even though he’s only there to get humiliated.

But yeah, this is another example of a book that exudes competence, which helps make up for deficiencies in originality and character. You will be mildly entertained when reading it. Which these days is more than we can ask for.

Can Someone Please Explain What’s Going On?! ~A Sign-on-the-Line Wedding Story~, Vol. 3

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By Tsuredurebana and Rin Hagiwara. Released in Japan as “Dareka Kono Joukyou wo Setsumei Shite Kudasai! ~Keiyaku Kara Hajimaru Wedding~” by ArianRose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Mattias Hirsch.

Something struck me as I was reading this book, particularly as our hero is away fighting a war that we never actually see and our heroine and her in-laws sit at home eating snacks and wondering how long it will be before their country triumphs: this particular story is rich people and their rich lifestyles. It does point out the arrogance of Cercis in trying to wine and dine Viola with the most expensive possible food and accessories, but this is meant to point out his naivete as a man more than his naivete as a rich man. Even Viola, who arguably goes from rags to riches as the point of the entire story, is a poor NOBLE – she is still the daughter of an earl. Most of the plot involves Viola bopping around her mansion, tending to her garden, and eating yummy food, and the closest she gets to utter shock is when she spills tea on one of the expensive dresses. It’s a fairytale.

As noted, the majority of this book sees Cersis reluctantly away from the wife he is desperately trying to woo, as the country next door has decided to battle, and they have to go over there and put them down. We get a very one-sided view of this conflict – it’s basically accepted that Cersis and company will win, the question is how long it will take, and we get no real impression of the other side at all. It’s dissatisfying, frankly, and makes everyone feel just a little bit smug. This is not helped by Cersis being in heavy-duty lovey-dovey mode throughout, so he’s writing super sappy letters to his wife and also punishing other soldiers who apparently hit on Viola without knowing who she is. It’s meant to be amusing, but it again struck me more as “I am rich and a duke, so I can do what I want.”

As you’d expect, we’re also still dealing with the fact that Viola does not realize how much Cersis is in love with her, mostly as Viola still has killer self-loathing that is starting to become a problem. Her servants are beginning to wear down a little the more Viola describes herself as plain and dull, because it just isn’t true. We do see that she’s not very good with socializing at garden parties, but that’s more as she was abandoned the moment she came in and forced to walk around on her own. Fortunately for Cersis, it does seem as if Viola is starting to develop feelings for him unconsciously. These don’t show up in her third person narration, which still seems to be filled with “gosh, we’re just a contract marriage”, but her reaction when a messenger brings what she thinks might be bad news about her husband is the clincher – she’s clearly panicked and also clearly has no idea why she’s panicked.

So overall, this is a pretty good volume in the series, but, well, even the “commoner date” Cersis takes Viola on at the start is shown to be “we use our power to take over a restaurant so that they can have their sweet date”. It’s not the most 2020 series in the world.

The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 1

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By Daisuke Aizawa and Touzai. Released in Japan as “Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute!” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kristi Fernandez.

The sort of story that The Eminence in Shadow tells is one that can only be a comedy. It can’t take itself seriously, because if it does, it’s going to be the worst thing ever. Everyone has seen those fanfictions where the author says “So this is the plot of the main series, only the main character is grey, and intelligent, and badass, and gets all the girls, and…” etc. Warning you now, this is that fanfiction. Perhaps minus the intelligent part. Cid is ridiculously overpowered, his ethics are distinctly sketchy (though occasionally he can muster some rage at true cruelty), and he not only has a battle army of multiple girls in love with him, but he also gets two other girls to fall for him in this book. Fortunately, this*is* a comedy. Cid’s reaction to everything, and the over the top responses of his minions, are what make this a fun, breezy read. Such is a good thing, because there’s another warning about this book: it’s a demon lord at a magical academy book in disguise.

Oh yes, it’s a reincarnation isekai as well. We meet our hero in Japan, where he’s trying to grow stronger and stronger. His desire in life is to “control things from the shadows”, to be the sort of supervillain you see in Sailor Moon R. To that end, he does masses of ludicrous training, which ends with him smashing his head against a tree for hours and then, thoroughly concussed, wandering in front of a truck. It would be somewhat horrifying in any other context – there’s clearly something broken in him – but here it’s played as goofy. He ends up in another world as Cid, the son of a noble, but he hasn’t let go of his desires, and he’s stupidly strong and tough. He also gradually rescues a number of girls from fates worse than death, and because he only thinks in supervillain he names then Alpha, Beta, etc. After coming of age, he goes to the local magic academy, where he tries to be a “normie” – remember, the point of ruling from the shadows is that you aren’t conspicuous – but fails utterly.

As I said, after the first quarter of the book it essentially becomes a magical academy series, with Cid’s delusions of grandeur as a spice. The gimmick – which I haven’t mentioned yet, oddly enough – is that he’s made up complete garbage about a secret conspiracy to resurrect an ancient evil… and it all turns out to be true, only he is unaware of this, and assumes everyone around him is simply going along with his shtick. He meets a princess who he immediately realizes is a tsundere with a sharp tongue, because it fits her “trope”. Reality warps itself to match his fantasies, and as I said, that sounds awful but it works because he isn’t buying that for a moment. When he hears the villains have taken the school hostage, he’s over the moon that he can now go on a one-man assassination spree, but doesn’t think of it as genuine. Again, if you start to worry about his mental heath, the whole thing falls apart. It’s just a show, we should really just relax.

I’m not sure how this will hold up in the long run – titles like this get old fast – but this was a good first volume that should amuse anyone who enjoys “OP harem” series but doesn’t take them seriously.