Category Archives: reviews

My Hero Academia: School Briefs, Vol. 1

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By Kouhei Horikoshi and Anri Yoshi. Released in Japan by Shueisha. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Caleb Cook.

Shonen Jump series tend to have a lot of light novels based off their parent series, but just because those come out in Japan does not mean they are a success over there. Even Naruto, the juggernaut, had its post-series light novels quietly dropped after only three of the six books were out. But My Hero Academia is the new Juggernaut, the Deku to Naruto’s All Might, and so it seems appropriate that we give it a try with this first in a series of books about the “daily lives” of the cast. No major plot points, just fun. This book seems to take place around the 7th volume of the series, though if you haven’t read the 11th volume you may be spoiled for Bakugo’s mom. As that sentence indicates, the subject of this book is Parent’s Day, where out student heroes have to have the family visit. This being UA, the teachers have a surprise in store for them, however…

As you might guess, with a cast this big, not everyone gets a spotlight – even Bakugo is mostly sidelined. Not everyone is fond of Parent’s Day either, particularly Todoroki, who wants his mother to go but knows that she can’t, and really does NOT want his father to know about it at all. (Which leads to a great punchline at the end, that does not shy away from Endeavor being a horrible dad.) Fortunately, his sister is able to go. Meanwhile, Iida has tickets to an amusement park, and invites the main cast, but none of them can make it. So we end up with the odd foursome of Iida, Tokoyami, Kaminari, and Mineta. Meanwhile, Uraraka is trying to buy supermarket bargains (the book is great at reminding us how poor she is compared to the rest of the cast, particularly Yaoyorozu), but is distracted by an apparent shoplifter. And then there’s Parent’s Day itself, which turns out to be a lot more dramatic than the kids thought.

There’s good and bad in this volume. It’s trying to strike a balance between “engage new readers” and “write for fans of the series”, so there’s a lot of introductory stuff telling us who the cast is and how quirks work, etc. It makes it feel like a book that’s geared towards younger readers… were it not for Mineta, who is in this book quite a bit, and remains the worst thing about the series. Even something that is meant to be heartwarming, such as Tokoyami bonding with a lost little girl who’s scared of birds, gets ruined by Mineta saying that when she grows up, she’ll be a hottie and hitting on the girl’s mom. I hate him. He also drags Kaminari down with him, though that’s true in the manga as well. The book is best when it’s delving into things that Horikoshi has not had the time to really delve into, such as what’s it’s like for a child when their quirk first manifests (it can be terrifying), or enjoying the friendships of a group that is still learning about each other at this stage.

This is a fast read (don’t let the page count fool you, it’s short) and, Mineta aside, a lot of fun. There’s even a few touching scenes, particularly with Todoroki and Tokoyami. Fans of the series should like it quite a bit.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 13

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Winifred Bird.

When I had reviewed the Lyu spinoff of this series, I had wondered why we did not get the actual flashback showing how her Familia were all killed, and what set her on her roaring rampage of revenge. As you read this novel, it becomes clear: the author wanted to save it till we got to this point. Picking up right where the last book left off, and not even allowing Bell and company to emerge from the Dungeon (Hestia gets a small cameo to remind us she exists), this volume points and laughs at all the people who thought that we couldn’t possibly get even more over the top. A murder that sees Lyu as the prime suspect drives a bunch of 18th floor mercenaries and adventurers to hunt her down, and Bell’s team tag along because they think something more is going on here. They’re right, but the murder investigation soon becomes secondary to something far more important: trying not to be killed and left in a bloody mess.

As noted by the author in the afterword, we also get a much larger role here for Cassandra, the adventurer who, like her namesake, has prophecies that no one ever believes. She’s aware of this, and so this time decides not to lay it all out for people (it’s hard to interpret anyway, beyond “everyone will die), and instead tries to go along and see what she can do to help stop it from happening. Sometimes this is really great – the extra armor she has Welf make for Bell (which, amusingly, is a scarf, making it look like a present from a girlfriend) is ridiculously strong, and Bell would absolutely be dead by the end of the book without it. Unfortunately, she can’t really stop a landslide once it’s actually started, and once the true monster of the book gets going, she almost completely shuts down in despair and fear.

Speaking of which, this is a very different Lyu to the one we’ve seen before. To no one’s surprise, she’s not the murderer, but that doewsn’t mean that she isn’t rampaging through the dungeons, having spotted someone she thought long dead – because she killed them all. As I noted above, here we get the full story of what happened to her Familia, and why she’s so traumatized by the whole thing – in addition to the juggernaut killing everyone, she actually “sacrificed” some of her family members to escape… or at least that’s what she and the bad guy think, I suspect the actual reality is likely a bit different. Fortunately, she has Bell by her side, who is ridiculously impressive in the fights towards the end of this book, which are mind-bogglingly good. No one writes non-stop action and deep emotions at the same time quite like Omori does. The 5th chapter is worth the price of the book alone.

Sadly, and with the author apologizing to us for doing it again, there’s a cliffhanger here, so we’ll have to wait till the summer to see how Bell and Lyu get out of this. Not to mention Cassandra and the rest of Hestia Familia are still down there. I suspect it’ll all work out, but I dunno, DanMachi can get pretty dark. It’s still in the top tier of light novels right now.

Transparent Light Blue

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By Kiyoko Iwami. Released in Japan as “Toumei na Usui Mizuiro ni” by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Yuri Hime. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Katrina Leonoudakis. Adapted by Asha Bardon.

This yuri manga, right off that bat, had something different from the usual that made me raise an eyebrow: there’s a guy in it. In a major role, no less. A lot of the more recent yuri titles tend to avoid having men in them altogether, taking place at all-girls’ schools and the like. There’s a good reason for this: yuri fans tend to regard any guy in a title where they have ship preferences as the absolute worst. Just ask old-school Tomoyo fans about Syaoran in Cardcaptor Sakura. Having a cast be all girls does not remove the drama, necessarily, but it does allow the drama to happen without the worry of “what happens if this is just a tease and the het couple winds up together?” That said, that’s unlikely to happen here, as the magazine this comes from, Comic Yuri Hime, has yuri as the definition. So we do get a guy, and even worse, he’s a childhood friend.

Ritsu, Ichika, and Shun are all childhood friends. Unfortunately for Ritsu, Ichika and Shun have begun to date. This is particularly unfortunate as Ritsu is also in love… with Ichika. Yes, it’s a standard love triangle, only in a yuri fashion. Ritsu is torn up by this, but at least Ichika remains close to her, even allowing the other girl to clean her ears (a very intimate act in Japan). Ichika’s trust moves Ritsu to kiss her while she’s sleeping… which Shun walks in on. From that point, there’s lots of melodrama, discussion of who likes who and why, and teen angst. In the end, though, Ichika feels safest when she’s with Ritsu, and likes her back. I really liked that the manga makes Ritsu morally dubious while keeping her the heroine, and also doesn’t make Shun a villain, keeping him the childhood friend who realizes that his girl is going to go off with another girl. I could have done without the ear cleaning porn noises, admittedly, both at the beginning and as a plot point.

As with a lot of these sorts of single volume titles, there’s not enough material for a full volume, so we get Apron, a story of a girl at a cafe who’s in love with another female employee. She’s caught sniffing said employee’s clothing by her coworker, who has a similar height and build to the other girl, and therefore is semi-blackmailed into wearing her apron so that she can pretend. Unfortunately, the girl she has a crush on is fooling around with the (male) manager. Fortunately, the coworker she’s been using also has a secret they’ve been keeping. This chapter is not really allowed to get as deep as it possibly needs to, and feels a bit too pat as a result. That said, the author is very good at drawing crying faces of angst, and we get some good ones here.

This promises a quick-hit volume with some yuri, and that’s what it delivers. I think fans of the genre will enjoy it.