Category Archives: reviews

Cooking with Wild Game, Vol. 1

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By EDA and Kochimo. Released in Japan by Hobby Japan. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Matthew Warner.

Given that this title starts off with a young man waking up in a forest with no idea where he is, it’s time to tick off the isekai/reincarnated checklist. And actually, the series so far seems to hold up pretty well after ticking the boxes. There is no adventurer’s guild here, nor do we go dungeon crawling. While the town it takes place in seems to consist of outcasts, there don’t appear to be slaves. Our hero does not have any new and fantastic powers from entering this world. He knows how to cook, but that’s from his life in Japan, and he doesn’t have skills above “I’m seventeen and still learning from my dad”. He doesn’t even meet God! That said, his skills are certainly needed as he meets a group of people who have forgotten how delicious food can be, and his job is to help them rediscover that. He’s helped by a blond, dark-skinned… no, wait, she’s not even an elf! They’re dark-skinned from their lifestyle.

Now, to be fair, the female lead is a tsundere. If you hate tsunderes, you may want to find something else to read. I quite liked Ai Fa, though, who is dealing with a lot. Her mother died years ago. Her father, after teaching her to hunt (which women don’t really do in their village) also dies, leaving her as the sole member of the family. Of the two big families in the village, one son tries to rape her (she fends him off) and the other tries to marry her to a second son (she declines). As such, she’s something of a pariah, going into the forest to kill food so she can survive. It’s no wonder that when she finds our hero Asuta, dressed as a chef, incredibly pale, and saying he’s from Japan, she’s inclined to want nothing to do with him. But he can cook, and that fact alone warms her up quite a bit. Plus, he’s nice and doesn’t try to take advantage of her. Well, except when he was sleeping and tried to eat her.

As noted above, Asuta is a nice guy, whose only real eccentricity is a tendency to overanalyze people by what they smell like. He’s here in this world with boar-like creatures and onion-like veggies and has to improvise, and a lot of the dialogue is cooking details. If you enjoy foodie manga, you might get a kick out of this. Aside from one scene that seems designed to provide fanservice involving a giant snake, there’s not really much skeeziness here. We also meet potential rivals for any romance, but honestly, Asuta and Ai Fa look pretty smitten with each other, so they’ll have to work really hard to top it. This title isn’t going to be winning any awards for excitement and adventure. But, like most good foodie manga, it brings a smile to your face when people eat the food, especially towards the end of the book. (Which does not end so much as stop – an epilogue may have been wiser than a side story.) I’ll be reading the next volume.

Koimonogatari: Love Tale

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By NISIOISIN and VOFAN. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc. Translated by Daniel Joseph.

Most fans of the series over here have long been spoiled, of course, but I imagine it must have been irritating to some Japanese readers, who have been teased in past books that this book will have Senjogahara’s narration and thought processes, bought the book with Senjogahara on the cover and interstitials, opened it up, and had Kaiki telling them they’ve been duped. Yes, this Love Tale is being told by Kaiki, last seen with a beard and talking with Kanbaru about her problems. This takes place about six months before that, however, and is the story of Senjogahara hiring him to help with her own problem – Sengoku and her death threat. Her god powers have meant that Araragi and Shinobu are getting nowhere in this regard, and Kaiki has saved Senjogahara’s life before – horribly so. And so Kaiki sets up to deceive Sengoku, something that he thinks will be a piece of cake after talking with her for ten minutes. But is that all just a lie?

After the deadly dullness that was Shinobu’s narration last time, I’m pleased to say that Kaiki’s narrative voice is excellent. He plays at being an arrogant jerk, but the cracks show through constantly, so that’s fine. It’s also fun to see Araragi’s life and surrounding people from the perspective of an adult not connected to him – Kaiki finds a lot of Araragi’s antics disturbing, and there’s a running gag of everyone in the book referring to Shinobu using, well, a derogatory nickname, I’ll leave it at that. Kissshot sure has fallen far. I also like to see him confused at things that the reader will get – “Swear to cat” is a good example. His discussions with Senjogahara range from hilarious to touching, and you sense him shying away from the true feelings she had for him back two years prior. It’s disappointing that we don’t get her narration (in fact, spoilers, we never will, not even some 15-odd books later), but her fans should be pleased, as there are many scenes in the book showing off how far she’s come since Araragi first caught her nine months before.

Kaiki starts the book by claiming that a good deal of it is a lie, but of course he may be lying there as well. We do get a lot more insight into Sengoku’s personality and why she is the way she is, though I do think she’s not quite as infantilized and simple as Kaiki makes her out to be – if nothing else, he underestimates her at the end, though attributes that to her inability to let anyone get close to her. The description of her home life strikes an interesting comparison to Hanewkawa’s – something Kaiki himself does when he meets Hanekawa 2/3 through the book. And, as with my review of Onimonogatari, I will skip over the best part of the book, the climax where Kaiki breaks Sengoku but also convinces her to step down as a god. It’s magical. The book should end happily for most people, but since Kaiki is narrating, and he’s a self-proclaimed “villain”, there’s one last sting in the tale.

In the end, this is one of the strongest volumes in the Monogatari series, with lots of great jokes, tons of dense prose, and some keen insight into human nature, filtered through the voice of a man who insists that we take nothing at face value. Great stuff. Next time we’ll focus on Ononoki, who gets some small scenes here (and has a new character tic, something she lampshades).

My Next Life As a Villainess! All Routes Lead to Doom!, Vol. 2

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By Satoru Yamaguchi and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Shirley Yeung.

When I was reviewing the 2nd and final volume of It’s My Fault That My Husband Has the Head of a Beast, I noted that it was a very open ending for a series that wrapped up there, not resolving much of anything. The 2nd volume of Bakarina has the opposite problem – unsuspecting readers who finish this book will definitely think it’s the final volume, which isn’t true. While none of the cast have been able to get their feelings through to the dense Katarina yet, the book takes us through to the end of the “Fortune Lover” game that her prior incarnation had been playing, and she successfully navigates it without getting a horrible Bad End. We even meet Maria Campbell, the actual heroine of the game, and she’s sweet and kind and also falls head over heels for Katarina, because of course she does. Problems are solved, tragic backstories ferreted out, and they all lived happily ever after and ate lots of snacks.

I will issue a word of warning: while there are still tons of hilarious parts to this volume, the second half of the book turns serious, and one of the backstories features sacrificial murder of a loved one. It’s not played for laughs at all, nor should it be. Katarina starts her school life, meets Maria and defuses any problems there by her love of sweet, and all seems to be well… except that the same things happen that occur in the game – Katarina is accused of being a terrible bully to Maria. Fortunately, in this world it’s not true, so this is rapidly defused, but it’s clear that someone is out to get Katarina. Someone with Dark Magic, which can control a person’s mind and also means they’ve killed to get it. The culprit is not exactly a mystery, frankly, but it’s handled quite well, especially as Katarina doesn’t have any foreknowledge of the events – her past self never got to the “hidden route” before she died.

Speaking of past lives, we find here that another of the main characters turns out to be a reincarnation, though she isn’t consciously aware of it. This allows Katarina, at a time of great peril, to get advice from her former friend who HAD played the game, and allows her to try to save the villain – because remember I said tragic backstory? Plus this is Katarina, and much as she may be silly and dense a lot of the time, she’s a kind and loving heroine, to an extreme. This means that she’s allowed to talk the villain down by simply saying that she’ll listen to him and she understands his pain. Bakarina is having fun with its heroine’s personality, but it’s not really subverting or deconstructing anything except perhaps the fact that literally everyone falls in love with her. She is 100% shiny and pure.

So with everyone living happily ever after, where does the series go from here? Well, they’re all still at school (though Nicol graduated, and time definitely seems to be moving faster than these sorts of books usually do), and this world may be based on a game but clearly isn’t actually a game, so I’m sure that something will come up. And maybe Katarina will realize the others’ feelings for her!… yeah, OK, no.