Category Archives: reviews

I Shall Survive Using Potions!, Vol. 1

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By FUNA and Sukima. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Garrison Denim.

This was honestly not at all what I expected. I expected this series to be a very ‘slow life’ sort. The heroine would be reincarnated in another world, start a potion shop, get a couple of assistants, etc. Kind of like Killing Slimes for 300 Years, that sort of thing. This is 100% not that sort of series. Kaoru is not interested in a quiet life, just a life with freedom. Like Katarina from My Next Life as a Villainess, she has “evil eyes”, i.e. the sort that slant up, and wherever she goes she changes the lives of people around her. But Katarina is a sweetie pie, whereas Kaoru is more of a tactical nuclear missile. As the book moves from place to place, and Kaoru and her potions affect more and more people, the reader’s jaw begins to drop as to what will happen next. And woe betide the evil baron or sketchy gate guard who gets in the way of a really good plan. Kaoru is here for one reason alone: Kaoru.

A brief summary: Kaoru is a 20-something OL who’s on her way home on the train when she literally EXPLODES and dies. This is the fault of higher beings who were trying to do something else and she got caught up in it. They offer to reincarnate her in a medieval-style world, and she proceeds to ask/blackmail them into giving her a LOT of things. Language skills, a box of infinite holding, etc. And the ability to create any potion she can think of, along with containers for same. The kicker here is that she thinks she’s going to be in a standard light novel fantasy world. But no, there’s no magic here beyond dragons, and it’s more ‘hunting’ than ‘adventuring’. As such, when Kaoru uses her potions to heal a gravely wounded hunter, the general reaction is “WHAAAAAAAAAT?”. Now Kaoru finds herself moving from kingdom to kingdom, getting involved, healing people with potions, and trying to live a free life.

There are so many light novels out there that are male power fantasies, where the hero gets a harem of slave girls, awesome adventurer powers, etc. that it’s weird to read a female power fantasy like this. Most of the other series we’ve seen over here with female protagonists (including Make My Abilities Average!, by the same author as this) tend to have them as nice girls who are “plucky”. Kaoru is not that sort of heroine, and is almost anti-plucky. Occasionally she is in mild danger, such as when she’s captured by the evil nobles who want to get her potion abilities, but she’s got a plan, which involves knocking out the maid, dressing up as her, stealing the entire room, and walking out. (The poor maid eventually gets her dress back, and we’re reassured is not beaten or anything.) That said, most of the people whose lives Kaoru makes miserable are men, and sometimes you get the feeling she’s going out of her way to be awful to them. That said, she really does help a number of people suffering from grievous injuries, rich or poor. As well as, um, de-aging a female knight who’s too old to get married so she can try again.

By the end of this book I was enjoying it quite a bit. I will warn that it may make some readers uncomfortable. Kaoru is a lot to take, and can tease men or destroy their lives at a whim. But then, that’s what it means to live the free life, rather than the slow life.

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).