Category Archives: reviews

Who Killed the Hero?, Vol. 1

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By Daken and toi8. Released in Japan as “Dare ga Yuusha wo Koroshita ka” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kim Morrissy.

It’s always hard to try to review a book whose very nature requires that the reader is surprised as it goes along. It’s even harder to do this when the book is excellent, as your review essentially amounts to “You’ve got to read this, it’s great!” “Why?” “I can’t tell you, spoilers!”. But here we are, and this book is great, so let’s settle down and try to do this. At its heart this book takes a long look at the fantasy standard “hero’s party goes to defeat the demon lord” cliche. There’s a prophecy, there’s the hero/swordsman/mage/healer party composition, there’s a promised reward of a royal daughter, and, inevitably, there’s a death. Because the book is called “Who Killed the Hero?”, I can at least talk about that. The death, in turn, leads the book and its cast to ask about the nature of the hero, why they have to defeat the demon lord when others cannot, and how a story can be turned on its ear by a simple investigation.

Four years earlier, the hero, Ares, led an elite team to defeat the demon lord. There was noble swordsman Leon, beautiful priestess Maria, and intelligent yet cynical mage Solon. They succeed… and yet, when they return, Ares did not come back with them, and they said that he perished on the return visit. Now someone is going around, getting the word on the street, talking to the other members of the hero’s party, as well as the prophet who made the prophecy about the hero in the first place, to try to figure out what happened. Because no one’s quite sure. Some say Ares was killed by a rogue demon. Some say the other members of the party killed him as there was a love triangle going on. And even the person who is going all around the capital trying to figure things out has their own agenda. What happened?

This is, by necessity, not a book with a large cast, and I enjoyed all the characters tremendously. My favorite was undoubtedly Maria, theoretically a girl devoted to God but in reality someone who will have a boy go and get her the “best” bread every day because it amuses her… only to be stunned when he actually manages to learn the things she was theoretically teaching him. I also was fond of the young princess, who listens to the hero say that he’ll defeat the demon lord, but he’s not coming back, and refuses to accept that. There are a lot of cynical people in this book, and it’s dealing, through almost its entirety, with a death. Despite that, I was amazed at how life-affirming and happy it is, and that once you get all the answers in the end even the one person whose life you assumed would end here ends up being forced into happiness.

There’s two more volumes of this, which seem to have a similar premise but a different cast. Similar to Brunhild the Dragonslayer, I think. In any case, despite not being able to give much away, this is a very rewarding book. Seek it out.

The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor, Vol. 7

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By Sasara Nagase and Mitsuya Fuji. Released in Japan as “Yarinaoshi Reijō wa Ryūtei Heika o Kōryaku-chū” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by piyo.

It’s sometimes very hard to separate this series, where a young woman decides to get engaged to the man who may one day try to destroy the world in order to change her own fate, and at every single turn of the page worry that she’s going to fail and the book will end with most of the cast dead and a BAD END screen, and not compare it to I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming the Final Boss, by the same author, which has the exact same plot. And both series also have an antagonist, someone who sets herself diametrically opposite our protagonist and does everything they can do fix things. It’s just been harder to spot it in Do-Over Damsel, as Faris just hasn’t shown us much. Fortunately, in this book we get to see her dealing with a very, very useless goddess (no, not that one), and also bond with Jill over a mutual enemy. It’s sweet. Also, it makes her evil at the end hit even harder.

Jill is headed off to the Lehrsatz Duchy for a meeting with Faris, the queen of Kratos. Hadis is staying behind, with one of the candidates to be his wife handling things on his end, and being better at it than Jill, much to her chagrin. Unfortunately, when they’re flying to the duchy, Jill decides to investigate a mysterious village that may be home to the Order of the Ark, a group of religious terrorists who wants the Gods dead. As it turns out, she then manages to get accidentally abducted by those same terrorists – accidentally as the ones they really want to abduct are Raw, presumably so they can control dragons… and Faris, who they have already abducted and who is near unconscious due to the anti-magic barriers surrounding her. Can Jill break them out and manage to get to the conference? And what will Hadis do when he hears about this?

This was supposed to be the short story volume. CIW says that it is still coming, but they did this volume first. I’m assuming that, unlike, say, Re: Zero or Index, this is not causing us to miss all sorts of nuance in this current volume. Not that nuance is something Jill is good at. Her strength is indeed her strength, as well as her temper, as she realizes the best solution is to simply punch everything until it stops. Again. Her weakness is that this isn’t good enough this time, and Faris, who seems to only have the strength to break her ditzy goddess spear, is much better at crafty plans that you cannot punch your way out of. Hence the cliffhanger. There’s also the usual “Jill gets jealous and mad, Hadis panics and feeds her to make up for it” wackiness – these two know each other really well by now. That was fun.

Will we get Vol. 8 next? Or short stories? And yes, I did deliberately leave out all the reveals near the end. A great series, assuming you can get past the premise, which is still hard to get past.

I Want to Be a Saint, But I Can Only Use Attack Magic!, Vol. 1

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By Fuyu Aoki and Bodax. Released in Japan as “Seijo-sama ni Naritai no ni Kougeki Mahou shika Tsukaenain desu kedo!?” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Kashi Kamitoma.

As I was about three minutes into the book, I joked that it should be called “Bocchi the Mage!”. Little did I know. There is a scene, with art to match, where Yuffie, the heroine of this novel, wears a party outfit to what turns out to be a standard noble’s ballroom party. It consists of big sunglasses, one a heart and one a star, and a T-Shirt saying Let’s Party. When you combine this with her hideous social anxiety and desire to abase herself, it’s really hard NOT to think of Bocchi. Or Monica, because she also gets invited to the student council, which feels very much like the one from Silent Witch. Unlike Monica, she’s only here to go to school and make a friend or two, if that’s possible for someone like her. Unfortunately for her, she lives in a world where magic is gender-binaried… and she’s just broken that binary.

Yuffie is a girl who lives in the middle of nowhere with her family, who aren’t abusive per se, but seem to be of the “why can’t you be like the normal children?” sort. She’s got crippling social anxiety, and her attempts to make friends have been laughably bad. When they team up for school activities, she’s always with the teacher. But she has a secret. When she was seven, she saw a saint using magic, and realized that’s what she wanted to be when she grew up. So she practiced magic. Every day. For seven years. By teaching herself. She manages to learn some healing magic… slow healing magic, but it’s there… and shows her parents, who say she should go to the magic academy! She’s delighted. Or horrified. One of those. See, she has a secret. She has immensely powerful attack spells like fireballs and lightning blasts. But… only men can use that sort of magic. It’s in their religion. Not good.

If seeing girls having a panic attack and debasing themselves constantly is not your thing… well, don’t skip the book, but you’ll need patience. Yuffie does get better by the end of the book, but it’s a long, painful road. She accidentally makes friends with most of the current student council. She’s trying to hide her attack magic, so the rest of the students and her teachers hate her. Oh yes, and it turns out that the demons are trying to attack humanity, starting with this school, and the only thing powerful enough to wipe them out is Yuffie. She self-taught herself magic so well she’s the most powerful attack magician in the country, and that means that it’s not – for once – just her paranoid fantasies,. she really COULD be imprisoned and experimented on. Fortunately, this school seems to mostly have good, if eccentric nobles. One seems to be a predatory lesbian, but it’s more of an “I’m taking her home with me!” cute fetish than anything sordid. Heck, even the bullying ojou-sama is almost immediately tamed by Yuffie’s apologies and delicious burdock roots.

This is not a must-read, but if you can get past Yuffie’s complete mess of a self-image, it’s a decent power fantasy, though it’s not so much a trans allegory as just another “what if I were OP as hell?” fantasy.