From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman: My Hotshot Disciples Are All Grown Up Now, and They Won’t Leave Me Alone, Vol. 6

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By Shigeru Sagazaki and Tetsuhiro Nabeshima. Released in Japan as “Katainaka no Ossan, Kensei ni Naru: Tada no Inaka no Kenjutsu Shihan Datta noni, Taisei Shita Deshitachi ga Ore o Hōttekurenai Ken” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

This is getting an anime pretty soon (in two days, in fact), so it’s interesting to see this volume coming out right before it, as it’s essentially starting a new arc for the series. The last volume brought to a close a lot of Beryl’s issues with his dad, and he’s now come to the conclusion that hey, maybe he *is* pretty strong after all. That said, baby steps. He still struggles with his self-deprecation coming to him automatically through this book. And in regards to his quest for a wife, he’s going to have to get past the “no one could possibly find an old geezer like me attractive” stage to get anywhere. He also straight up says that he’s not going to have any of his former students as bridal candidates, which is essentially EVERYONE to date. So it’s unsurprising that we get a new girl introduced here to offer an alternative.

After dropping by the magical academy to see how the sword magic classes are going, Beryl is called into Allucia’s office. They have to go to the estate of Margrave Flumvelk, who is holding a gathering to celebrate Beryl’s accomplishments to date. Beryl is understandably his usual self about this, but he also knows he can’t refuse a request for a noble, so he, Allucia, and a bunch of knights spend a couple weeks traveling out there. When he arrives, he finds that the margrave is one of his old students, and Allucia’s classmate. He also has a younger sister, Shueste, who he wants to have at Beryl’s side in order to fend off nobility who have designs on Beryl, is gorgeous and clever, and pairs really nicely with Beryl… much to the annoyance of Allucia.

This book is OK, but I have some issues. All the action and drama is backloaded into the last 4th, making it feel like the author had a different ending and was told to change it. We’re introduced to two knights to guard Beryl and Allucia, and one is almost killed, but they both have zero personality between the two of them. They cried out for a side story. More to the point, they do address the elephant in the room here, which is Beryl marrying someone. Warren, the margrave, admits to Allucia that he’d be happy with Beryl marrying his sister… but would also be fine with Beryl marrying Allucia. The key is that Beryl is getting older, and they want someone to carry on the line. I’m not fond of “my awesome sword abilities are genetic” stories, even though, in a world with magic like this, it may be entirely possible. Then again, merely getting Beryl to have sexual desires may be too big a hurdle.

So now we have a whole new subplot with new villains to dig into. The next book promises to finally bring back the adventurer who was one of the harem in Book 1 and then vanished. We’ll see if the anime can bump it up a bit as well.

Victoria of Many Faces, Vol. 2

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By Syuu and Nanna Fujimi. Released in Japan as “Tefuda ga Ōme no Victoria” by MF Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andria McKnight.

The first volume of this series felt very self-contained, but left open the possibility of a sequel hook for the second book. A sequel hook that remains open, because it’s not used here. Instead, this book takes place five years later, with Victoria, Jeffrey and Nonna returning from fantasy China, and is content to do much the same thing the first one did. It divides its time nicely between Victoria having slice-of-live vignettes around the city, reconnecting with the cast of the first book, and raising her daughter to be a wonderful noble girl. This is contrasted with the other half of the book, which is Victoria as spy: she can’t help but decode an ancient book, which reveals the location of a hidden secret, and she’s attacked about five different times in this book, all of the attacks very unsuccessful – she’s not even injured. But the most important part of this book is seeing how Victoria has raised her daughter to be a lovely bundle of terror.

As noted above, Victoria and her family are back in Ashbury, five years after the first book. Nonna is now twelve years old, and has spent the last five years learning Shenese martial arts, which now take up most of her time – when she hears she’s going to be reuniting with Clark, she’s far more interested in showing off her cool kung-fu moves than to talk to a boy who has now grown into a man (with a clear crush on a twelve-year-old – I’ll ignore that for the moment given that in Book 1 he was 12 and she was 6 and it was more cute). She also meets back up with Mr. Bernard, who shows her a rare copy of The Lost Crown a famous adventurer story. This one seems to have some odd typography, and Victoria and Bernard wonder if it’s actually a cipher. This mystery leads to further mysteries which take up the back half of the book.

The best selling point of the book is how matter of fact it is – both Victoria and Nonna are absolutely deadly in a fight, and neither of them are remotely challenged by any of the thugs who attack them in this volume. What’s more, the only real criticism of her daughter following her into a deadly situation and taking out all the thugs with her mother is that she was acting a little too chuuni when she did it. Honestly, the matter of factness even extends to one of the subplots, where the reader (and Nonna to, to be fair) keeps expecting Victoria or her family to win over the heart of the plucky foreign teen they rescued from her country’s outskirts, but we find that in fact the plucky foreign teen is in fact a crook who falls in with a bad crowd and is not in fact redeemed by the power of good thoughts. Sometimes you can’t really do anything about that.

As with the first book, this one ends feeling like it’s the end of the series, but there’s a third in the series out in Japan, so we/’ll see if someone can actually break through the defensive badassery of mother and daughter. This is still a great series.

Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools, Vol. 9

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By Hisaya Amagishi and Kei. Released in Japan as “Madougushi Dahlia wa Utsumukanai” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by A.M. Cola.

It’s been a while since we saw the last volume of Dahlia, long enough for me to think that Lucia was the real protagonist and Dahlia was a mysterious side character. But there’s a big difference between Lucia and Dahlia. Lucia may be self-effacing, but she recognizes her own talent and can take an actual compliment. Whereas to Dahlia, taking credit for anything is like being asked to walk over hot coals. We’ve joked about the slow burn between Dahlia and Volf, which at this point may be less slow burn and more a fire that has had water poured over it, but frankly, there’s no way it can go anywhere right now. Not because Dahlia is a commoner – that’s taken care of here – but because Dahlia has no sense of her own worth at all. Which may be partly Tobias’ fault, yes, but could also be due to Carlo, as his desire to protect his daughter seems to have left his daughter thinking she’s TOO ordinary.

As I hinted above, Dahlia’s commoner days will soon be over – she’s getting a barony. As is Jonas, who is equally surprised. This means that she’ll also need to make her noble debut, which will mean… shudder… conversing with others. And dancing. She’d much rather work on magical tools, thanks you, or at least spend her evenings eating delicious food and getting drunk with her bestie Volf, who is so gorgeous but doesn’t see her in a romantic light at all. Right. Dahlia’s lack of perception has never been more annoying. She also gets a tour of the magical tool facility, where she would likely be working if she had enough magic… and the residents of said facility quickly realize that ‘a lot of magic’ is not the be-all and end-all of being brilliant. She’s also helping to bring together different guilds to make better products… really, is there anything Dahlia can’t do? Other than understand her own heart?

There is a genre of Japanese novels where an overworked office worker in a horrible environment dies and ends up in a fantasy world, usually while bemoaning the horrible work standards they have to deal with in modern-day Japan. It’s a typical type of escape. This is its counterpart, where you invent a world where everyone wants to work, work, WORK SO HARD. The heads of the company have to tell their employees to work less. There are literal hypnotic machines designed to force people who have been staying up too much to sleep. What’s more, when you see people that are working incorrectly, or being uncaring or callous, there’s an easy solution. Just add Dahlia, who with a few words and frantic hand waving that it wasn’t anything she did really denials, you can move mountains and get the lions to lie down with the lambs. Or the shoemakers to lie down with the magical tool makers. Honestly, dying and reincarnating as a villainess may be a lot more realistic.

That said, as the “extra” story shows this time around, we may have to do more than just get Dahlia to be noble and somehow hook her up with Volf. She’s special, and it’s only a matter of time before her specialness impacts the plot a lot more than it is now. But till then, please have some nice food, some wonderful alcohol, and for dessert, modesty that is so ridiculous it’s become a literal Tragic Flaw.