Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, Vol. 8

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By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

I do appreciate Nia Liston really committing to its best running gag, which is that every time Nia watches a fight and is vaguely impressed by its fighters, she has to come in with a variation on the old phrase “I could beat them with one hand tied behind my back”. She’s simply so far over everyone else in this series that even now, as she watches people battle to see who is the strongest among 10,000 different fighters, she’s still not able to find anyone who could truly present a challenge to her. And indeed we see she’s not merely full of it, as at the end of this volume we see her facing off against two “heroes” whose job it is to be the best, and she has to hold back in case she breaks their legendary weapons. She is, frankly, terrifying. Which is why she spends most of this volume doing color commentary for the actual fighters.

The preliminaries are done, and so it’s time for the tournament itself. Well, after the “loser’s round”, which sees those who were knocked out get another chance to win their way back into the fight. Nia and her friends spend the time covering the fight itself, and she also gets to see her brother Neal start his own Junior Wingroad team as an added attraction. That said, most of what we get here are some really good fights… as well as some instant wins, because there’s a new clause: no one is allowed to be magically healed if they win, only bandages. This results in a lot of folks being too injured to go on. And of course some of our main characters are in the underworld, and are suddenly finding themselves on live TV. Some respond by making a deal to cut and run, and others respond by getting TOO famous to quietly murder.

The drawback to this volume is that there’s no suspense whatsoever. I kept wondering if one of Nia’s students would get a surprise loss, but no, she’s simply trained them so well that it doesn’t happen. The toughest fight is between Lynokis, in her Leeno disguise, and Gandolph, and they’re basically exactly who we expected to see there. (Well done to Gandolph for not dying, though he needed Nia’s help to avoid that.) Likewise in the weaponed fights category, it was pretty much going to have to be Anzel, both because the mob was betting on him and made it clear he had to win, and also because if he wants to avoid getting immediately arrested or killed, winning a tournament and making himself famous is a good solution. And a good time was had by all, the tournament is a success. Back to everyday life.

Or not, as we get a surprise cliffhanger ending as Nia is in a pinch! My guess is this is just “I want a change of setting for the new arc”, but I do wonder if any of the other regular cast will appear. In any case, girl punch good.

Re: ZERO ~Starting Life in Another World~, Vol. 28

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By Tappei Nagatsuki and Shinichirou Otsuka. Released in Japan as “Re: Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Dale DeLucia.

I think I’ve started to figure out why it’s harder to get into this arc compared to previous arcs, and it’s not just that 4/5 of the cast is new or we’ve only seen them in spinoffs. The problem is that Re: Zero’s plot is supposed to be, in part, a throne war. Emilia, Crusch, Priscilla, Anastasia and Felt are all vying to be the new leader. Unfortunately, we’ve now thrown that aside to get ourselves involved in another throne war next door, and… well, OK, maybe it *is* the fact that we don’t really know 4/5 of the cast. Now, some of them are becoming better known to us – I’ve really come to love Medium, and I hope nothing terrible happens to her. But for the most part the plot of this book is to have Priscilla save the day, but the enemy gets away, so they move on to the next location. Subaru describes it like an RPG and he’s not wrong. It’s a tad dull.

As hinted in the cliffhanger of the last book, when all seems lost and Arakiya is about to massacre everyone, Priscilla (and Al) arrive to, if not save the day, at least distract her enough to be subdued. Unfortunately, before she can be interrogated, our least favorite mercenary breaks her out. So they’ve taken the city but are otherwise back at square one. And Priscilla certainly isn’t here to help – anyone who has met her knows that. They need to prove that Abel can actually gain real allies, which means one of the nine demon generals. Unfortunately, one of them is so unreliable no one wants to deal with them, one of them is the enemy they just had escape, and one of them is the one who actually instigated the coup. So they’re going to The Chaotic Demon City to try to talk to one of the others… only they’re not the only ones there.

The good thing about Re: Zero is that while the overall plot may annoy and bore me, individual scenes can still be absolute dynamite. When he’s checking on Rem, and describing what happened to her, she points out, quite sensibly, that he’s taking too much on and that he doesn’t need to be a hero. To Subaru, however, who only moved forward thanks to Rem’s words in the 3rd arc, this is the worst POSSIBLE thing she could have said, and it briefly devastates him. I also enjoyed “Natsumi” being more formal while in the carriage with Al, because frankly the two of them sound too similar – it not only helps the author to differentiate between them, but helps to remind us that a lot of Subaru coping is his taking on a role, be it for himself or others. He keeps justifying being in drag throughout this book, and no one really buys it except him.

The cliffhanger suggests we don’t need to worry about Natsumi for a while now. That said, I warn you – this cliffhanger is one of the most contentious parts of this arc, and it will not go away anytime soon. Five more to go!

Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived, Vol. 4

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By Masekinokatasa and Kaito Shinobu. Released in Japan as “Tenseishitara Koutei deshita: Umarenagara no Koutei wa Konosaki Ikinokoreru ka?” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jason Li.

Those who know my reviews by now could probably guess that I would find writing about this volume difficult. It is, after all, a massive medieval battle, complete with little maps showing the position of the troops and everything. This is still a book of “let’s sit down and explain politics, economics, ad history”, but now we get “warfare” in there as well. Still, buckle down, I will get through this. After all, that’s what Carmine has to do. His “reincarnated from Japan” doesn’t help him quite as much when it comes to things like this, and after all the Emperor should not be fighting one-on-one anyway. Carmine is going to have to set back and let other people fight so that he can survive. And that’s hard for him to sit still and just watch happen. Fortunately, he can occasionally duck into secret night sabotage, but near the end, when all seems lost, he has to ignore everyone around him and take up a sword himself.

Carmine and his troops are headed into battle against Duke Raul’s forces, and they have clever plans to ensure victory. Well, sort-of-clever. Plans that don’t hold up against actual medieval problems like the fact that measurements haven’t been standardized yet. Or the fact that it doesn’t matter how many commoners you trick into fighting for you if they’re too scared to actually go in for the kill when it matters. Or, and thanks to the blurb for this book for spoiling it, the fact that the enemy army is twice the size of Carmine’s own. Fortunately, there are certain advantages they have – the mana batteries, Carmine’s own magic, which will allow him to sabotage the enemy cannons, and of course Vera-Sylvie, who has stopped being a shy maiden who finds it hard to speak in a tower and has leveled up into being a shy maiden who finds it hard to speak but is a magical powerhouse. That said… the actual battle can’t be predicted.

Vera-Sylvie did pretty well, though this clearly is not somewhere she wants to be. It is, though, exactly where Nadine wants to be, and it has to be said, if Rosaria, Nadine, and Vera-Sylvie are all going to end up with Carmine (and this book points us even more to the fact that this is going to happen), They’re very good at balancing each other out. They even get along – Nadine warns against Carmine making Rosaria sad as a threat. Mostly as no one trusts Carmine not to try to fix things himself at the possible cost of his life. Carmine would say that he rushes in to fix things himself because he wants to live longer – he explicitly says here that he does not care at all about what happens to the Empire after he dies, as he’ll be dead and won’t care. Everything is for the Carmine of now to live as long as possible.

Which means that cliffhanger is just rude. Fortunately, that can be solved by looking at the cover art for the next volume, which if nothing else should give me something to write about.