Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, Vol. 8

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By Sunsunsun and Momoco. Released in Japan as “Tokidoki Bosotto Russia-go de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matthew Rutsohn.

I’ve talked many times before about the stark contrast between the backstory of Masachika and Yuki and their family drama, the romantic plots with Alya and Maria both being in love with Masachika, and the wacky comedy shenanigans. The drama gets more attention this volume, and the shenanigans are confined to the middle of the book for the most part, and almost feel perfunctory. They read like the author watched a random anime and used that plot as the antics of the book. When I say “there’s a party with chocolates that have a small bit of alcohol in them”, the average fan could write the rest of that scene in their head and be 100% accurate except that it’s only one girl who gets drunk, not all of them. And there’s also an invented game that involves penalties, but since we already had the sexy antics earlier, these punishments are more just silly. The drama, though, is the main reason to get this.

The festival is over, but the aftermath of its events are still reverberating. Masachika’s mother was ill after his performance and had to go to the nurse’s office… and what’s more, Masachika found his father comforting her! Oh, and she’s also now sleepwalking. Masachika himself is filled with all-new self-loathing about his piano playing, which briefly impacts his ability to play until he gets some good advice which is basically “stop overthinking everything you do”. Oh, if only that advice would stick. As for Alya, well, she’s admitted that she’s in love with Masachika, at least to herself, and is briefly really, really happy. Can’t have that, of course. Enter Nonoa, who levels up here from minor supporting character to possibly the main antagonist of the entire series.

The big news here comes right at the cliffhanger for the book – Masachika is finally going to admit the truth about him and Yuki to Alya. This is good, because after overhearing him saying that Yuki will always be the most important person in his life, Alya has spent most of the volume dealing with agonizing unrequited love issues. These two are, frankly, very similar, which is why they’re such a good couple – or at least they will be, eventually, when the series is allowed to end. As for Yuki, she gets less to do here, but is also part of the cliffhanger. I’m not sure if her relapse will last longer than the next book, but it’s a reminder that she’s just as tied into the dark backstory as her brother, and is not simply about being a tease and making incest jokes. There is also a lot of Maria, of course, but even though she’s clearly deeply in love with Masachika, all her plots here are comedic. We know what that means.

And then there’s Nonoa, but let’s save her for another time. Till then, I enjoy wading through the most predictable comedy ever to get to the good bits.

Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!, Vol. 20

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By FUNA and Itsuki Akata. Released in Japan as “Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Tara Quinn. Adapted by Maggie Cooper.

One of the very first things I observed about this series, back in the first volume, is that it gives its heroine a supporting cast and then replaces with with another, seemingly similar supporting cast. Now, as the series has gone on, we’ve found that this works fine: the Wonder Trio, for all that they came first, are basically three very similar girls who are “upper class”, “middle class”, and “lower class”. Reina, Mavis and Pauline have been given far more opportunity to show off they are more than just that and also they are lunatics. As is Mile. The Wonder Trio can be a bit eccentric, but compared to our main girls they are common sense personified. That said, now that they’re here, they can help develop the main cast, as they are nearly perfect at everything – and Reina and Pauline, as it turns out, are not.

Our two groups have settled into their new country, and are able to easily fend off merchants who are trying to lowball them on jobs. That said, there is an elephant in the room: Mile has her fantastic Storage Magic. Mavis can now also use it. The Wonder Trio has Inventory, which they are quietly pretending is Storage. But Reina and Pauline, since they’re not Nanomachined up, are struggling. Perhaps… the problem is how they’re being taught? After this, everyone decides to take a quick trip back home to check in on folks, only to find that when you’re the heroes who saved the world, a lot can happen in the little hometown you came from. This hits Reina especially hard.

This was a solid volume, with the usual good points and bad points (Mile once again tells us how AWESOME child labor is if you’re an orphan). I liked how the difference between Mile’s teaching (teaching magic as it’s learned here, trying to convey the power of imagination) and Mavis’ methods of teaching (we must use the power of EMOTION and FEAR to make your storage POWERFUL!) and, as it turns out, this is exactly what Reina needs. She gets the climax of the book, which has some wonderfully black comedy (what’s happened to her parent’s graves in the interim) and some triumphant power-ups (about to be murdered when trying to save a group of children being sold into slavery, she unlocks her inner storage through the power of not wanting to die), and you really feel great for her. Pauline also gets some nice development (quiet, you) as she realizes that maybe, with the Crimson Vow’s weird party makeup, she needs to learn how to direct a battle rather than be the support.

All this plus our heroines asking each other about marriage and gradually realizing that they’re all gay (no, not really, but yes, really). FUNA fans will have a ball.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online: Invitation from Vivi

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By Keiichi Sigsawa and Kouhaku Kuroboshi, based on the series created by Reki Kawahara. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

After fourteen volumes, it has not escaped my attention that the volumes of GGO that I enjoy the most are the ones that do not have the words “Squad Jam” in the title. Possibly it’s because of their one-off nature, possibly it’s due to them being a change of pace, and possibly it’s because the Squad Jams all tend to combine a VRMMO game with the most annoying aspects of reality TV where we’re all watching waiting to see when they figure out who the traitor is. So this volume was always going to be starting off well for me. It finished well, too – this may be my favorite volume of the series to date. There’s some really cool game battles, lots of ludicrous things happen to Llenn, everyone’s reasonably funny, and there’s even a surprise or two. This may be Keiichi Sigsawa’s vanity project, but since we’re never getting his main project (thanks, Tokyopop), I’m cool with seeing him work his chops here.

After the events of the last Squad Jam, our core cast are celebrating in a virtual karaoke room when they get a request from David, the leader of MMTM. Vivi, the leader of the machine gun squad XEMAL, has issued a challenge, and if David wins he’ll get to meet her in real life. The challenge doesn’t say that he can’t invite others, so of course he’s turned to our girls, who are reasonably happy to help him with his live life – after all, this is just a game, so if they lose badly, it doesn’t mean anything. Miyu, aka Fukaziroh, is especially excited for this – she’s lost time and again to Vivi in ALO, and thinks she has a good guess as to who she is in real life. That said, first they have to clear Vivi’s challenge… which ends up being nearly impossible. Fortunately, they have a Llenn.

I’ve always been a fan of Fukaziroh as comedy relief, and we get a lot of that here, but this is a really fantastic volume for her in general. She gets to do clever and explosive things during the challenge, and her guess as to Vivi’s identity is… well, it’s wrong, but it’s only wrong by a very little bit. (There is also the joke that she and one of the machine gun players share a name, and will get married in the future, which makes me wonder if Sigsawa has been sitting on that for ages or if he just realized he used the same last name twice and decided to make it into a joke). As for Vivi, not spoiling too much, but this not only makes for a satisfying reveal, but also ties back into the main series. It can sometimes be hard to remember this takes place in the world of Kirito and company, and that VRMMOs can be used for reasons other than just having fun and shooting each other.

There’s no new volume in Japan yet, and if the author wanted he could probably end it here, but I suspect we’ll get another Squad Jam at some point. In the meantime, this is pretty much the series hitting on all cylinders.