The Mythical Hero’s Otherworld Chronicles, Vol. 3

Leave a reply

By Tatematsuri and Ruria Miyuki. Released in Japan as “Shinwa Densetsu no Eiyū Isekai Tan” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by James Whittaker.

This is likely my final review of this series, but I want to assure everyone that it’s not for the usual reasons of “oh hey, this just became intolerably bad”. It’s more that this has simply not become a story I personally wish to read. I can see why others would want to read it, though. It’s very teenage boy. There’s a kickass guy with an eyepatch, taking out swathes of enemies by himself, with multiple girls as love interests, a couple of whom actively try to seduce him whenever they get the chance. It is, in other words, a light novel. The one drawback, and the reason I’m moving on, is that it’s so goddamn serious 90% of the time, I had picked this up as it had a lot of similarities to Altina the Sword Princess, which is on indefinite hiatus forever, but even Altina, which had some dark moments, was fairly lighthearted. This is just too straightforward. There’s no subversion, no meta, no in jokes. It’s a cool guy being cool.

After the events of the last book, Hiro and Liz are asked to come back to the palace to get even more accolades. For Liz this means command of an army, which goes out to quell someone or other. For Hiro is means a new job… a somewhat suspicious job. He’s asked to head north to Lebering, the kingdom to the north of the Empire. Hiro almost immediately finds himself caught up in a throne war while there, and needs to try to escape, save the crown princess who appears to be the one member of the royal family who is not dead or bloodthirsty, and try to quell a rebellion WITHOUT asking for help from the Empire – who would likely simply annex the kingdom and make it part of its own. Can Hiro pull all this off and still find time to pose dramatically?

There’s not a total lack of humor. Liz is by her very nature a fun character, even if she’s written as a bit too naive, and Rosa toes the line of being “the annoying sexy one” without ever actually going over it. The battle scenes are well-written, even if sometimes they go a bit too far into “we’ll write a lot of rape scenes offscreen to show that these are the EVIL soldiers”. The main issue is Hiro, who remains steadfastly uncompelling, despite being isekai’d from Japan *and* the old warrior Mars now come back to life. There are hints that he might get more interesting in future books, but the hints are that he might go down a darker, more amoral path, which are not hints I like. Even the big reveal at the end, which should have been more surprising, suffered because it was filtered through Hiro’s “of course, I knew all along” boringness.

If you’re the sort of person who enjoys those fanfics that rewrite Naruto or My Hero Academia with the hero being “darker and more badass”, this is a great book for you. But I just want something a bit *less* straightforward these days.

The 100th Time’s the Charm: She Was Executed 99 Times, So How Did She Unlock “Super Love” Mode?!, Vol. 1

1 Reply

By Yuji Yuji and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “99-kai Danzaisareta Loop Reijō Desu ga Konse wa “Chōzetsu Aisare Mode” Desutte!?: Shinno Chikara ni Mezamete Hajimaru 100-kaime no Jinsei” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Stephanie Liu.

This is a book which tries, and mostly succeeds, in striking a balance between what the reader is expecting to have happen and what would make more sense for the characters. I’ll be honest, I was expecting this to be a lot more cliched. For one thing, I assumed, like most other “yarinaoshi loop” titles, that we’d be going back a few years to try again – nope, there’s almost no time to do anything. But the way this ties into the multiple deaths is clever. Then I assumed that everyone involved was simply being a massive tsundere – which *is* true, but is not remotely the reason that she was executed 99 times. The one thing that was exactly as expected – and the weakest part of the book – is the antagonist, who like most light novel antagonists is not allowed to have shades of grey but has to be 100% evil and awful. Complete with pig noises. But… mostly good.

Princess Alphina has had a bad time of it lately. Accused of crimes she did not commit by the Saint of the country, and condemned to death by her fiancee, friends, family, and the emperor, she is summarily executed… and then has it happen again. And again. What’s worse, she usually rewinds back to right when she’s arrested, so there’s not even time to change the storyline. She attempts to prove her innocence. She attempts to escape. She attempts comedy. By now she is thoroughly sick of this. However, as she starts her 100th time reliving these same events, she now finds she can hear the inner thoughts of everyone around her! Will this allow her to finally escape the time loop and show who the real guilty party is? And does she even want to go back to being a princess?

This has both a well-known writer (the creator of OreShura, aka My Girlfriend and Childhood Friend Fight Too Much) and illustrator (the artist of My Next Life As a Villainess), so I shouldn’t be surprised that it reads well and the author knows how to land a gag. It’s predominately a funny series, for good and ill. The best part of it is Alphina, or Arle as she comes to call herself. Deciding to use her newly discovered magic powers to simply nope out of all of this drama is an excellent choice, and frankly I wish it had stuck. The various love interests she has all have inner monologues that verge on the ridiculous, which is the point, but always manage to stay on the funny rather than the annoying side. The exception, as I noted, is Debonaire, the saint, who is a boy-crazy egomaniac who doesn’t even have the decent excuse of being isekai’d from Japan, and whose theme is “pig squealing” for a laugh. It’s no surprise that, rather than surviving to be annoying another day like most good “heroine” villains, she’s butchered here.

This is getting a 2nd volume, though given that cover is “wedding” themed that may be it. I’ll read it. Fans of the genre might want to just ignore the “heroine” and enjoy the antics of the “villainess”, who’s a spunky tomboy princess who kicks ass.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By Teren Mikami and Eku Takeshima. Released in Japan as “Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Naijan, Muri Muri! Muri Janakatta!?” by Dash X Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by TNFWIBYLU Translation Team. Adapted by Harry Catlin.

I can understand the appeal of a title like this. It starts off badly, in my opinion, but around the second half of the book we start to get the actual character flaws that will become development. Its lead heroine is (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) intensely self-deprecating to the point where it’s almost her entire personality, and because she’s an introvert who has been unsuccessful at interaction in the past, she has a definition of “friends” that is vast and all-encompassing. The other heroine is the perfect , extroverted, and very forward rich girl whose personality masks a lonely life, and who also has minimal experience in real relationships, so comes on far, far far too hard. It’s the sort of story that can be developed pretty well over the next few books. That said… I have issues. The narrative voice. The lack of consent throughout (which is, to be fair, a plot point). The implied future plot.

Renako is having issues. She’s successfully managed to reinvent herself in high school as a normal, outgoing gal, and is part of a group of friends that includes the school idol, Mai. Unfortunately, she’s an introvert at heart, and all this interaction is too much. So she runs away to the roof… where Mai finds her, and for some reason assumes she’s trying to kill herself. Throwing herself towards Renako to stop her, both girls end up going off the roof. Fortunately, they are rescued by a passing tree. Unfortunately, Mai then confesses to Renako, saying that she wants to be her lover. This flummoxes Renako, who has no idea why the school idol would be interested in her. can’t they just be friends? You know, best friends?

So, my issues. Renako’s narrative voice is very, very panicky teenager, with a near constant repetition of the title words “no freaking way”. I was crying out for the book to switch to another point of view, but alas. Secondly, Mai has no sense of boundaries, being very explicit about what she wants to do with Renako and not backing off even when Renako demands she do so. This actually comes to a head near the end of the book, when Mai forcibly gropes Renako and Renako’s sister walks in, leading to a slap that was much needed. At this point the book begins to address this issue seriously, but that still leaves a lot of the start of the book, which is in “noncon is funny” mode. Lastly, the series is ongoing, and the subplots of this book, showing Renako interacting with the other members of their friend group, seem to imply a “harem” aspect to this series, with Renako as the unwitting object of multiple affections. This depresses me, as I’d much rather see Renako and Mai try to grow up and define what they have together, but instead suspect I will get “no freaking way” repeated a lot more.

So despite some whining on Twitter, this isn’t bad. It just has a lot of things I personally dislike. And, from what I hear, it’s certainly better than the author’s other yuri series. You might be better off reading the very similar Yuri Tama.