Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By Hiromu and raemz. Released in Japan as “Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Evie Lund.

Manga and light novel trends tend to feel into each other, with parodies, homages, and deconstructions of the hot new thing happening three years later and becoming the next hot new thing. Nowhere is this more apparent than the halls of Gagaga Bunko, home to the cover art where every series looks exactly the same. Gagaga, I’m sure, must also have fantasy and isekai titles… but those aren’t licensed here. Instead we started with My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, where a cynical so-called loner psychoanalyses the nature of high school cliques. Then we saw Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki, easily the most popular of the subgenre of “the popular kids can even turn you, a loser, into one of their own”. And now we get Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle, where the main character IS the popular kid, and you will be surprised and shocked that he too has something to say on the nature of popular kids and high school cliques. Everyone’s riffing on someone else.

No, that’s not Chitose on the cover – Chitose Saku is our hero, a handsome cool high school kid who enjoys school and hanging out with his equally popular friends. He has several girls who are interested in him. He’s almost immediately made class president. He’s living the good life. And now he has a job to do, as the teacher has asked him to try to get Kenta, an otaku nerd type, to come back to school – he’s stopped going after getting shut down by a girl he confessed to. Chitose goes along with this, managing to get Kenta out of his room with a nice combination of encouragement, hot girl and good old fashioned violence. But Kenta, who whines about how Chitose gets everything handed to him and an easy life as a popular kid, decides to show Kenta how to actually make an effort.

As you can see, this synopsis bears more than a little resemblance to Tomozaki (Kenta is even named Yamazaki), and we do indeed get the “let’s shop for clothes that are not otaku schlub” and “here is how to actually converse with another person” scenes. At the same time, it also mocks that trend of “self-help” books as unrealistic, showing how difficult it can be to try to change your image and personality and not immediately get attacked. There’s a whole lot of jerks in this book, and the way Chitose and his friends handle them is a good look at “don’t punch down”. As for Chitose himself, he’s a protagonist who cries out for more than one book, so it’s a good thing this won an award and got a series. There’s hints of his past as well as his need to live up to his reputation that might get darker in later books. But overall, he and his friends are very likeable, fun people. If you’re reading this as you heard it was “romcom starring the popular kids”, you won’t be disappointed.

I will note that Chitose can come across – deliberately, he’s clearly doing it on purpose – as smug much of the time, and this may grate on readers who are more used to cynical sad sack narrators. That said, I am very curious to see how this handles being an ongoing series and how much we can peel back Chitose’s hero complex.

Goodbye Otherworld, See You Tomorrow: The Traveled Path and the Box of Hope

Leave a reply

By Kazamidori and Nimoshi. Released in Japan as “Sayonara Isekai, Mata Kite Ashita” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by MPT.

There’s a wonderful moment in this book where someone points out to Keisuke one of the big reasons that he’s constantly identified as someone from another world, and it’s because he actually has optimism and positivity despite the fact that the world has ended. It’s an important thing to have, especially going forward as there are fewer and fewer people. Fortunately, that’s not quite true, as Keisuke coming into her life has made Nito a massive ball of sunshine and cuteness, to the point where it’s practically weaponized to use against the rest of the cast in this book. That said, the book is not all good times and fluffiness. As you read you will feel a war going on between positivity and hope on the one hand, and melancholy and regrets on the other. One side does win, but it’s a struggle, and while we don’t have suicide attempts like the first book, this book has some people who have mostly given up on life.

While the previous book had Keisuke and Nito traveling around to various places and interacting with the folks they find there, this book mostly centers around one area. Arriving at a village temple, they stay there for a few days with the old woman who cleans it when she’s not busy running her shoe workshop. Also there is Charolles, a young woman who is searching for the ending of an incomplete book that she once read. A little ways away, in a more built-up area, is a theater containing Paula, a wannabe dancer, and Jill, a very shy singer, as well as Monty, a guinea pig the size of a man who smokes a pipe. Naturally, over the course of this book, Keisuke and Nito find that all these characters have pasts with each other in some way, and are also consumed by fears. There’s only one way to solve this: have a festival!

There is some terrific trans representation here, with the reunion of Paula and Fago hitting the reader hard. I also enjoyed seeing the terminally introverted Jill force herself to interact with the others and even sing in public in order to help Paula. That said, my favorite character here was Charolles, who gets the most screen time and also most of the art within the book. (I was vaguely annoyed we did not get art of Paula and Jill.) Charolles’ journey is very similar to Nito’s, but she’s older and more cynical, and she’s the one who I was most worried about finding dissolved in a pile of crystals by the end of the book. Fortunately that does not happen, but she also very pointed does not join Keisuke and Nito on their travels (possibly sensing their relationship is a lot more romantic than either wants to say.) I hope things work out for her.

This volume has an open ending, but there’s no more volumes out in Japan, so if it does continue it will be a while. Still, I definitely recommend it. Great characters, great moody writing, and emotional.

Private Tutor to the Duke’s Daughter: Creating a New Legend with the Unbeatable Lady of the Sword

Leave a reply

By Riku Nanano and cura. Released in Japan as “Koujo Denka no Kateikyoushi” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by William Varteresian.

This book does not particularly advance much of the plot we saw in the first volume, and in fact reads a bit like “oh crap now it’s a series what do I do”, but I don’t think I care because this was so much fun to read. Apologies to the titular duke’s daughter, Tina, but Lydia is a delightful ball of tsundere cliches. We only saw a bit of her in the first book, but here she’s in full flower, bullying Allen, attacking him, defending him, beating nobles to death for him, and generally doing everything except saying “I-it’s not like I did it for you or anything!”. Wait, no, she does that too. Tina and Ellie, joined by Lydia’s little sister Lynne, are clearly infatuated with Allen, but they’re starting from so far back in the race that it’s kind of sad. And yes, I realize that a series like this is setting itself up to have Tina as the winning girl, but I’m not sure, at this point, how that is going to happen.

Allen is faced with a bit of a dilemma this volume. Lydia is having her ceremony to welcome her as a royal sorcerer at the same time that Tina and Ellie are having THEIR opening ceremony at the academy. There’s really no good way out of that (get used to me saying that about Allen and his romantic dilemmas), but he chooses the academy. There we meet his younger sister Caren, who only has a bit of a brother complex, and Tina’s older sister Stella, who has spent years proving her family wrong and making a name for herself at school only to have Tina waltz in and be better at everything. I expect her to snap and turn evil in Book 3 or 4. Unfortunately for Allen, without him at Lydia’s side, her investiture has gone to hell in a handbasket. the second prince, who is the reason why Allen is not also a royal sorcerer, has returned to claim what he feels is his, and… yikes.

Lydia may spend most of this book rather angry, as fits her character type, but it’s not without cause. The second prince is a cartoon villain, the sort of arrogant snot that has a face made for punching. Indeed, one of the climactic battles has as its main difficulty NOT killing him, as a living prince who can answer for starting it all in the first place is vastly preferable to a dead prince who will just lead to exile form the kingdom. But Lydia also has more important things to worry about. Allen seems far too close to Tina, as well as her sister, and let’s not leave out dark horse Ellie, who gets more head rubs than anyone else. Hell, even Lydia’s MOTHER is hitting on him constantly. Fortunately, Allen may still have the sexuality of a bowl of cold oatmeal, but even he knows that Lydia is in love with him. He’s just ignoring that.

Allen’s headspace may make this book too annoying for harem fans (who will also dislike Lydia’s cliched tsundere ways), but I find it equally hilarious. And we even get the standard head maid/assassin/spy” type here. Despite the presence of multiple 13-year-olds hitting on our hero, this series is simply hella fun.