The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, Vol. 3

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By Hirukuma and Namako. Released in Japan as “Murazukuri Game no NPC ga Namami no Ningen to Shika Omoe Nai” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns. Adapted by Aysha U. Farah.

I imagine that a dream that a lot of mystery writers have is to be able to write a book that’s all mystery and no solution, where you can just coast on being cool and baffling the reader. For the first two volumes of The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, that’s pretty much where we’ve been with each book giving us a few hints here and there but making up for it with exciting battle scenes, heartwarming character development, and awesome lizards. Unfortunately, we only get two of the three in this third volume, as the rest of Yoshio’s family and his childhood friend-turned-wannabe-girlfriend are shuffled to the side so that he and Carol can figure out what the heck is going on. The result is… I dunno, it’s explained well enough, I just really didn’t like it. Then again, I’m not sure, with this kind of setup, there was an answer that I *would* like.

After surviving the attack from his co-worker and Player Two, Yoshio now has to deal with the fact that Carol has, through the power of the Gods, managed to mail herself to him. Fortunately, his family is away the next few days, and Seika is giving him at least a bit of the benefit of the doubt. That said, he not only needs to get her back into the “game”, but also figure out what’s going on. This is not helped by other people continuing to attack him, as a hit has been put out: attack Yoshio and get the Book of the Gods and Carol, and get a big reward. So he’s got to try not to get killed, protect Carol, and find the creators of the game, who are in a small town in Hokkaido. When he finally gets there, the answer is not what he expected. More importantly, though, can he get Carol back to her game world? Did anyone else survive that last monster rush? And can Yoshio protect them himself?

I don’t want to get too deep into the mystery reveals that we get here, but I think the main issue is that I find it a bit tonally jarring with the rest of the series. It feels as if the author decided to take some characters from another series they’re working on and have them make an appearance as the cause of everything we’ve seen. Which is fine, and I’m sure that series has lots of yuri antics from what we see here, but it feels like it has nothing whatsoever to do with Yoshio and his struggles. His journey has been so personal in the first two books that it doesn’t work when he’s meant to sit there and passively hear what’s going on from a third party. I admit I was amused, though, when Yoshio has to explain that no, he actually does NOT want to stay in the other world with cool powers, he just wants to go home and confess to his long-suffering sweetheart. (We don’t get to see that either, also to my irritation.)

The author hints that if this is popular enough there might be more, but there’s no more of the webnovel it was based on, and I suspect this is it. It’s a bit of a misstep, in my opinion, but those who enjoyed the first two should still read it.

Housekeeping Mage from Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home!, Vol. 1

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By You Fuguruma and Nama. Released in Japan as “Kasei Madoushi no Isekai Seikatsu: Boukenchuu no Kasei Fugyou Uketamawarimasu!” by Ichijinsha Bunko Iris NEO. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Elanor Sakamoto.

Sometimes, when you have a story you want to tell, you have to remember to tell it and not get distracted by other things. Indeed, sometimes the other things are completely unnecessary. You want to have an isekai with a love story between your heroine and a handsome adventurer, but urgh, isekai. That means you have to do the whole “why have you been summoned here/level up” stuff. But… do you NEED to have all that? As for your heroine, there’s a long sequence where she gets involved with the wrong party and is slowly ground down until she’s damn near suicidal. It’s needed setup for the romance to come… but do you NEED to have all that? Flashbacks are your friends! By jettisoning its tragic backstory to the very start of the book and keeping it in flashback, and by having the isekai be reduced to “it just happened, no reason”, the author of Housekeeping Mage is able to focus on telling the story they want. And that’s a good thing.

After a brief “I’m walking home from my grueling office lady job oh hey, isekai whooooosh” prologue, we meet our hero, Alec, an adventurer who’s just gotten back from a long job away from the capital. This means he has not met the capital’s new adventurer Shiori, whose magic power is minimal but who makes up for it in brilliant technique. No one is sure how she ended up there, at first unable to even speak their language. However, they know that when they take her on a multi-day quest, they get hot meals, hot baths, and reasonably soft beds, plus laundry service. Alec is, frankly, smitten pretty fast. There’s just one problem. Shiori was with a party previously who treated her like… well, like a maid, and drained her of her will to live… then abandoned her in a dungeon when forced to by greedy nobles. Frankly, Shiori has PTSD. But Alec, who has his own secret past and his own tragic backstory, wants to get to know her better anyway.

The book tries very hard to not have this be “Magical Maid”, to the point where her first party that does treat her like that are held up as the scum of the earth. (I was expecting to meet them towards the end of the book, but no, though they may show up later.) The rest of our main cast are quick to emphasize not only that what Shiori’s doing is a huge mental and physical help to adventurers, but also that it requires a fine technique that few mages possess – her mixing of different spells works for her because she DOESN’T have huge amounts of mana, those with more would likely be unable to do it. And later on she saves the day with both housekeeping knowledge AND knowledge from Japan. That said… Shiori is pretty broken in this first book. Alec realizes that, I think, and pursues her firmly but slowly, waiting for her to start to open up to him. Which she does, eventually.

There’s more of this in Japan, though as of this review the second book hasn’t begun on J-NC’s site. If you enjoy isekai written for women, or shoujo romance, this is a definite must read. It doesn’t skip the boring bits per se, but they’re shuffled to the side or left for dessert.

Dragon Daddy Diaries: A Girl Grows to Greatness, Vol. 3

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By Ameko Kaeruda and Sencha. Released in Japan as “Totsuzen Papa ni Natta Saikyou Dragon no Kosodate Nikki: Kawaii Musume, Honobono to Ningenkai Saikyou ni Sodatsu ” by GC Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Nathan Macklem.

This series, and really all series that star protagonists who start out as the strongest in the land and stay that way, has a basic problem: there’s really not a lot of places for their growth to occur. The titular dragon daddy has an advantage here over his daughter as he’s still learning about how humans (and indeed demons) react to things and what their value systems are. But Olivia… sigh. I love this series, but if it has a weak point it’s Olivia, who is the best kid and the most powerful kid and not much else. She can’t really start the drama. She can’t make mistakes. The most she can do here is to suggest that their quest for magical items amount to a summer visit to her friend’s houses, because no one has any idea where these items are. Fortunately, we do have a character in this book who screws up all the time and it a bit of a mess. She shines here.

School’s out for summer, but the Queen has a project for Olivia and her father. There are several magic artifacts that need to be drained every 30 years or so, with the added bonus of granting a wish. Unfortunately, almost all of them have been missing for about a thousand years. They need to be found, despite no one knowing anything about them. So Olivia visits all her friends, and one by one she and her father see different sorts of miscommunication between parents and their children and teaching them a valuable lesson. It’s actually pretty heartwarming. Meanwhile, our resident Dark Queen is… sulking in her castle, wanting to hang out with everyone but also wanting to be a lazy shut-in. That said, she also has an idea where one of the magical googaws is… but it would involve returning to the demon realm and facing her comeuppance.

I’ve said before that I enjoy the wacky antics of Maredia and Clowria, but I enjoyed them even more here when things got more serious. OK, only a tiny bit more serious – we meet the rest of Maredia’s family, and it turns out they’re all chuuni NEET shut-ins just like her. But a lot of the behavior that she’s been trapped in a vicious cycle for was brought on by crushing expectations from the demon world, and she blames herself for failing them all. The trial that the ruler of the demon world must pass is in two stages, and the first is easy, as she elects to take it with her friends, two of whom are well-nigh indestructible. But the final test is her on her own, facing her worst fears. It can drive a person mad. Fortunately, Maredia is an old hand at screaming at herself in her own head.

As with the previous books, there’s no explicit yuri here, but I mean, Maredia and Clowria give each other rings, with Maredia even going down on one knee to do it. That’s near as dammit. I’m not sure when the next book in the series is coming out, but it’s likely the final one. I liked this a lot.