The Executioner and Her Way of Life: Wish Upon a Star, Pray to a Flower

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By Mato Sato and nilitsu. Released in Japan as “Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

Well, back to reality. After a volume where I actually managed to enjoy it from beginning to end, we’re back to business as usual for The Executioner and Her Way of Life. The first 40% or so of this book is absolutely dire, and I was once again wondering why I had not dropped the series. The difficulty is that most of the people who remain in the cast are profoundly unlikable and selfish, and it’s not fun to read about them. This is also a book whose plot synopsis can best be summed up as “everyone is ignoring everyone else’s feelings and desires for the sake of their own”. Now, frequently this is understandable. The color soldiers are looking for a new homeland, and worry that this will cause the humans to try to eradicate them. (Correctly.) And Menou’s grand plan for saving Akari amounts to “kill myself”, so it’s not surprising that Momo is not down with that. Everyone is, frankly, at the end of their tether, and it shows.

Menou, Maya, and Sahara have fled to the Mechanical Society with Abbie’s help, but Michele, Momo and Hooseyard are hot on their trail, and trying to work out a way to break in there. Menou’s goal is the Starseed, but things prove more complicated than expected when they discover that another one of the Four Evils, Gadou, is still alive. After dealing with the fact that Gadou has literal split personalities, Menou puts her plan into action, despite the fact that her memory has gotten so bad that she’s forgotten Flare, Momo, and everything else about her past. Momo, meanwhile, has an Akari-in-a-Box, and a plan to get Menou and Akari both back with their memories attached, but this plan sort of relies on killing Menou first. Just for a bit. A little killing.

This book really does get good in the second half, as everyone starts to fight for their lives and their goals, and realize that there’s no way that everyone can end this alive. Indeed, Menou’s self-hatred and death wish is about all that’s fueling her now, and it helps the reader to sympathize with Momo a great deal, even when she tries to solve a problem by taking Akari from her luggage and hurling her at Menou’s head. Momo and Akari still hate each other, for obvious reasons. That said, Momo’s plan wouldn’t have worked without Akari, so they can at least be grateful for that. By the end of this book, most of the cast are almost back to normal and we’re at the end of the arc. If only Ashuna were back in the series I’d be perfectly happy. (Monkey’s Paw twitches) Oh no…

So yeah, Ashuna is the cliffhanger, and I am no longer happy. I suspect in this world that runs on war, death, and genocide, a lot of other people aren’t going to be happy either. Still, at least with Menou and Akari back to normal, there’s potential for more yuri in Book 10. Recommended, but be prepared for the traditional slow start. Also, warning, this book contains Hooseyard, and she’s still really annoying.

Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 16

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By Yuumikan and KOIN. Released in Japan as “Itai no wa Iya nano de Bōgyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Bofuri is, in the end, a series about what goes on inside a VRMMO, and most readers are here to follow the fun antics of Maple and Sally. Now, there are real players involved here, Kaede and Risa, and we have seen them on occasion. But we rarely have a chance to be in their heads for more than a couple of pages before we’re back in the gaming world seeing Maple eat a giant lump of poison. The series began with a brief mention that Risa had tried to get Kaede into some other games, but nothing clicked till New World Online. This volume, however, very definitely says the end is near. And as a result, we’re getting a little (very little) background into Kaede and Risa. Which is good! But given it’s the real world, we may actually get some real-life drama in Bofuri, the anti-consequences series. As frankly, Risa is starting to get very desperate about gaming with Kaede as much as possible before it’s too late.

Last time I said there would be an after-event recap of some sort, but nope. We’re straight into more gaming, as everyone goes around clearing dungeons, battling new monsters, and preparing for the 10th stratum. When that’s finally revealed, it’s shown to be the previous nine floors all in one – each section is one of the prior floors. The goal here is to Kill The Demon Lord, so Maple and Sally and the rest of Maple Tree start investigating to figure out how to do that. And they want to do it fast, as Maple and Sally have made things clear at last: they’re going to be third-year high school students soon, which means the days of gaming for hours a day are gone forever. It’s time to start getting serious about college.

It’s been clear from a while ago, and is made more explicit here, that Sally wants to fight Maple in a PvP battle, but holds off as she knows Maple doesn’t enjoy those. Maple is aware of this, though, and as their deadline draws near she’s starting to dwell on it more. She has no trouble fighting (and destroying) Frederica, mind you, but Sally is different. Back in the real world, not only is Risa anxious about those halcyon days with Kaede ending forever, but there’s also implications about Kaede’s past. We’d guessed that they’d been friends since they were kids, which is mentioned here without any detail. But now we hear how much Maple has changed since starting New World Online, and that she had never been so excited or enjoyed herself so much before. I want to know more about this! What was pre-Bofuri Kaede like? Was she bullied? Was she introverted? What’s going on here? And is there anything besides her latent crush and possibly different colleges that is the reason Risa is so desperate to enjoy this time with Kaede while she can?

There’s so much story I want to know about, and we get more of it here than most other volumes. But there’s still very little of it. Trust me, if you want to see Maple create poison copies of herself that explode, you’re also in the right place. Next time, probably more grinding and investigation.

Engaging with the Plot: A Former Cat’s Attempt to Save Her Now Temporary Fiancé, Vol. 1

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By Usagi Hoshimi and Qi234. Released in Japan as “Konyakusha-sama ni wa Unmei no Heroine ga Arawaremasu ga, Zantei Konyaku Life wo Mankitsushimasu! Anata no Noroi, Kiraware Akujo no Watashi ga Toicha Dame desu ka?” by Earth Star Luna. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Minna Lin.

It’s always dangerous when you’re making stew. When you have something that’s just “let’s throw as many common ingredients into the pot as we can, stir it up, and eat that for supper”. A lot of the time it just ends up being an ugly, overcomplicated mess. Sometimes, though, all the ingredients manage to coalesce into something really tasty. You wouldn’t dare call it original – the exact opposite – but the common muck ends up being just what you wanted. We get that here. This is a villainess story with a capital V, having all the trimmings, and yet it works because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (at times I wondered if it was actually trying to be a parody) and because it has a really good story to tell about love, and what happens to people who get it and people who don’t.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but we open the book with our main character being dumped publicly by her fiance, the second prince. Lucille was well-meaning and did her princess lessons well, but she knew the princess didn’t love her and was trying much too hard to change that. Now she’s engaged to the “cursed marquess”. Felix. This causes her to pass out… and when she wakes up she has memories of her past… eight lives. Yes, this is her ninth life, but her first as a human. In the previous eight, she was a beloved pet cat of some of the most influential and powerful people in history. And what’s more, she has a prophecy, which shows her pissing off Felix, getting into dark magic, and being killed by the Saint who’ll be arriving in a year. Fortunately, with her past memories and her premonitions, she can change literally everything about this plot.

A lot of this just made me laugh. It’s always nice to see an isekai’d Japanese girl who’s part of the supporting cast rather than the lead – one of Lucille’s past owners was a reincarnator who loved her “smol” kitty. The second prince is a buffoon who cannot recognize that the beautiful woman in front of him is his ex-fiancee, just not wearing heavy makeup, and it just gets sillier and sillier as he rants. But there’s also some really good stuff here. Lucille, being an ex-cat, does not remotely worry about what anyone thinks of her and is very confident. And she’s surrounded by people who are filled with self-loathing or self-doubt, ranging from the cursed Marquess to her new friend Mary Hunt… erm, Alice Rohans, who suffers from being the normal one in a generation of geniuses, to her own father, who is caring but it comes out as uncaring. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the dialogue can seem a bit TOO overly elaborate. Sometimes these people speak as if they’re reading words off a page rather than being in the moment.

This has a second volume coming, which I assume will resolve the curse as well as the cliffhanger we saw. If you liked Lady Bumpkin, and you liked Bakarina, and wondered what would happen if you smashed them together, this is that book.