Too Many Losing Heroines!, Vol. 5

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By Takibi Amamori and Imigimuru. Released in Japan as “Make Heroine ga Ōsugiru!” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Matthew Jackson. Adapted by Hayame.

Given that this is a series that, about half the time, frames itself as a parody of the standard light novel high school harem genre, I should not have been surprised with the outcome of this volume. And yet. I was surprised. I had certainly seen the previous four volumes, showing Nukumizu’s sister Kaju as, shall we say, dangerously obsessed with her brother, but other series have also done that (looking at you, Goodbye Overtime), and have known that it’s OK to show them as being far too close for a brother and a sister without saying straight out “there is sexual desire here, this is meant to be incestuous for real”. Losing Heroines goes there, and so this comes as a content warning for those who might be put off. That said, I think most who would be put off wouldn’t have gotten this far into the series anyway, and it’s not as if Nukumizu has the ability to understand anyone’s attraction to him, much less his sister.

It’s time for the middle school students to visit prospective high schools, and that means our protagonists have to show off what makes their school great. For some this is easy due to talent (Lemon, who may be held back a grade but boy can she run). For some it’s easy due to personality (Anna, despite her foibles, can be outgoing and personable). The literature club is in trouble, though, with its two introverts who hate dealing with others. Nukumizu, however, has other problems. It’s Valentine’s Day soon. He heard his sister recently on the phone talking about… a guy! And she’s got plans in the calendar the siblings share that imply dates! She’s 14, that’s far too young to date, surely! Everyone else tells him he’s overthinking this, but they’re not getting through to him, as he’s in full big-brother mode. Hijincks, of course, ensue.

As always this is a well-written book, with a lot of laugh out loud gags. Anna is funny whenever she opens her mouth, and her chocolate cannonball was deserving of the interstitial art it got. Nukumizu, as always, is so good at reading the hidden subtext of most of the relationships of others around him that he fails to see the actual TEXT of girls throwing themselves at him. He is told by his friend Ayano that he needs to realize how he looks to everyone around him who doesn’t have the full story, and Nukumizu… brushes him off. And let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Not only does Kaju provide a story for the literature club about a brother who has knocked up his little sister, but she’s also really desperate to help her friend Gondou with her own doomed relationship, despite the fact that Gondou knows that Kaju is really thinking about herself. She knows she can’t have sex with her brother. She knows he just sees her as family. And, as this volume makes explicit, she HATES that.

Now that we’ve unlocked the barn door and let the horses out, I assume that she’s going to get more blatant in future volumes, which does not thrill me. But she also won’t be the focus, so I’ll bear with it for now. For romcom diehards and people who don’t understand why I don’t like that sweet, sweet incest.

The Poison King: Now That I’ve Gained Ultimate Power, the Bewitching Beauties in My Harem Can’t Get Enough of Me, Vol. 1

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By LeonarD and Won. Released in Japan as “Doku no Ou: Saikyou no Chikara ni Kakuseishita Ore wa Biki-tachi wo Shitagae, Hatsujou Harem no Aruji to Naru” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Boris Lecourt.

This wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d hoped, alas. For the third of my “go back and try a JNC series I skipped”, I decided to try this series, which kind of repulsed me when I saw it licensed. I was supposed to be explicit, and I was expecting a lot of ridiculously bad prose. Alas, only one or two speeches really lived down to that, and for the most part it was a standard ecchi power fantasy. And so, in the spirit of not ordering a milkshake at Home Depot, I will review this for what it is rather than what it is not. What is it? It’s a series to read if you like cool guys using martial arts and poison powers to kill bad guys, and also using pheromones to seduce all the women around him and take them to bed. Where it will cut away right before the actual act. Sorry, there’s always AO3.

Years ago, the hero’s party, including a man and his wife, defeat the evil poison queen. Sadly, as she dies, she curses the wife, who is now dying herself. Their “friend” Faust (subtle this book is not) has a solution: the wife is pregnant with twins, so they can all survive if one of the twins gets the curse. What no one expects is the twin to survive. Thirteen years later, the wife is dead, and our hero, Caim, is living in a hovel outside a village, where he is abused every day for being cursed. His dad threw him out when his mother died. The only friend he has is his very very loyal maid. Then one day Faust comes by with a possible cure… and he meets the Poison Queen, who tries to possess him. When she fails, he ends up now being able to control his powers and aging five years. Time to go get some payback.

So, how to sell this series… Aside from some overwrought monologues when Caim is killing bad guys, which read more like him being a chuuni than anything else, and another girl pissing herself in fear (a trope I hate, and which the author admits in the afterword is there for fetish reasons, so bleah), this is not all that different from a typical male power fantasy book. Caim, after his plot-relevant age-up, is cool and powerful but also does not lose occasionally acting like the 13-year-old he was until recently, especially when trying to deal with love (not sex, love) or fantastic panoramic landscapes. The love interests, so far, are a) devoted maid, b) noble princess turned into enthusiastic hedonist, and c) tsundere girl who loves being spanked/insulted. They’re actually not too bad. They don’t turn meek, and he doesn’t take any advantage of him they don’t want to, except when his pheromones are doing what the plot requires. And he also punches some Nazis… erm, nobles. I always like that.

Basically, if you are looking for a book with a lot of sex, this will probably frustrate you. If you are looking for a book with a lot of boobs, suggested sex, and a cool guy living his best life, this is certainly one of them. You could do worse.

D-Genesis: Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared, Vol. 1

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By KONO Tsuranori and ttl. Released in Japan as “D Genesis: Dungeon ga Dekite 3-nen” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by JCT.

This was the second recommendation by folks when I was asking about series I hadn’t tried before, and this one was far more vocal and vociferous than The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects. People really, really pushed hard for this series. When it was licensed, I was simply absolutely sick to death of dungeons, so did not bother to read it, despite the fact that it had an obvious sell on the cover art: Noa Izumi. OK, that’s not actually Noa Izumi, but close enough, frankly. I do hope Miyoshi pilots a Labor before this ends. That said, the people selling me on this series turned out to be absolutely correct: this was very, very good. I will be reading more. The main reason it’s very good is that there is minimal dungeon crawling. It’s all about the “what if” concept of dungeons appearing all over the modern-day world, how they would be regulated, and what happens when our heroes accidentally find a game-changer but want to stay having a normal life?

3 years ago, dungeons appeared all over the world, leading to a new industry. Today, Keigo Yoshimura is currently in a horrible R&D job where he is being abused by his middle-management boss. Then one day he’s part of a bad traffic accident. He’s not injured, but it turns out a dungeon opened up in the street. He accidentally runs over a goblin (thus making him eligible for dungeon rewards), and then accidentally pushes a huge mass of rebar into the dungeon, where it drops aaallllll the way to the bottom. This clears the dungeon, and makes him the top dungeon clearer in the world. He knows he does not want to be famous for this. Fortunately, his co-worker, kohai, and bestie Azusa Miyoshi finds out about this, and about the skill he picked up by clearing it: he can essentially analyze dungeons and figure out how to get whatever he needs. The days of random drops are over! And now he *really* has to try to hide.

The worldbuilding is pretty good. I didn’t hate it. It’s perhaps a bit unrealistic that our protagonists are allowed to do this, but the author freely admits that’s part of the fiction. The best reason to read this are the two leads, who are terrific. Keigo is the sort of guy who tends to narrate cynical but also tries to help everyone he can – which in this book is mostly young attractive women, this is still a light novel. That said, he has absolutely no filter and says everything he thinks, so I do not expect romance anytime soon. Miyoshi has known him for a while, so is clearly used to him. She’s a math genius and also a food/drink gourmet, so she is very interested in helping him so that she can get rich and get the best food and wine. They’re also having fun examining stats, seeing what the unknown drops actually do, killing slimes for 300 … erm, slimes till they discover what that does, and healing grievous injuries in a very secret, don’t tell anyone way.

I assume the second book is going to have more people get involved in their lives, and no doubt will have more dungeon crawling (there’s a big wolf on the cover, for one). And I warn people that there is considerable math in this. In any case, my bad. This is a great series so far, and I will try to fit the other, erm, eight volumes to date in my schedule when I can.