Agents of the Four Seasons, Vol. 5

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By Kana Akatsuki and Suoh. Released in Japan as “Shunka Shūtō Daikōsha” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sergio Avila.

After all the trauma of the first four, I noticed this one was a stand-alone volume, and I hoped that it might be a breather, a chance to relax and perhaps have a more lighthearted plot. And indeed the first half of this book fulfilled my wish. For the most part we have not had to deal with the supernatural person being in love with their minder in this series. Agents tend to love other agents, or other unrelated people. This also applies to the Archer of Twilight. Oh, sure, they are so ridiculously close to their minders that you can see the relationship as homoerotic (see my prior reviews regarding Hinagiku and Sakura), but we haven’t really had a romantic relationship until this book. Kaya is a teenager who is unable to deal with a crush, and her minder, Yuzuru, who clearly loves her deeply but is repressing it. The two of them push against each other, and get grumpy and sad, and it’s adorable. Well, until it isn’t.

Last time we met the Archer of Twilight, Kaguya, whose arrows brought about the night. The Archer of Dawn had a brief, minor appearance, but we get to know her here. After being chosen to be Archer, she was assigned a custodian, but he quickly found that walking up and down a mountain every day for years was too taxing for him. His son, however, Yuzuru, proved only too happy to step in and take care of Kaya. And now she’s in high school. She’s even able to go to an actual school, thanks to concessions from the organization behind all this. She’s a bit worried about Yuzuru, though, who’s so awesome and deserves so much better than staying with her his entire life. Even if she really wants him to, but is too shy to say so. And then there’s a landslide, and everything goes to hell.

While you can rest assured that the bad guys who want to control everyone and everything involved with the seasons and the day/night cycle are still here and still bad, I was rather surprised to find that they weren’t behind the natural disaster that leads off the second half of the book. Sometimes tragic stuff happens and it’s just because of natural causes. That said, the theme of this series is still present and correct. When Kaya makes the decision she does later in the book, she knows that she’s going to be punished for it. Everyone does, in fact, and other people are trying to take the punishment so she doesn’t have to. The best part of the book is when, in the epilogue, Kaya is told her punishment will end soon, she briefly feels it’s not nearly bad enough. Whereupon she’s told “You’re still in high school.” As these books go on, other people are bringing up over and over again what they are doing to children, and pushing back is becoming less a travesty and more a necessity.

We’re back to an arc next time, with more focus on Autumn, who played a major role in this book. Till then, this remains very well-written but also a bit worrying. These poor kids.

An Unruly Summon, Vol. 1

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By Cathfach and Kurodeko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club.

This was one of the winners of the J-Novel Club original light novel contest, where they had judges (including Carlo Zen, author of The Saga of Tanya the Evil) picking out who created the best work. The winners got a cash prize, publication, and illustrations by a Japanese light novel artist (in this case, the Lady Bumpkin and Her Lord Villain artist). The premise of this story interested me, as it looked like it might be a deconstruction of the standard isekai. Which it is, but not as much as you’d expect. Honestly, this has its roots in those old fanfics where the author wrote the story asking “what if everything were the same except the main character was sensible and asked questions?” Thomas, the main character of this story, is sensible and definitely does ask questions, but that only gets him so far, because this is a world that has been at war for a while, and has summoned heroes before, and they are not happy they have to do it again. So they try to rig the game in their favor. This goes badly for almost everyone.

Thomas Smith is walking drunkenly back to his apartment with his friend Simon when he spots a purple “whirlwind” in front of him. On touching it, he ends up in another world. There, he is told that the world is under threat from demons who are on the verge of destroying humanity, and he has the power to help them fight back. He’s also assigned four pretty women – Stephanie, the King’s daughter; Christine, a knight; Wendy, a mage; and Mary, a slave. As he learns about magic and swordplay, and discovers that, much to his surprise, he really does seem to have heroic abilities, he also starts to connect the dots that they’re lying to him. In fact, the reader knows this from the start. Previous heroic summonings haven’t always gone well (and, in a nice meta joke, tend to be Japanese teenagers), so they gave him a “harem” and are trying to get him to be their good little puppet. The more he learns, however, the more everything completely goes off the rails.

This is a solid book, which wants to play around in the isekai sandbox but also try to examine some of its cliches. Slavery is examined closely here, and it’s horrifying in many ways. About 40% of the way into the book, we get a HOLY CRAP moment, and you wonder if that’s going to help solve the slavery thing, but that ends up not really being the case. Because this is a world where no one really understands how magic works. A lot of it is just “because it’s magic”. And Thomas finds that the success and failure of his spells lean a lot on his feelings towards others – even if they’re unconscious. Which means if he is unconsciously blaming others for their past horrible actions, even if he wants to save him the magic can simply not work. The world is also just starting to show off its complexity – it’s clearly meant to be multiple volumes, though I’m not sure how ongoing series work when it’s a contest winner. Possibly depends on sales.

I will admit, the character I most want to see more of in future books is the one who only appeared on the last page. So I would like to see more of this. For fans of isekai who want dark!gray!independent heroes.

Anime NYC 2025, Sunday

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It’s always striking how calm Sunday is compared to the previous two days. You’d think it would be near the same, given the large number of 4-day badges you saw walking around earlier, but the truth is that Anime NYC has always tended to have Sunday be the least happening day. On the bright side, this meant the lines for the bathroom were much shorter (well, for me, using a men’s room.)

Because I have a lengthy journey home thanks to Connecticut’s train tracks still being hundreds of years old (Amtrak can make trains that go 800 miles an hour, and they’ll still have to dawdle through New England), I was only able to attend one panel Sunday, which was Kodansha Comics. Kodansha always has one of the better, most professional panels out there, and this year was no exception, with Ben Applegate, TJ Ferentini, and Haruko Hashimoto.

The entrance to the con was packed with free copies of the Young Magazine 100-page English Edition that everyone at the con seemed to be lugging around (including me), as well as a totebag. Readers can vote on which series they want to see more of, and if it gets a good response they may do another one. Having a sequel to Boys Run the Riot inside got the biggest reaction. People were also happy to hear about Kodansha House in October, with more creators coming to New York, including Atsushi Ohkubo and Suu Morishita.

They discussed the “print-on-demand” service they started last year, in an effort to put digital-only series that deserved print but possibly the sales did not justify it. We’re getting second volumes for Love, That’s an Understatement, Teppu, and Blade Girl. And then we get the big news, which is that all the big news happened last month. This is not uncommon for publishers. The summer is littered with huge conventions. Kodansha had panels at Anime Expo at the start of July and San Diego Comic Con at the end of July. There’s no way they’d have a list of 15-20 new series by the end of August.

As a result, most of this panel was a recap of what they’d already announced at the last two panels. That said, there are some really great titles in there. They’re bringing back iconic shoujo manga Mars (hardcover, fancy metallic covers, new translation) and iconic shoujo manga Shugo Chara (new covers, new translation). There’s Fruit of the Underworld, by popular author Aya Kanno, known for Requiem of the Rose King and Otomen. They’re also doing a big ol’ giant deluxe box set for Ghost in the Shell, and Ben knows his audience, as he immediately said “yes, it will include those three pages. If you know, you know.” Shirow instructed them as to how he did some of this stuff, so they could replicate it. Rolled posters in the box – not folded!

There’s also Wicked Spot, a new series from the creator of Tough Love at the Office; Love at First Memory, from the creator of Springtime with Ninjas and Boss Bride days; Love Out on a Limb, from the creator of Love in Focus and That Wolf-Boy Is Mine!; popular yuri title Marrying the Dark Knight (For Her Money); BL baseball manga Blue Summer Haze; BL title Smells Like Green Spirit, from the creator of Boys, Be Ambitious!; Dragon Circus, from the creators of Ultraman’s manga; and Stella Must Die!, with a story by the author of Princess Resurrection.

They were quite enthusiastic about a couple of titles. That’s Not Love is by the creator of 1122: For a Happy Marriage, and is about former friends reconnecting years later and secrets from middle school. Cat-Life Balance stars a man who will gladly take on any task and help other co-workers… and it’s causing him to burn out. One day he spots fellow employee Kurone, who deals with work by being stonefaced, playing in an alley with stray cats. Can cats solve their issues? Probably not, but the cats are cute, right?

We then got to the new announcements, of which there were three. My Journey to Her was a very popular digital-only title when it came out last year, and it won an Eisner. They’re now doing a print release for it. I had read this when it first came out, and it’s a riveting and informative look at the author’s gender dysphoria and subsequent reassignment surgery. It ran in Weekly Morning.

Speaking of Yūna Hirasawa, they’ve also licensed her current Weekly Morning series, Luca the Dragon Vet (Ryūi no Luca). A young woman is determined to be a vet who takes care of dragons in her fantasy world. Alas, there are tough exams, difficult classes, and unfortunate family connections. But, I mean, dragon vet! Who wouldn’t want to be a dragon vet?

Then we got the big announcement: Yes, it’s not just iconic shoujo manga getting the big re-release treatment. Beck, a Monthly Shonen Magazine series from 25 years ago, is finally getting fully released in print in English! Tokyopop released about a dozen volumes before the 2008 “everything is cancelled” happened, and the series being 31 volumes meant we missed over half the story. Kodansha picked up the series about seven years ago and finished it, but that was digital only. Now it’s coming in print in 2-in-1 omnibuses.

And that just left Q&A, my old nemesis. (I have several nemeses.) So I departed the con. Anime NYC has gotten near 150,000 people by now, so it’s not a convention to be taken lightly. But if you love anime and manga (and light novels, maybe, they get mentioned once or twice), you should have a great time.