My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me!, Vol. 1

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By mikawaghost and tomari. Released in Japan as “Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni dake Uzai” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

I’ve said this before, but sometimes you just want McDonald’s. You know that you could walk two more blocks and go to a nice steakhouse or an expensive Asian restaurant, but you can’t have that every day, and you feel like McNuggets, dammit. Sure, you’re probably going to get some bad along with the good, but you at least know exactly what you’re getting and are not surprised. This applies, believe it or not, to light novels as well. Sometimes I want to be amazed and transported to another world by wings of song, etc. And sometimes I want to read a harem comedy where the hero is as dense as lead and the heroines are all variations on “I hate you because I love you”. Good news! This book is McDonald’s. It won’t blow you away, but it will fill you up, and you know what? It came with a nice Apple Pie as a treat. (Have I finished grinding this metaphor into the dirt? Yes? Let’s get to the plot.)

Akiteru is our main character, and he has a lot on his plate. He’s the head of an amateur game development group, their new release is selling great, and he wants a job with his uncle, who runs a MUCH LARGER game company. The uncle agrees, on one condition: that he pretend to be his cousin’s boyfriend for the next year. She’s transferred schools after being bullied. And then there’s the titular little sister, who has apparently been reading the books of Takagi, Uzaki and Nagatoro and taken them to heart. She flirts aggressively with Akiteru, whose one main fault, as with most LN protagonists, is a complete inability to recognize anything as love. To him, her flirting is just plain mean bullying. And as for his cousin, well, she hates him too. Right?

To get the bad out of the way, there’s a character here who can be summed up as “shotacon”, and it’s as annoying as you’d expect. Also, the “friend” in the title gets very little to do, but I am hoping future books will change that. The reason I am hoping this is because the book’s chief strength is balancing out the love triangle that is forming around Akiteru with the game group he’s created, a tight-knit group of friends. Mashiro, the cousin, is the seeming newcomer to the group (though she has a rather obvious secret), and most of the second half is getting her introduced, loosening her up, and dealing with the bullying she had to content with at her previous school. I enjoyed that. Iroha, the little sister, is terrific, being obnoxious in the fun way rather than the irritating way. As for Akiteru, he’s hard to get a handle on. He does nice things, but his narration is basically “grumpy old cuss”, and he needs a shot in the arm of idealism. He’s not as bad as, say, Hachiman, but it can make him hard to read on occasion.

This just had an anime announced, and it’s not hard to see why – it isn’t due to the quality of the writing, it’s due to the fact that it checks a whole lot of ‘this should be an anime’ boxes. Despite reservations (see above), I think it’s the best of the three GA Bunko romcoms that J-Novel Club recently licensed. Fans of that genre who don’t mind the usual dense hero should get a kick out of this.

Slayers: The Silver Beast

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By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

This book really is starting to feel like the anime series by now, and not just because this is the first book to feature the “main cast” all together. The characterization is getting a bit broader – Gourry is dumber, Amelia is more justice-oriented, etc. I’d say the exception would be Lina, but as we see towards the end of the book, her own narration skews some things to make herself look smarter and savvier than she sometimes is. Zelgadis is back as well, though he’s still sort of the kinder, mellower Zelgadis at this point, at least when a cure for his chimera form is not being discussed. And, of course, as the cover shows, this is the book where we first meet up with a certain mysterious priest – though the volume alternates between “priest” and “monk” – who likes to tell everyone that things are a secret. With Xellos now joining us as well, it feels like the books may be headed for a climax… except they’re still pretty much stand alone.

While beating the crap out of random bandits, Lina, Gourry and Amelia run into a mysterious woman who ends up sealing Lina’s magic, then tells them to follow her to a nearby city, where it turns out there is a satanic cult! OK, it’s the Slayers equivalent of Satan, Shabranigdu, but still. Unfortunately, after another altercation, Amelia is captured and Gourry vanishes, leaving Lina on her own trying to meet back up with them again – and to kill the woman who sealed her magic, as that’s what will break the seal. She gets help on this end from Xellos, who is looking for a rumored copy of the legendary Claire Bible. As is Zelgadis, who’s also wandering around. Everything converges on the cult, who, as it turns out, are resurrecting the legendary Zanaffar, which turns out to be both a monster… and also not.

These books are still very short, so there’s not much room for characterization or plot development. Indeed, one grumble I had is that, after being set up as the Big Bad of the book, the woman who sealed Lina’s magic is killed casually, offscreen, by Xellos and never mentioned again. You get the sense that these books were very much written on the fly, without going back and checking on things. They’re still fun, though, with lots of big battles and dangerous moments for our heroes. Zel/Amelia shippers won’t get much from this book, as they barely interact, though they do seem to get along better than their anime selves. Lina/Gourry shippers don’t get much more, but after getting into an argument (and Lina hitting Gourry with a bedroom slipper she stuck into her backpack just so she could hit Gourry with it) Amelia tells them to stop it with the Couples Therapy. Which is cute.

Oddly, by the end of the book Xellos remains merely “a mysterious priest”, albeit a very powerful and suspicious one. I’m sure that will change. In any case, an9ime fans will be happy to see a lot of what drove slayers Next popping up here, and light novels fans will enjoy a relatively snack-sized action series.

Can Someone Please Explain What’s Going On?! ~A Sign-on-the-Line Wedding Story~, Vol. 5

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By Tsuredurebana and Rin Hagiwara. Released in Japan as “Dareka Kono Joukyou wo Setsumei Shite Kudasai! ~Keiyaku Kara Hajimaru Wedding~” by ArianRose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Emily Hemphill.

For all those whose favorite part of this series is the disconnect between Viola’s opinion of herself and what everyone else thinks of her, I have delightful news: this book is entirely about that. Indeed, at this point I think the most interesting – and impressive – part of the book is how no one is really sitting Viola down and explaining anything to her. They’re content to merely praise her, let it flow in one ear and out the other, and watch as she slowly (very slowly) figures things out. Now, part of this is that the writer doesn’t want her to suddenly wise up, as that means the series would almost be over. But it also shows that it’s Viola who needs to make the change and realize that she really is a gorgeous, trendy person. This also applies to her marriage – Cercis continues to be content – mostly – in waiting patiently for her to recognize his feelings. She’s still not there yet.

The book begins still on their belated honeymoon, and the most important thing that happens is when they tour the Fisalis mines and Viola takes a liking to the sapphires that have been left behind (because the miners are after the rarer rubies). Cersis decides to make these sapphires – which he renames Viola Sapphires – the hot new thing, and to have her show off how gorgeous they are. Of course, this also means she finally has to go out to parties again, so sadly very little puttering around in her maid outfit in this book. That said, as the book goes on, Viola slowly realizes that fashion and tastes have changed since she was last at an event – and everyone is now following HER. Even the blond ojou, who’d dropped her princess curls and upped her tsundere. Viola also now seems to get that Cersis really does love her. As for her own feelings… work in progress.

There’s a lot of good humor in this book. Some of it is overt, such as everything about the sapphires and Viola’s embarrassment, or Viola, after her near kidnapping in the last book, learning self-defense (and finding her maids all have daggers strapped to their thighs, which she calls sexy). Some of it is more subtle, mostly as Viola’s constant self-deprecation has become both amusing and annoying. Again, all Viola sees when she looks at herself is plain, flat-chested, and gawky, but she fails to realize that she’s basically Twiggy, setting the trend that everyone else has started to follow. Her bafflement at seeing all the other young women at the parties wearing simple hairdos and dresses is really funny. That said… I really hope we are reaching the end of Viola’s endearing bafflement soon. There is only so long you can string this out. I realize that we may never see her have a good opinion about her looks, but maybe we could at least get her to fall in love a bit? (I’d wonder if she’s ace, but this is not that kind of series.)

Despite a bit of frustration, this is a strong volume in a series that runs on light froth, and for those who want to see Viola walking arounnd looking stunning, it’s a must read.