Last Round Arthurs, Vol. 2: Saint Arthur and the Red Girl Knight

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By Taro Hitsuji and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jan Cash.

I’m not sure why it took almost a year between the first and second volumes of this series to come out, but fortunately it doesn’t really matter much. Even if you’ve forgotten what happened in the first book, the protagonists quickly steamroller over your doubts and get around to what Last Round Arthurs wants to be: Fate/Stay Night with Haruhi Suzumiya as Saber. I know I said this last time, but it bears repeating: this series is so unoriginal that it beggars belief. In the first volume, the author basically admitted that he was asked to make a Fate ripoff, and getting the guy who does the art for Index and DanMachi Sword Oratoria to draw it just means that half the characters remind you of those two series. I joked on Twitter that it was the Black Clover of light novels, meaning that it is a series that will unashamedly steal any hot new trend, but somehow manages to work anyway. There’s nothing really annoying or boring about its unoriginality. It’s fun. Provided you can stand Luna.

On the cover are the newest competition in the battle to be King: Emma, a girl who has been brainwashed/tortured by a bunch of French religious folks to be the perfect candidate (with a little help from Rintarou, who had no idea what was actually going on but knew they were abusing a girl) for King, and Sir Lamorak, who may be one of the more obscure Knights to casual readers but is well known to Arthurian fans as one of the strongest knights of all. This being a Fate ripoff, she looks like a 10-year-old girl. Emma wants to be King for supposedly noble reasons; Lamorak is super strong and tough. What can stop them? Rintarou, who seems perfectly content to switch sides? Luna, who is busy buying a mansion with all their funds and continuing to insist that she wants to be King for the fame and the money? Certainly not Sir Kay, who had better be the final Last Boss of this series or I’m going to be cross. We’re in for an epic battle.

This volume has a bit of a point it’s trying to make, which is “you don’t have to do what your abusive family tells you to do if it doesn’t fit you, find another path”. Sadly, this ends up being “you are a weak little girl who is not fit to be king, perhaps an attempted rape and being made literally into a maid by the final pages will make things better”, which left a very bad taste in my mouth. Other than that, this book is Big Dumb Fun, much like its heroine. As with the first volume, Luna is obnoxious and awful until things get serious, and is shown once more to be a better king deep down, even if on the surface everything about her is terrible. She’s hardly the sort to be a tsundere, so we get two other options for that here with Felecia (the standard example) and our hero, Rintarou (the distaff example). And the action scenes, attempted rape aside, are very well handled.

So this won’t change your life or make you want to write fanfiction. But if you’re sad Fate/Zero’s novels aren’t licensed and want something with as much fun but 80% less tragedy, Last Round Arthurs is just the right sort of book. And I think the third volume is due out in the fall, so there will be less of a wait.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 6.5

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By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

The origins of this volume are rather tortured. Around the time that Season 1 of the anime was coming out, they had the author do an episode about the athletics festival, that was not in the novels. This was Episode 13 of Season 1. At the same time, he was asked to do exclusive stories for the BD/DVD releases, and decided to greatly expand this episode into one big novel (yes, despite the .5 in the title, this is NOT a short story volume). The story came out cut into thirds, one per release. It’s now being collected as this volume, which takes place between Vol. 6 and 7 (hence the numbering)… except for the bonus story, based on a CD drama, which takes place right after Volume 9. What does this all add up to? Well, a mixed bag, primarily because (as the author admits in the afterword) he really wanted to bring back a character that no one else really wanted back. (The anime was fine with having her disappear.)

No, I’m not talking about Kawasaki – she gets the cover, but is a minor presence in the book. The “star” of this book is Sagami, the sort-of villain from the 6th novel, who is still dealing with the fallout from the cultural festival. Miura is annoyed that Sagami’s drama is ruining the atmosphere of the classroom. Meanwhile, student council president Megumi wants someone (meaning our trio of heroes) to help her on the Athletic Festival Committee. Combining the two problems, they decide to have Sagami chair the committee, giving her a chance to get things right this time. Unfortunately, things do not go as well as hoped, this time due to two of Sagami’s friends, who are making it clear they are unhappy that the clubs are having to be part of this. Can Hachiman and company find a way to resolve this without sacrificing Sagami entirely? And can they find a way to make the athletics festival fun and interesting?

I’m gonna be honest here: a lot of this book is a retread of the sixth volume. This is deliberate, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Some might say that Oregairu is at its best when wallowing in teenagers being painfully abrasive at each other, and if so, they’ll love the first half of this book, which feels like fingernails on a blackboard. The payoff (Sagami finally doing her job and standing up against her friends) is not really worth the long painful slog we had to read to get there. Unsurprisingly, the best part of that section is the part that was animated – the festival itself. Fortunately, the adaptation of the CD drama works much better, and features Hachiman, Yukino and Yui at their closest. It’s a Christmas party that manages to be free of drama, and I will even forgive its heaping helping of “ha ha, our teacher is old and desperate” jokes because the ending was really sweet.

I guess I’m happy this is a .5 volume – if it had come right after Book 6 I might have thrown it against a wall. This series continues to have rewarding climaxes to excruciating journeys.

I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Vol. 7

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By Kisetsu Morita and Benio. Released in Japan as “Slime Taoshite 300 Nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level MAX ni Nattemashita” by GA Novels. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jasmine Bernhardt.

I’ve gradually gotten used to this being the isekai version of K-On! (the illustrations helping along, as they get more and more ‘moe’ with every volume), and this volume in particular reminds me that Azusa’s laid-back style works so well here because the entire world is laid-back. The idea of someone being killed off or an evil villain trying to take over the world feels so foreign to everything we’ve read here to date, and the result is that you have a reader who is completely relaxed in reading this book. There’s never any serious conflict, and that’s good! The characters are all various varieties of “cute girls doing cute things’, and that’s good too! There are no stories in this series that run longer than about a quarter of the book, so you don’t have to pay too much attention, and if a character returns, you’re helpfully reminded where they showed up before. On the downside, reading this may make you fall asleep.

Things that happen in this book: At Pecora’s birthday party, she changes Azusa into a fox girl, which ends up backfiring when Azusa starts beating up everyone in the demon kingdom in an effort to eat abura-age, which reminds you how Japanese this series is and also likely makes you turn to Google. Azusa and company then go to see one of the goddesses in this world speaking at what amounts to a business convention, and she is startled to find this is the goddess who first sent her to this world… who has since been demoted, as she refused to deal with anything but cute girls. There’s a battle to see who the next Dragon Lord is, which turns out to be a typical beauty contest. We get Around the World in 80 Days, Killing Slimes style, which is to say it’s pretty boring. And in the longest story in the book, the cast discover an ancient civilization, now inhabited by stuffy ghosts and a very unstuffy ruler who is annoyed no tsukkomis exist here.

This is fun and insubstantial as always. The ancient ghost queen is amusing as she talks in a broad accent, and also seems content to treat her temple like it’s a dungeon raid. Azusa is less grumpy than usual here, having fully accepted everyone’s eccentricities. That may, in fact, be the biggest negative in the book – everyone’s gotten too used to each other. No one fights anymore, no one gets upset. Conflicts are resolved almost immediately. It’s definitely a series that you should read after you’ve read a volume of something serious, bulky and filled with plot – it acts as a dessert or a palette cleanser. That said, this is absolutely the worst kind of series to marathon. If you read all seven books at once, you’ll give up. One book every few months is just the right pace.