Adachi and Shimamura, Vol. 1

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By Hitoma Iruma and Non. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Molly Lee.

It is, to be honest, rare that a light novel catches me completely by surprise. For one thing, I tend to spoil myself as to what the content of a series is going to be. I thought I knew about this one. I knew it was an extremely popular yuri light novel series. I also knew it was supposed to be a bit boring. Both are true. The story begins with Adachi and Shimamura already knowing each other (though we get a later flashback to how they meet). They’re both delinquents who tend to cut class. Adachi, the black-haired girl, is seemingly stoic and unapproachable. Shimamura, who has dyed light brown hair, is more open and has more friends than the aloof Adachi, but also seems to have a disconnect when it comes to emotions. Seeing them flapping around in their interior monologue trying to connect is what’s meant to be the point of the book. That said, it doesn’t quite keep the reader’s attention. Then the girl in the spacesuit shows up…

So yes, this is my own fault. I knew that the author of this series has written a large number of other series for both Dengeki Bunko and other publishers (including the Bloom Into You light novel spinoffs). I had also heard of the much older series Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko), but didn’t realize that it was also by this author. And that series has, as one of its supporting cast… a girl who dresses in a spacesuit and has seemingly supernatural powers. In the context of that other series, which stars another girl who says she is an alien, Yashiro as a mysterious maybe alien with supernatural abilities works fine. But when she shows up here and starts hanging out in what is, let’s face it, the cast of K-On! without the band, it’s quite jarring. Especially when she takes over the scenes she’s in… and proves to be more interesting than the two leads.

Let’s get back to the title characters. Three fifths of the book is narrated by Shimamura, and is the poorer for it. I’m not sure what the author is really trying to convey with her headspace. She seems to be pretending to be a normal, outgoing high school girl to hide her own inner lack of empathy and interest, but she’s too good at it externally and too bad at it internally, so it doesn’t quite come off. She’s the reason the book is seen as dull. When the narrative shifts to Adachi, things pick up a great deal, as she has the actual character conflict – she’s in love with Shimamura, something she starts the book off denying (in the classic “not in a gay way or anything!” sense) but accepts, at least to herself, by the end of the book. I think she’d have confessed to Shimamura on their “date” if Yashiro hadn’t ruined her chances. Hopefully future books will give Shimamura the chance to develop beyond “how do I connect to other humans” as well.

So I am very fifty-fifty about this book. The most interesting character in it is from another series. The narrator for most of the book struggles to connect with not only everyone around her but also the reader. On the other hand, Adachi’s inner monologue of panicked love epiphany was genuinely involving. I’ll be reading another volume, but so far it’s more Adachi than Shimamura for me.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Isekai

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By SAKKA KEIHAN and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by the authors at Comiket 96. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Emily Balistrieri, Noboru Akimoto, Roy Nukia, Andrew Cunningham, Andrew Hodgson, and Mike Langwiser.

First of all, I really like the fact that this was licensed. I appreciate publishers taking a flyer on titles like this, especially when it’s something that was not published professionally in Japan, but rather was the author’s own fan work they sold at one of the Comikets. It’s also an amusing idea, the sort of thing you can imagine a writer’s group brainstorming about – deconstructing and parodying the isekai genre by putting themselves into the genre, and showing the pitfalls that most isekais manage to avoid by not thinking about them too closely. These stories think about things far too closely, and that’s part of the humor. It’s also a doujinshi, so it’s not too long (and don’t expect illustrations beyond the cover art – these are writers, not artists). That said, I feel it could stand to be a bit shorter. The danger of anthologies is that you find stories you like and stories you don’t, and this did not have a great batting average overall.

The cover art alone should tell you how seriously to take it. We start with Carlo Zen (the author of The Saga of Tanya the Evil) writing isekai as a travel guide for tourists. Tappei Nagatsuki (the author of Re: ZERO) then steps in with what amounts to a broadsided attack/homage of his friend Natsume Akatsuki’s work KonoSuba, as well as other “goddess grants you powers” works. Natsuya Semikawa (the author of Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu) has the isekai as a day trip to escape the burdens of deadlines. Natsu Hyuuga (the author of The Apothecary Diaries) writes the straightest isekai of the bunch, where they are not only transported to another world but are a “piglet” (the word “orc” is studiously avoided) and having trouble surviving; Katsuie Shibata trades on the fact that he took his penname from a Sengoku military commander and does the “accidentally summoned instead of someone else” story, and Hoko Tsuda is transported via delicious ramen into a “everyone mistakes everyone’s intentions all the time” world.

I’ll start with the good: Nagatsuki’s section is reason enough alone to buy this book, as it’s hilarious, especially if you’ve read KonoSuba. Getting hit by a truck, magical power lotteries, and Aqua herself (well, a 2nd rate expy of her) combine to make this tremendous fun. Carlo Zen’s section suffers from his dry, textbook prose (something Tanya readers will find familiar) but is an amusing “what about inoculations/money/customs declarations/etc.” guide. After that, though, things start to sink a bit, though I will admit I found the idea of Shibata’s (penname authors summoned as Sengoku commanders for a real fight) to be a very good one, but the execution was also a tad boring. Semikawa’s story was simply tedious, Hyuuga’s was far too normal (it read like a standard isekai), and Tsuda’s, I suspect, depends on knowing the work that he is riffing on, which I do not.

So again, your mileage may vary, and I like the concept and would like to see more author anthologies like this. But this particular anthology had more misses than hits for me.

Prince Freya, Vol. 1

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By Keiko Ishihara. Released in Japan as “Itsuwari no Freya” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa DX. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Emi Louie-Nishikawa.

One of the habits that I’ve noticed a lot of creators have, particularly in series that have afterwords, is that they can sometimes apologize for the flawed behavior of the main character. Rarely is this an actual apology, it’s more to let the reader know that yes, the author did in fact plan for this character to be weak/annoying/overpowerful/perverse, and that it is a function of the plot, so don’t worry too much about it. We get that here as well, as the author tells us she is aware that Freya is a bit of a crybaby, but to hang in there because the story is about her character growth. What makes this amusing is that the author also starts the book with a startling image of Freya leaping off a giant cliff. Again, this is a fakeout (she looks tragic and doomed, but it turns out was gathering herbs that grow in dangerous places) but it does set up up to see her as bold and fearless… THEN shows us what she is is coddled.

Freya is a teenage girl in “fantasy medieval Europe”, whose mother is sick and whose adopted brothers are part of the Prince’s elite guards. We get a chapter or so showing us her life, where she tends to be sweet but also shy. Fortunately both brothers are awesome, so she need not worry (her mother is also awesome, we are told, despite now being ill). That said, there is a problem. Their kingdom is under threat, and the prince is actually dying. A prince who, it turns out, is a dead ringer for Freya. The brothers have been sent to get her so that she can imperso9nate the prince, but neither of them want this outcome. Unfortunately for them, Freya overhears them and decides to follow them to the castle. She may regret this: by the end of the volume the country is still in great danger both from without and within, and her resolve to impersonate the prince is derailed by personal tragedy and her own skittish personality.

It feels a bit strange, particularly from this publisher/magazine, to have a first volume that is almost all setup. I’m so used to one-shots that slowly turn into series, or stories that appear to be complete but then we get more of when they get popular. Prince Freya, though, is designed to run for a few volumes, and it shows. Freya is an interesting heroine, who is instinctively very brave and bold, but when she thinks about things she locks up and falls to pieces. It’s not helped that she suffers a horrible trauma halfway through the book (I’ll just say that one of her adopted brothers is incredibly cool, nice, loves her, etc. and let you take a wild guess) and that those in the book who aren’t her family are a lot less patient with her hysterics given that the country is in danger. Fortunately, the end of the book sees her acting instinctively, jumping off a building (she really does jumping from great heights)… and ending up accidentally kidnapped. Whoops.

It’s just a start, but there’s a lot here to make readers want to read more. We’ll see how Freya does as prince next time around.