There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), So I Made One MYSELF!, Vol. 1

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By Hagane Kurodome and Katto. Released in Japan by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Taishi.

If I’m honest, this book was never going to live up to its title. That’s a big title. It promises a lot. It’s long, in the tradition of light novels these days. But the (srsly?) and the MYSELF!, between the two of them, promise more than I feel the series is prepared to deliver. The premise is solid. Indeed, if I read the second book in the series, it’s likely because I’m interested to see what happens next as I am curious. Unfortunately, the characterization and the writing can’t quite live up to it. Possibly the main sin the series commits is that I don’t think it’s funny enough. There’s an occasional smile as I read, but a title like “There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), So I Made One MYSELF!” demands laughs. A lot of laughs. It does not, I should note, demand endless textbook analysis of what being a telekinetic would be like in real life. Sadly, that’s what we get, as Sago is determined to relate to us in great detail his scientific method.

Sago is our hero, a teen who finds one day that he has telekinesis when he moves snack crumbs using only the power of his mind. It’s never clear how he woke to these powers, nor does anyone arrive to tell him about them, or say that he now has to fight bad guys. After years and years of training, to the point where he is laughably overpowered, he’s bored just being a salaryman, so he decides to create his own organization that would do to others what he wanted done to him. He finds a rich young woman who has just as many delusions of grandeur as he does, and two teenage kids who have issues of their own. He also creates bad guys for the kids to fight. Now he finally has everything that he originally wanted, though admittedly all he ends up doing himself is watching this play out from the sidelines, because he’s given himself the “mysterious unseen boss” character.

As I said, the premise is intriguing, especially with the revelation at the end of the book that they’ve been discovered by the press (which was intentional on their part). There is also a terrific bit of misdirection where they recruit the 5th member to their party that impressed me. But for the most part this was an exercise in frustration. The book is quite lengthy, and a large amount of that length, as I said earlier, is given over to Sago slowly and deliberately testing his powers, researching things, etc. The first fifth of the book, till he meets Kaburagi, is some of the most boring prose I’ve read in some time. Speaking of Kaburagi, I wish we’d done more with her, as she’s a character type I find fun, but she’s mostly wasted in this volume. The two teenage kids who are the “main characters” in Sago’s ploy are interesting, but Shouta’s initial jerkass character is also extremely frustrating. And the side story about the drunken CIA agent was painfully tortuous to read.

The book is trying to show how having a secret evil-fighting organization of superpowered people would be difficult to do in a “realistic” way, and it succeeds in showing us that. But man, it really does not live up to its title.

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 12

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By Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu. Released in Japan as “Yakusoku no Neverland” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Satsuki Yamashita.

A brief moment of appreciation for the cover art for this series, which continues to amaze. Last volume we had Emma looking like a witch, this time around her feathery hair is shown to be reminiscent of a bird. She’s also paired on the cover with Phil, who gets a chapter reminding us that the youngest children had to be left behind… and that everything’s changed at Grace Field House. The kids are now all split up, the Mom we know and have mixed feelings about is gone, and Phil has to just sit there and pretend to be happy knowing his friends are going off to be harvested. (Speaking of which, lots of shots in this volume of huge jars filled with child heads and body parts – it constantly reminds you the kids are food. More on that later.) Even worse, at the end of the chapter Phil is cornered by the bad guy… and that’s not really resolved.

As for the escaped kids, they’ve combined to form a huge group themselves – over 60 people. The most fascinating part of this volume to me was seeing how it deals with the “time skip” so beloved of shonen manga. Usually it’s fairly straightforward – there’s a chapter that feels like an ending place, and then we get a “two years later” or somesuch. Here we see the timeskip happening over the course of several chapters, as Emma, Ray and their small party go looking for clues as to what to do next as the others stay behind and live life as best they can. Before we know it, we get “three months later”, “six months later”, till by the end of the book it’s two yeas since events at the start. If nothing else, this shows off how impressive everyone is from staying hidden from the bad guys for so long… but alas, by the end of the book everyone’s in dire straits.

I noticed something interesting when Andrew, the lead bad guy for this book, is chasing down our heroes. When he confronts them personally, he refers to them as “food”, the same way that the demons think of them (there’s a very chilling moment in this volume when the demons bemoan all those ordinary kids they’ve been eating and wonder how delicious the ones from the top farms really do taste), but when on his own he thinks of them as “kids”. A nice reminder that some of the bad guys in this series are actually human, but also that they may not entirely buy into the “raised as food” line that is being toed. In the meantime, despite Emma once again thinking that she wants to escape without anyone dying, it’s hinted very hard that the adults in this group, Lucas and Yugo, are not long for this world. I suspect they will go out with a bang, though.

Continuing to combine the best parts of horror and thrilling adventure, The Promised Neverland is still top-tier Jump.

Crest of the Stars: The Return to Strange Skies

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By Hiroyuki Morioka and Toshihiro Ono. Released in Japan by Hayakawa Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Giuseppe di Martino.

The final book of the trilogy, though not the final book in the series overall. This wraps up getting Jinto and Lafier off the planet they’ve been stranded on and back to the Abh Empire, where he can finally go to quartermaster school an she can be a pilot. In between, we get cops chasing them, soldiers chasing the, the resistance desperately trying to get them to behave like hostages, a wild chase through an amusement park with animatronic animals, space battles galore, getting shot into space in a coffin, and an epilogue that neatly wraps everything up. If there hadn’t been more of the series, you’d still be pretty satisfied. That said, I am very happy that Banner of the Stars is to follow, as I think this was the best book of the three, despite a few battle scenes that were overfilled with vocabulary, this series’ Achilles heel.

The best reason to read this third volume is the introduction of Sporr, who is essentially that princess-curled high school bully girl from every anime ever put onto a spaceship. She even does the Ojousama Laugh (TM). The back and forth between her and her beleaguered assistant is pure gold, and you also greatly enjoy it when she’s the one who rescues Lafier and it turns out they hate each other, because of course they do. Unlike most princess-curled anime girls, though, Sporr is also tactically clever, and you can tell her rank is not just for show. Speaking of ranks, I also enjoyed the scene near the end where Lafier has to go before a commission to see if she can be a full-fledged pilot. They enjoy making her twist in the wind a bit, magnifying every error she’s committed along the way before mercifully admitting that she did fine and passes. The amusement park was also a hoot, with the behavior of the robot animals possibly being the comedy high point.

As for Jinto and Lafier, they are still not quite a couple by the end of the book, but Jinto does admit he wants to spend the rest of his life by her side, and even after he’s made crew on her new spaceship, she still asks him to call her Lafier. You get the sense that for these two reserved kids, this may be as explicit as you get. They do continue to be awful at being on the lam, and it’s a relief that the comedy resistance fighters are still capable enough to take care of them. he local police force also helps. One of my favorite bits of characterization in the book was seeing Kyte, the military liaison who’s been a prick ever since he arrived on the scene, gradually loosening up, revealing backstory, becoming sympathetic… and then losing it and becoming a prick again when he sees Lafier in person. Sometimes your tragic backstory isn’t enough to redeem you. You have to actually put in the effort. He did not.

The epilogue of the book sees us jump forward three years, and I suspect Banner of the Stars will feature even more space battles than we’ve gotten already. Still, this final volume was excellent. If you can get past the tortured vocabulary, Crest of the Stars is a great space opera.