The Irregular at Magic High School: Visitor Arc, Part II

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By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

This is very much a book of two halves, and I must admit that I preferred the first half to the second, though they both had issues. The first half is a continuation of the plot from the first book in this arc, as Tatsuya and Lina separately and together try to figure out what’s “possessing” these people and how to stop them, but are almost undone by a traitor in Lina’s midst. The traitor is… a character we met once before in the last book, but I must admit “minor character X’ does not really make it very dramatic – I was expecting it to be Lina’s aide Sylvia, which would have been more tragic. There’s also a pretty nice fight with said minor character traitor at the climax of the first half of the book, which actually gives Mizuki something to do. And we get a great way to present boring exposition and still make me laugh – Shizuku calls from California to give intel to Tatsuya, but she’s shitfaced drunk when she does so, and he’s trying to explain things to her as she slurs her words more and more. It’s pretty funny.

I was less impressed with the second half of the book, as it’s Valentine’s Day at the school, and you know what that means: wacky hijinks. I’ve talked before about how I’m not fond of Honoka being defined just by her love of Tatsuya, and I realize that the author is trying to let her and Shizuku get developed by the Honor Student manga author in that regard, but man, here her love for Tatsuya is literally weaponized by the runaway parasite, who possessed a robot named Pixie that’s part of the school’s robotics experiment. As you can imagine, instead of being driven by self-preservation and killing witnesses like the other possessed folks, she’s driven by the intense and disturbingly submissive love for Honoka that Honoka accidentally activated her with. That said, most of the valentine stuff was merely okay, and not actually irritating. And Mayumi’s revenge chocolates made me smile.

The irritating, as so frequently happens in this series, was saved for our two leads. I realize that Miyuki gets jealous sometimes, but what she did with Tatsuya’s chocolates was so petty and immature my jaw dropped. This is not helped by Tatsuya basically saying “welp” and just going along with it. (Tatsuya is not at his most likeable throughout the book – there’s a sequence where he lets Miyuki answer a difficult conundrum they have as he wants her to be “more than a pretty doll” that made me want to punch him.) And, of course, Miyuki is also dealing with her incestuous feelings for her brother, which are sometimes used as the usual gag (Lina’s reaction to Miyuki saying she and Tatsuya are just siblings) but in Miyuki’s inner thoughts are very much taken seriously. She feels guilty about these feelings, but honestly the whole thing makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

When you add in some “Japan is good, everyone else is less good” speeches, and Lina getting chewed out for daring to fall in love with Tatsuya (a fact that she denies, but no one believes her, least of all the reader), and you have a typically easy to read but frustrating volume of Mahouka. Next volume should wrap up this arc, at least.

An Invitation from a Crab

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By panpanya. Released in Japan as “Kani ni Sasowarete” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Rakuen Le Paradis. Released in North America by Denpa Books. Translated by Ko Ransom.

Iev always been a fan of those sketchy, semi-slice of life (except they’re too weird) manga that you see towards the back of a lot of seinen and josei manga magazines. It used to be that the chances of such works getting licensed over here was nil, but Denpa has quite a few eclectic titles coming out now, and An Invitation from a Crab is one of the first. It’s more of a collection of interconnected short stories, along with the occasional essay discussing the importance of paying attention to things. Our unnamed heroine is theoretically a high school student, and occasionally we do see her in class. But the world she’s in is not quite the same as ours, featuring normal humans but also animal-headed people, as well as the bizarre lemon with an eye that seems to be a ‘boss’ sort of type. Essentially, An Invitation from a Crab is a “what kind of stories will the author spin next?’ sort of book. And they’re good stories.

The stories here range from a few pages long to larger chunky narratives. The title comes from the first story, where our heroine follows a crab that is lying in the road and seems to know where it’s going. That said, the “punchline”, as it were, amounts to not much, and that’s also the case with most of the rest of these stories. You’re reading this for mood, not for jokes or characterization, and so frequently the stories feel like “shaggy dog” stories, where the ending does not justify the effort expended. Which is absolutely fine given much of this is about enjoying the journey. We see our heroine wearing a Chinese communist outfit in a factory breaking coconuts so they can be used to create electricity. That is a sentence I can’t believe I just typed, and it’s probably the weirdest of the stories in here, but there’s other dreamlike sequences as well, including one that literally is a dream, where our heroine’s spirit gets off a train but her body doesn’t.

There is quite a bit of humor here, despite my saying earlier that there weren’t punchlines per se. Sometimes simply seeing the situation makes me laugh, such as our heroine and her dog/roommate/whatever searching to try to find anyone who knows where pineapples come from, or the heroine gleefully preparing for her Sunday day off by doing piles of things (this reminded me of the Zetsubou-sensei chapter where the class had a “preview” of their field trip). And sometimes the mood can be disturbing – there’s a lot of dark shadows in this world, and while the coconut and lost body stories are not dark in any way, they’re unsettling and have a sense of unreality to them. Even some of the shorter stories in the volume, such as when our heroine is sold a giant salamander and tries to return him to the Amazon (a plot that lifts directly from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon), has an ominous feel to its humorous ending.

If you’re interested in a skewed look at life in a world that’s not quite this one, or wonder what it would be like if you did follow that crab into the side alley, you should definitely pick this up.

Accel World: Snow White’s Slumber

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By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

I was a little grumpy with the last volume of Accel World. After feeling that the Armor of Catastrophe arc went on far too long (a fact the author also agreed with me on), seeing it return as a Mark II made me slap my hand to my forehead. Fortunately, we were near the end of this arc when it appeared, and so it’s taken care of in one volume, though not without considerable sacrifice. More importantly, there’s a lot of really interesting discussion about the nature of Accel World in general, as well as its forbears. Striving for a meaning and purpose in life is something we see a lot of in the real world, but in the Accel World, the meaning and purpose of life may actually be a tangible thing, given that it was created. What’s more, the nature of Metatron reminds me very much of the nature of Kizmel in Sword Art Online; a sense of “these supposed NPCs have gone way beyond what everyone thought they would do’.

A lot of this volume, given that Haruyuki is separated from Kuroyukihime, focuses on the relationship between him and Metatron, who would likely have risen up fairly high on the list of ‘harem candidates’ were it not for the events later in the book, and even so the epilogue shows there may be hope. I admit I could have done without the “I speak like a tsundere princess” thing, but I really did like the discussion they had, which also shows how clever Haruyuki is, piecing together stuff that’s been bubbling around inside his head for the last 15 volumes or so. She also gives him the strength to finish off the bad guys before they get even more powerful, and (hopefully) get ris of the ISS kits making everyone lose it in the real world as well, though that last part remains to be seen. Everyone else got a lot of good stuff to do as well, and there was some nice development of Nico, who gets her armor back… mostly. There’s even a heartwarming festival to end things!

Except that what most everyone will be talking about is the arrival of White Cosmos, the White King who we’d never seen before, the power behind the Accelerated Research Society, and Kuroyukihime’s real-life sister. Given this is a Kawahara villain, it’s no real surprise that her goal appears to be to drive everyone in the game to total despair. Subtlety is not why you read this author. I suspect that she’s mostly going to be used to drive character development for Kuroyukihime, who wisely (and with Haruyuki’s help) chooses not to fight her just now. And of course to contrast the ‘girl shrouded in black who’s really kind vs. girl who looks white and kind but is secretly manipulative and awful’. Again, subtlety is not on display here. But it makes for a nice, dramatic scene, and would look pretty cool animated.

Given that we’ve wrapped up a long arc here, I would not be surprised if the next volume is lighter in tone. In the meantime, fans of the series shold enjoy this new volume, especially the talk between Haruyuki and Metatron.