Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 10

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Gaippe.

Last time we asked what would change about monster hunting if we knew that not all monsters are evil and mindless. But if there are good and bad monsters, then there are also good and bad people. And the bad people who make up the Ikelos Familia are very bad indeed, so a good deal of this book is reversing any gains made by the last book. In fact, reversing may be a bit of an understatement – by the end of this book, Bell’s reputation is in shreds and everyone is furious with him. (Well, not his own Familia, thank God.) And while Ouranos’ experiment is still living on, it’s hanging by a thread. It’s hard not to sum up this volume of Danmachi as “Everything is terrible. The end.” That said, how we get there is important, and there are some excellent fights, good character moments, and… OK, yeah, no humor this time around. Not even any harem antics.

Much of this book continues to revolve around Wiene’s story, and unfortunately that’s a weak point in the novel, as she is absolutely a damsel in distress throughout it, whether it’s getting captured and sobbing in captivity, or being forced to mindlessly rampage aboveground. The trouble, of course, is that her plight is needed to advance Bell’s character, so she has to suffer as a result. The moral battle between Bell (pure, good, a bit headstrong) and Dix (twisted, evil, scheming) is a highlight, though I’m not sure Dix’s description of Bell as a hypocrite quite fits. Dix’s anger stems from a classic dilemma in stories like this – who do you choose to save if multiple sides are in peril? Do you save humans or monsters? Bell saves both, of course, and that’s why Dix rails on him for such impossible optimism. Dix himself is a thoroughly loathsome villain, though I wasn’t all that fond of the whole “descendants must carry on the insane plan” thing.

Aboveground, the rest of the cast gets relatively little to do – Lili and Hestia investigate a bit to try to find out where the middleman is in this conspiracy, but for the most part they’re sidelined. As for Team Loki, they get the bulk of the climax, trying to stop the rampaging monsters in the city and wondering why in God’s name Bell is chasing after one of them. (It is fairly notable that Bell’s “this is my kill!” excuse is rather lame, and while it is what kills his reputation I don’t think anyone who really knows him buys it for a minute – Eina certainly doesn’t.) I was wondering if Bell would have to fight anyone from Loki Familia, but we avoid that, mostly as he’d get the crap kicked out of him, I expect.

And so now we wonder where to go from here. Bell’s reputation is bad, but he’s not thrown out of the city or anything. And Hermes is already trying to find ways to fix things. I have a feeling that the next book will involve a lot of dungeon crawling. and I hope that it’s a bit more lighthearted. Still, if you’re looking for a dose of Danmachi at its most serious and grim, this is the volume for you.

Nisekoi, Vol. 25

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By Naoshi Komi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Camellia Nieh

Harems are a very popular genre, so popular they’re even called harems, rather than what they actually are – romantic comedy or romantic drama. You have a guy, or a girl, and their various love interests – when it’s more than two, that puts it in this genre. They are popular but also very dangerous to license long-term, especially for the West, where titles can come out in volume format over a year after fans have been shamelessly spoiled on the forums. Because let’s face it: 90% of readers are dissatisfied with the ending. Either the title leaves everything ambiguous (the so-called “no ending”), or the protagonist chooses the wrong one – i.e., the one the reader doesn’t prefer. This is true even if the correct choice has been signposted from the first chapter, so it must be even more frustrating for fans of Nisekoi, which theoretically did a much better job at keeping all its heroines as options till the end. That said, the series is still subtitled “False Love”. The False Love was the plot. And therefore the heroine… is the one we expected.

Therefore, this volume does its level best to shut down all the other pairings and show that, in fact, it’s Raku x Chitoge going forward. Chitoge is not the promise girl that we’ve been wondering about for the entire series – that’s Onodera – but she is the one that Raku decides he is in love with, despite the fact that, similar to Naru in Love Hina, she literally runs away from her feelings until there is nowhere left to run to. It’s very in character for Chitoge, and honestly everyone in this volume acts exactly as you’d expect them to. Tsumugi gets to have a cool fight, and finally show Claude that she is, in fact, a she (was anyone else reminded of that Night Court scene with Christine? No? Just me? OK…). Marika, who has always been the one whose feelings are RIGHT THERE, acts as an audience surrogate in telling Chitoge to man up and admit the truth. And Onodera… well, Onodera gets to cry, and also bake their wedding cake, something so mind-boggling that she has to textually tell the reader that she wanted to do this, and it wasn’t Raku or Chitoge’s idea. The nice girl to the end.

While we are starting to see a few series experiment with polyamory, it’s always in a “fantasy world” setting, and you’re not going to see it in modern-day Japan. And for those who want to ship the OT3 after the wedding… nope, we get a short epilogue showing Onodera’s daughter running into Raku and Chitoge’s son, and it’s obvious they haven’t met each other before. (Which is incredibly frustrating from anything other than a ‘dramatic irony’ perspective – must ALL harems never speak to each other again after the wedding, especially when they’re as close friends as Chitoge and Onodera were?) And so we’re left with a series that I enjoyed for 25 volumes… but is only going to be satisfying if you shipped Raku and Chitoge. This is the curse of all harem series, and it’s why they’re popular but hard to license, because hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. Still: Nisekoi was excellent. Good job.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Yokohama Disturbance Arc, Part 1

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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.

Having finished the athletic competition between the magic schools, we now get a chance to see the scholarly competition, which is not nearly as popular with the masses but carries just as much prestige for the winners. Naturally, since Tatsuya is a freshman and also in Course 2, he’s not in charge of this; that’s left to Suzune, the former Student Council Secretary and resident tall, dark and handsome girl of the group. Of course, Tatsuya being Tatsuya, he’s asked to join the team as a helper anyway, partly as the previous helper was the girl who got zapped in the athletic festival and therefore can’t use magic anymore, and partly as the alternate choice disagrees with Suzune’s objectives, so why not use Tatsuya, who does agree with them and is also perfect in nearly every way? That said, terrorists are all around them, both as students trying to stop the competition, and as Chinese mafia trying to do the same thing for different reasons.

Honoka and Shizuku are on the cover, but unfortunately have the least amount of face time devoted to them of our main cast. Or perhaps it is fortunate, as the other half of this novel is devoted to taking the various members of Tatsuya’s crew and trying to put them in wacky romantic comedy situations. This works best with Erika and Leo, mostly as the two don’t really have a shred of sexual tension or attraction to each other besides “oh look, attractiveness”, and thus they are allowed to behave fairly normally, leaving aside Erika’s tendency towards rage and Leo’s cluelessness. It works least well with Mikihiko and Mizuki, in a scene that is so blatantly a set up for wacky “whoops, I tried to stop you falling and groped you” antics that I actually winced. (The author implied in the afterword that he added some scenes from the webnovel to set up later stuff better, so I assume these two become an item – they DO seem to have some chemistry, when they aren’t being written badly.) And Mayumi and Miyuki, who I expect are two of the triangle of “Tatsuya partner candidates” in this book (Honoka being the third) get scenes as well. Given I’m not fond of the incest subtext in this series, it’s no surprise who I preferred.

The pats of the book that are a serious action movie with terrorists fare much better. This is what Sato writes best, and there are a lot of cool fight scenes with clever uses of magic – Mayumi and Mari come off particularly well. The Chinese Mafia are there to be goons, with the exception of Zhou, who seems like the sort of “always smiling Chinese villain” I remember from Patlabor. I suspect he’s the only one I have to remember for later books. In any case, as the title implies, this is the first of what the author says is a two-volume arc. I imagine we’ll see the academic competition sabotaged further later on, though whether we’ll get more romantic comedy hijinks is not in my power to guess. (Please no.) If you like thrillers with magic and cool characters, this is right up your alley. As always, if you hated Tatsuya before, you’ll hate him again.