Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Mobilization

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By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru. Translated by Tyran Grillo.

These novels seem to have been alternating between political intrigue and space battles, and as you might guess that means the majority of this volume is the latter. And some fantastic space battles they are, showing off good strategies, the horrors of war (one of Those Two Guys is even killed off), and a battle of wits between Yang and Reinhard. As for who wins, well, as you can imagine, it’s not as clear cut as all that. There is a decisive winner of the war, though, and that leads to the scene that everyone has been waiting five books for, which is Reinhard and Yang meeting face to face. It’s not a very long scene at all, and the two respect each other but don’t really change their mind about much of anything. Still, it’s iconic, and I imagine must be one of the highlights of the anime series. Of course, there’s still five books to go in the main series, so the question is where does LoGH go from here?

Perhaps a romantic comedy? Unlikely, but it’s not an accident that each main character has a capable and beautiful young assistant. That said, Frederica’s feelings for Yang have been far more noticeable, whereas it’s harder to get a read on Hilda (as the two generals mirror each other, so do their aides). Given that, it’s unsurprising that Yang takes the plunge here, with perhaps one of the most awkward proposals ever recorded on paper. It’s still nice to see, and combined with the war being over you sort of hope that Yang gets his wish to settle down, retire, and become a historian as he’s always wanted. That is highly unlikely to happen, sadly. As for Hilda, she’s far more active in the plot, but any potential romance (which, given the differences between the Empire and the Alliance, I expect would be more a political than romantic arrangement) is scuppered by her actions here to ensure Reinhard’s safety, which are very clever, work 100%, and absolutely infuriate him. Reinhard has never grown up in many ways, and it’s never more clear than in the scenes at the close of the battle, where he can’t accept what’s actually happened.

As always with LOGH, there’s about twenty other things also happening. Much to my surprise, the bratty child Emperor has not yet been terminated with extreme prejudice, but he has been made completely irrelevant, which works just as well. Julian is back with Yang, though that also means he has to deal with Yang and Frederica getting together, which (as a teenager with a crush on Frederica himself) is vexing. And there is still politics and intrigue, mostly on the Alliance side – in fact, given this is the midpoint of the series, it seems appropriate that a decisive and crushing final victory… is completely averted, leaving everyone pretty unhappy.

As you may notice, I’ve been trying to be less spoilery than usual, because the joy of this volume really is trying to guess what’s going to happen. Of course, the amusing thing is that the main audience for these novels may be fans who have already seen the anime. That said, if you’re on the fence and you like dense, verbose space opera, you absolutely have to be reading this.

Forbidden Scrollery, Vol. 1

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By ZUN and Moe Harukawa. Released in Japan as “Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Comp Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by ZephyrRZ.

Seemingly this manga is simply another in a long, long line of titles that can be summed up as “supernatural experts deal with the yokai problem of the week”. The star of the show, or at least the character who the events revolve around, is Kosuzu, a perky and slightly ditzy seller of rare books. The land she (and the rest of the cast) live in, Gensokyo, seems to exist somewhere in yokai land, and finding books that actually exist “in the human world” is a big deal. Of course, just because the books may have existed in the human world doesn’t mean they can’t be big trouble. There’s letter-eating bugs, and sentient smoke, and all sorts of yokai that are not precisely evil but are definitely troublesome. Fortunately, Kosuzu has a group of friends to help her out whenever things get too out of control. In fact, at times it feels as if the friends are the real stars that the reader paid to see…

Yes, as most readers are no doubt aware, this is not merely another generic youkai manga, but in fact that first manga licensed here in the West based on the hideously popular bullet hell game Touhou Project. And the reason that so much attention is devoted to Reimu and Marisa is that they are the overall stars of the franchise – Kosuzu was created specially for this title. There are, thankfully, some explanatory endnotes detailing who’s who of the major characters. Sometimes this isn’t needed – the vaguely antagonistic friendship/rivalry between Reimu and Marisa is pretty self-evident from the text, but sometimes things can be a bit confusing. When Reimu meets Mamizou, the unsettling supernatural tanuki girl, it’s clear they have a past history, but that is presumably part of another piece of Touhou lore.

So the question remains, is this readable and enjoyable to someone unfamiliar with the Touhou franchise? I think so. Pretty much all I know about Touhou can be summed up as “Cirno’s Perfect Math Class”, but I was able to move along here, mostly as I have considerable experience reading youkai manga. The cast are new to me, but their character tics are pretty well established – Reimu seems very lazy, for example. That said, I think I found Kosuzu the most interesting character – which makes sense, since this series is supposedly about her. It’s unclear how aware she is of the dangerous qualities of her books – certainly she seems to be hypersensitive to anyone damaging then, but that reads as “obsessive book lover” more than anything else. I want to see more of her.

I think Yen Press seems to agree with me that the series can be appreciated without any previous knowledge, as the Touhou references are limited to the endnotes – not even a “based on the hit game Touhou Project!” on the back cover. It’s supposed to succeed or fail on its own. There seem to be about 7 volumes, and I’ll certainly see how the next one is. For Touhou fans, obviously, but also yokai fans and fans of cute girls.

So I’m a Spider, So What?, Vol. 1

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By Okina Baba and Tsukasa Kiryu. Released in Japan as “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

The entire genre of ‘transported to another world’ (isekai) has grown massive and huge. Be it via dimensional portal, game gone wrong, or simply death and reincarnation, Japanese teens and young adults keep finding ways to enter a new world, pick up a sword, and start grinding like it’s 1999. And as you can imagine, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd, to have a premise that does not make the average reader go “oh, this again”. And thus we have the influx of being reborn in another world as something weird. Next month we’ll get slime monsters, and in April we may hit peak ridiculousness with vending machines, but for the moment we have spiders, as our vaguely named heroine (we hear about a mean nickname, but her actual name seems deliberately vague) wakes up after an explosion seemingly destroys her classroom to find… she’s a spider. A tiny, weak spider, the sort you kill in Level 1 of your new game. Now what?

To be honest, the other light novel title I kept comparing this to as I read it is Arifureta. The bulk of the book is similar to the middle of that series, with the spider getting into tricky situations, figuring out how to survive them, and getting increasingly strong, even if she may not realize it. Contrasting this we cut back to her other classmates, who have also been reincarnated in the same fantasy world. Some get off well – Shun is a prince with high magical talent, though he’s still a newbie to actually using it. His (male) best friend from their previous world is reincarnated as a (female) noble, though (s)he seems to take it in stride. And one of the “queen bee” types from their class is a dragon, and Shun’s familiar. We even get the cute but immature young teacher who’s there to help find the rest of her class so that she can show them the right path, which is pretty much exactly like Arifureta.

Whether you like Spider So What (which is what I’ve started to call it) depends on how much you can deal with the spider’s narration, which I would describe as first-person hyperactive teenager. In her previous human life, our heroine was apparently a quiet girl, more comfortable gaming at home than interacting with others. Which is fine, but it doesn’t quite mesh with her personality as a spider, which feels like one two hundred page run-on sentence. The plot is simple – watch her kill and eat things (even if it’s a bad idea), gain more experience and levels (which she (and we) can see, in a manner similar to the Death March books), and gradually get into some pretty badass battles – the fight against the bees near the end was probably the best scene in the book, and shows off how far she’s come. Aside from a “it was me all along” moment when we realize the egg she couldn’t open was actually the dragon egg that housed another reincarnated student, she never meets the rest of the class – their narratives are mostly separate. I’m not sure how long that will go on, though.

So I’m a Spider, So What? is not quite as goofy as I’d expected, and when you remove the veneer it’s actually pretty similar to other titles in this genre. But the fact that the lead is a teenage girl, even if she’s a spider, is refreshing, and she’s certainly plucky. I found this pretty decent, and I’ll read more to see where it goes.