Chihayafuru, Vol. 4

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By Yuki Suetsugu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Be Love. Released in North America digitally by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Ko Ransom.

The sign of a good series is that you care about the characters as if they were real people, and take joy in their triumphs and grieve at their setbacks. This can sometimes backfire, however, when you see the setbacks coming and think to yourself “Oh noooooo!”. The moment I saw Chihaya’s head throb, I knew immediately what was going to happen by the end of the volume, and it hurt. This is why this review is running somewhat late, because I really did not want to read what I knew was going to happen. It comes after a half volume of small triumphs and achievements, as they quality for the National Tournament, win over their faculty adviser, and slowly come together as a team, each character getting a little bit more to do and more for us to identify with. Then I saw that throbbing head. And I said “…she’s sick.” And yep. SO FRUSTRATING.

Arata gets the cover this time around, and fortunately also gets a chunk of the narrative, as we get to see the strong relationship he had with his grandfather from his POV, helping to explain why he was so devastated he abandoned Karuta. It’s portrayed very realistically: his grandfather is a vibrant, active guy who loves Karuta, but then he has a stroke, which brings memory loss and rehabilitation. And of course, this being a manga and thus obliged to observe the occasional cliche, he goes to the tournament and leaves his grandfather alone for a few hours. We all know how that’s going to turn out. It really helps bring Arata into focus and remind us that he is eventually going to be a major player in this series again, and I imagine seeing Chihaya and company here will act as a catalyst.

As for Chihaya, she does her best, and tries hard to hide her illness form everyone, but in the end they have to forfeit after she collapses. Naturally, after waking back up, she’s completely devastated, and I suspect Vol. 5 is going to have a lot of depression and self-hatred. We’ve been seeing a lot of sports titles over here lately, and usually when there’s something like this it’s a physical injury, such as a sprained ankle or somesuch. Of course, they usually deal with physical sports such as basketball or volleyball. When you have something like Karuta, which is a lot more physical than I expected but still played seated and relying primarily on memorization and strategy, a fever or nasty cold can be just as bad as that sprained ankle. It’s to the credit of the team that they kept playing after she had to forfeit, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll pick up after the tournament and deal with the fallout.

Chihayafuru remains one of the best digital titles Kodansha is releasing at the moment, and I hope my review of Vol. 5 (already out) will come sooner rather than later.

The Faraway Paladin: The Lord of the Rust Mountains

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By Kanata Yanagino and Kususaga Rin. Released in Japan as “Saihate no Paladin” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by James Rushton.

I’m reviewing this as one giant book, but it actually came out as two books here, called ‘Primus’ and ‘Secundus’ – in fact, Amazon thinks that those are the titles, and forgot about the whole Rust Mountains thing. It works better to see them as one big book, though, which is what the author intended. The first volume simply stops, and the second picks up right where it left off – there’s no real attempt to separate them. As for the plot, our square-jawed hero and his elf friend are here to take down an ancient dragon, helped out by some old friends and some new dwarves, including one who becomes Williams’s squire, despite being of royal blood. He is told repeatedly that if he fights the dragon now he will die, and he should gain more power and influence by letting a few people be killed so he can take it down more easily. As you might imagine, that is not how William rolls.

William is the star of this series, and the narrative fits itself around him, meaning it too tends to be like he is – straightforward, a bit humorless, and painfully, PAINFULLY earnest. This is actually the main selling point of The Faraway Paladin, which is miles away from any other fantasy light novel we have out there – there’s not an ounce of cynicism or irony in it. William is Good and True, and he can do impossible things thanks to the help of his friends, the training of his parents, and MUSCLES, which he points out are awesome several times throughout the book. The closest we get to cynicism is the villain, who is a very well-done ancient dragon, and would very much like to tempt William into allying with him to that he can sow chaos. He should know better.

The book reads quickly, and the action sequences are very well done, with no confusion about what is happening at any time. I was a little annoyed with the introduction of a tsundere elf girl, whose sole purpose seems to be to get rid of the ho yay that existed between William and Menel (there’s a lot of teasing of William for not having found a girlfriend yet, further driving the point home). Al is a good addition to the cast – it fits that someone like William gets a squire that’s almost as serious-minded as he is, and the two work well together. The translation is also good, though the Kindle version I have has both the dragon and the Gods speaking in bold text, which can get very confusing when three of them are all speaking at once – perhaps one should have been italicized instead.

Again, if you want to read a light novel but are thoroughly sick of the cliches of the genre, this is an absolute must-read. It’s the Lord of the Rings starring Superman, basically. I look forward to seeing where it goes next.

Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

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By NISIOISIN and Hikaru Nakamura. Released in Japan by Shueisha. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Nathan A. Collins.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this when I first heard of it, and now that I’ve finished it, I’m still not quite sure. It was written two years ago, and the anime is just coming out now, so it seems like it wasn’t written solely to be a TV tie-in (Nisio has done those before, writing books in the Death Note and xxxHOLIC franchises). But honestly, it doesn’t have the same strong authorial voice that I’ve grown used to from the Monogatari and Zaregoto series – if nothing else, it has far fewer puns. If I’m going to be honest it feels like it’s a book that was written because a bit of cash was needed, and someone said “can you write us a battle royale-style book that we could potentially use later?”. Even Nakamura’s illustrations are a bit disappointing, as they’re basically just character design – if you’ve seen the cover, you’ve seen the illustrations.

That said, this isn’t that bad a book, and it gets better as it goes along. As I mentioned, the plot is essentially a Battle Royale, as 12 fighters of various types and backgrounds, all seemingly connected with the Chinese Zodiac, have been brought together to fight each other to the death, with the last one standing getting anything they wish. At first it seems like the morality discussions we get, both via internal monologue and external dialogue, are merely padding while we wait for the battles, but as the book goes on it becomes clearer that the battles are padding for the morality discussion. This should not be a surprise, given this author – even in this book, which does not feature too many incredibly talkative people, there’s still a lot of discussion about the nature of good and evil, and what it means to be a good person.

The nature of the series means that even talking about what a character says towards the end of the book can be spoiling, given it’s a ‘kill someone off every chapter’ sort of book. I will say that it’s exactly as advertised – the start of the book said 11 of the 12 would end up dead, and sure enough, that’s what happens. This includes the worst of the bad guys and the most sympathetic of the good guys. It does seem to indicate that, while wars are bad, pacifism is not necessarily the best ideal you can strive for – one of the characters, Monkey, reminds me an awful lot of Tsubasa Hanekawa, and that may be intentional. My favorite chapters were towards the end, as two of the better fleshed-out fighters discuss doing the right thing, and it’s the only time in the book you actually want to see more than one person survive – for the most part, these aren’t nice people.

Watchers of the anime will likely get even more out of this series – Nisio gave each fighter a one-page “biography” in the book, but the anime is expanding said biography to give a lot more backstory to everyone. Likewise, there’s a sequel manga running at the moment in Jump, which I believe Viz has also licensed. And they just announced a sequel novel to this book, with (presumably) a new cast. So in the end maybe this was meant to be work-for-hire to create a franchise. Still, it’s not without interest.