I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History: It Seems Turning into a High-Born Baddie Makes the Prince All the More Lovestruck, Vol. 3

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By Izumi Okido and Jyun Hayase. Released in Japan as “Rekishi ni Nokoru Akujo ni Naru zo: Akuyaku Reijō ni Naru hodo Ōji no Dekiai wa Kasoku suru yō desu!” by B’s-LOG Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Sarah Moon.

She’s not in this volume much, but I will admit I have started to wonder what this series is going to do with Liz. For the most part, these sorts of “the good villainess is balanced by a bad heroine” style books tend to overbalance the heroine into being genuinely evil, or incredibly incompetent, etc. It’s easy to see what’s going to happen to them. Liz is not quite like those in that she’s charming people into loving her, but not deliberately, and it’s basically causing folks to affirm her own misplaced idealism. Unfortunately for her, the rest of the cast really hate her, and I’m fairly sure that exile is probably going to be her best outcome here, and genuinely snapping may still be on the menu. Sometimes you’re just the wrong archetype in a book that’s about someone else. Speaking of what someone else, let’s check in on Alicia.

Alicia wants to investigate Laval, but she can’t simply take a field trip into another country, especially when their own country is chock full of magic users and Laval doesn’t have any of them. So she’s going to have to figure something out. Fortunately for her, Duke suddenly loses all his memories of her, and everyone around says that she’s the one who did it – something which she leans into almost on impulse, because she literally cannot resist trying to be a drama queen. Hey, presto, she’s exiled to Laval so quickly that you’d almost think that it was a deliberately ploy on the part of Duke. She arrives disguising herself as a boy and quickly ends up part of the knights who work for the second prince, who is trying to find an achievement that will let him take the throne. An achievement that may need… magic.

It is sometimes interesting seeing the narrative through the eyes of Alicia, who is living it as if she’s the protagonist of a light novel and to whom dramatic events constantly happen, and the rest of the cast, who are actually part of reality and are forced to deal with the darker bits that Alicia touches upon but rarely stays long. The reunion of the king and his brother is agonizingly awkward, especially when you consider that a lot of the cause of their strife is, well, still around. Alicia may be delighted to be exiled, but for Gill it’s a nightmare, and to make matters worse he’s at Duke’s side through most of the book, so he can’t even pine properly for the girl he loves because the much better love interest is next to him. As for Alicia herself, we’re rapidly finding out that she may want to be a villainess, and has been told to play a villainess, but she has a much more important hidden role. Which, well, Liz is not gonna like.

This isn’t top tier villainess, but it’s solid, and fans of the genre should be quite pleased.

Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend

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By Hajime Kamoshida and Keji Mizoguchi. Released in Japan as “Seishun Buta Yarou wa Dear Friend no Yume wo Minai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

And so the Rascal books come to an end (leaving aside any short story or side story collections) with a volume just as short as the previous one. The main conflict from the last few books gets solved fairly quickly and easily, so much so that we realize that it was a fakeout, and we’re right, as the real conflict is with Sakuta himself. Well, that and maybe the publishers. I’ve talked before about how the series has always felt a little artificially extended after the 9th book, and that Sakuta in college but still dealing with all the Adolescent Syndrome stuff felt tacked on. Turns out Sakuta agrees with me – no, not the Sakuta we’re familiar with, but his alternate-world “perfect” Sakuta, who has come by to let him know that there are many and infinite alternate realities around them, and they all think Sakuta sucks, because he’s managing to break all of them.

When we last saw Sakuta, everything was terrible as Mai announced to the world that she was Touko. Now he has to make things right, which involves getting deep into the heart of Miori’s relationship with Touko and why her repressed feelings are actually making things worse. This is resolved, and thanks to Mai doing a quick “this was all an April Fool” bit, no one believes that she’s Touko anymore (including Mai herself). Unfortunately for Sakuta, all the OTHER reality-altered dreams are still present and correct – there are two Kaedes, Yuuma is dating Rio, etc. As it turns out, Miori is more than just the last in a string of women Sakuta has to help, she’s a dimensional nexus point of sorts. While everyone else has alternate versions of themselves (which we’ve seen with the alt-Sakuta), there is only one Miori. That said, most of this has little to do with Sakuta’s actual problem – how does he fix everything?

Despite the fact that this seems like the 15th book in a row where Sakuta takes a lot of public transportation lovingly described until a solution occurs,. there are things I really enjoyed here. Touko’s final song being a palindrome made it very life affirming, and I wish Miori luck in finding a Touko who isn’t dead. I also liked Sakuta’s discussion with the alt-Kaede, and her own simple solution to his “problem”. His problem is phrased as “grow up”, and the solution is pretty neat, and ties into something we’ve known about Sakuta from the very start – I appreciate how this fixes everything. The biggest issue with the book, and possibly why the last two were so short (well, that and artist illness) is that it’s padded out. Sakuta goes round in circles a lot here, and at one point takes us on a tour of iconic Rascal Does Not Dream locations. Like his alternate self, I wanted Sakuta to get with it and solve everything, not mope around.

The book ends with an epilogue set two years later, with stuff I really liked as well as a few things I’m eeeeh on (why do people love student/teacher relationships? Who are not students?). Sakuta and Mai are still exactly the same as before only with all their issues resolved – sorry, no engagement, marriage, or honeymoon scenes. Basically, everyone has grown up. Rascal went on too long, just like its hero, but I liked it a lot.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Vol. 8.5

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By Piero Karasu and Yuri Kisaragi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo to Tensai Reijou no Mahou Kakumei” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.

Ah, the good old .5 volume. This one even helps us out by telling us where most of the original short stories were seen – they were in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Magazine, which frequently has short story extras for its popular series. This is good news, as it means they’re all chunky short stories written for an attentive audience, rather than, say, the “these are all 2-3 page stories written for bookstore giveaways” short story volumes. In fact, I’d say this is just as strong as the regular volumes, and some of the stories I’d call essential. They mostly, with the exception of the first, examine life after Euphie takes the throne, and deal with the fallout of what comes from that. As we saw in the last volume, it’s still ongoing and nasty, and is destroying a number of families and lives. That said, we know where our sympathies lie, because the families whose lives are getting destroyed are trying to marry Euphie off to a man and still hate Anis.

The stories: 1) Near the start of their relationship, Anis shows Euphie how she collects spellstones, and they have a nice bath and are attracted to each other; 2) Anis tries to repair her relationship with her mother, which is difficult as they’re both very awkward and blame themselves for everything that happened between them; 3) Ilia’s family has gotten rid of her abusive parents, and are trying to get her to come back to them and marry her cousin, but Lainie isn’t going to let that happen; 4) in an original story for the book, Anis tries to ruffle Euphie’s coolness by being her maid for the day; 5) We get Tilty’s backstory as she tries to avoid reconciling with her father; 6) Halphys is getting married but a surprise succession change may mess things up for her at the last minute; 7) In another original story for the book, Euphie asks Anis if she can sometimes wear nice dresses and actually socialize.

The relationship between Anis and Euphie has always tried to toe the line between “codependent, but in a good way” and “codependent, but in a terrible way”. There’s a scene in Halphys’ story where a noble admits he’s abdicating simply as Euphie terrifies him, and given what happened in Book 8, I absolutely get it. Anis may get upset that Euphie always seems to be the dominant one in their love, but that’s more down to Anis’s embarrassment, whereas with Euphie being overly affectionate is how she holds on to what’s left of her humanity. The best story, I thought, was Tilty’s, where we meet her father and realize that they’re the classic case of two people trying to be considerate of each other who only end up hurting each other instead. It’s a must read if you like her character.

Hopefully we’ll get the 9th book a bit faster than we got this one. Another great volume in a series I really love.