Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!, Vol. 19

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By FUNA and Itsuki Akata. Released in Japan as “Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne!” by SQEX Novels. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Tara Quinn. Adapted by Maggie Cooper.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first: I am reading the digital version of this title, and it has one very large (20+ pages) and one very small section of text that repeats itself verbatim. Fortunately, nothing seems to be missing as far as I can tell, and I assume it will be fixed soon. Leaving that aside, this is another FUNA book, and in particular a volume of Make My abilities Average, which has as its one goal showing a lot of teen and tween girls kicking ass, making their own careers, and deliberately not getting married or even thinking of getting married anytime soon. I’m not sure I can comfortably call it feminist, but at least you don’t have to worry too much about anything too uncomfortable getting in the way of the goofy overpowered antics. Even on another continent, the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Three are going to be ridiculous, and now they’re infecting the royalty.

We pick up right where we left off, in the fishing village, as they try to figure out, now that they have all this rare and expensive fish, how they can preserve it when they don’t have ice magic and they’re miles from anyone. (It involves to a degree, eating and then throwing up, because they’re somewhat devout about not wasting fish.) After departing (and leaving behind the selfish merchant, who ended up being far less important than I expected), they slowly make their way to the capital, where they finally meet up with the Wonder Trio. The two groups, now that they both have Mile to themselves to a degree, agree to team up, after the Wonder Trio manage to game the system and get promoted the same way the Crimson Vow did, and they all move into a big house together. It’s very cozy.

Once a volume, the series tries to remind you that the author does have this ongoing sci-fi plot involved, where we see Mile discussing the fate of the world with various robot dogs, birds, and assorted intelligences. But honestly, this volume seems to half-ass that, and happily gets back to cute girls doing cute things. That even affects the side stories, where we see the two princesses (who also have Mile’s OP cheats) saving their countries from famine/surplus, making a profit doing it, and getting revered as saints. By accident. In the other side story, the baron’s daughter in the Servants of the Goddess – the one who hits things very hard – is inundated with marriage proposals, up to and including the princes of the kingdom, and like every other girl in this series decides the answer is to run away and be a monster hunter. FUNA has a leitmotif, and dammit, we’re going to play it over and over again.

That said, this is fine, aside from the usual “oh no my breasts are small” shtick. As always, for fans of the series only, but they should be happy.

Lady Rose Just Wants to Be a Commoner!, Vol. 2

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By Kooriame and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Caroline W.

We have had numerous books where I have observed that the protagonist and/or the antagonist tends to be a bit too quick to see the world they’ve been reincarnated in as the actual otome game they remember, rather than as a world with living, breathing humans with real feelings. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series lean quite so hard into the concept as Lady Rose, in which Lady Rose has to be handed a lot of the answers to the mystery she’s trying to solve as she is SO ingrained into the mindset that everyone is like the characters she remembers that she not only can’t see the forest for the trees, but can’t even see the tree. And when you add in the fact that, like so many other shoujo light novels, she is utterly unable to see her own value, calling everything she does “acting”, and you end up with a book that is less of a mystery and more of a psychological horror story.

We pick up immediately after the cliffhanger from Book One, as Felicia and Seth confront her adopted younger brother and try to figure out why he’s kidnapped Liliana… though this ends up being more an exercise in making Felicia face reality, something that proves to be… very difficult, frankly. Things are not helped by the fact that Liliana is now actively trying to kill herself, and Felicia has to figure out why that’s happening. And oh yes, Evan was also in on the kidnapping. This means that both Shade and Evan are going to be executed, unless… Rose goes back to the castle, and pleads with the King for clemency. Something which is unlikely to have any impact, unless of course she goes ahead and marries Nika, who she at least finally admits she loves. Will she be forced to give up on everything she’s fought for?

I’m gonna be spoiling a bit of the climax of the book here, but I just have to talk about how delighted I was by the ending, which until the last page I thought was going to be reversed. Hell, so did everyone else in the cast, and they’re very surprised at the final outcome. Because this is not “Lady Rose Learns How Important She Is”, or “Lady Rose Makes Sacrifices But Finds True Love”, it’s “Lady Rose Wants to Be a Commoner”, and it’s absolutely committing to that bit. Now, she and Nika are still being cute and blushy at the end, but notably: she’s a commoner, he’s a prince, and they aren’t married. She not only defies fate but defies the narrative, and I love that. (I also love the fakeout opening of Chapter 6, which gave me a brief heart attack till I laughed).

The series ends here… except it doesn’t, as there is a third and final volume, from the perspective of Liliana, the “saint”. Honestly, any perspective that isn’t Felicia’s will be welcome at this point – she’s too unreliable a narrator. Very much enjoying this.

The Dorky NPC Mercenary Knows His Place, Vol. 3

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By Toryuu and hamm. Released in Japan as “Kimo Ota Mob Yōhei wa, Mi no Hodo o Wakimaeru” by Overlap Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Josh DM.

We’re starting to get a bit of an overarching plot for this series, though for the most part it is still fairly episodic, showing us John taking a job, John doing the job, the complications that set in, and the aftermath. There’s far fewer girls crushing on John in this volume – the romance, emphasized in Book One, is almost completely removed now. That said, don’t worry, all the love interests have been replaced by people who are trying to shoot John instead. We are tripling down on people trying to kill him, and while some of it is just garden-variety bad guys, we’re getting the sense that there’s a conspiracy going on here, mostly in scenes with the worst of the nobles, a cartoonishly evil girl who looks like she stepped off the pages of a villainess book. Needless to say, she’s not a threat, but her eventual fate does show us that this series is not afraid to get dark if it has to.

John has been doing pretty well lately, but this book sees him having an awful run of bad luck. On the plus side, he does make enough money to finally pay off his parents’ debt, though he gently rejects their offer to get another job, as he feels that mercenary is the one that best suits him. He tries catching some pirates, only to run into a noble’s territory, which means he can’t go further. He acts as security for a noble party, only for a murder to happen there, and one of the accomplices decides to make their escape with John’s help. At the guild itself, an arrogant ex-noble who can’t get over the fact that she’s not allowed to simply murder anyone who she dislikes really hates John. And when he does pilot duty for an archaeologist, he’s left for dead and his ship is destroyed. Just… not a great book for him.

This book definitely is “guild fantasy in space”, but it’s not afraid to be other things “in space” as well. Sometimes this is for the sake of broad comedy, such as the murder “mystery”, which talks about an amateur detective showing up to solve everything, only to treat it the way amateur detectives are usually treated in real life. That said, that was the weakest section of the book, so I hope we don’t get “pastiche of the volume” going forward. The best segment was the last one, which did not have a strong villain (almost every villain in this book is dealt with ludicrously easily), but does manage to have John in actual peril briefly, though it is a bit deus ex machina to have him rescued by… well, spoiler. Sadly, even deadly peril doesn’t really cause John to move from his default “well, whatever” emotional state. Which might be due to his traumatic backstory, but doesn’t really help us in the present.

We’ve caught up with Japan – Vol. 4 comes out in two weeks there – and that’s probably for the best, as I need a break. I’ll get the next one, and I hope we get more of the evil plotters behind the scenes, but this is almost the dictionary definition of “okay”.