Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, Vol. 6

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By Umikaze Minamino and Katana Canata. Released in Japan as “Kyōran Reijō Nia Liston: Byōjaku Reijō ni Tenseishita Kami-goroshi no Bujin no Kareinaru Musō Roku” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by okaykei.

While this series has tried, at times, to be a cute girls doing television things series, or a magical academy-type series, at its heart it’s a battle manga. And for several volumes now, we’ve been building up to the thing that every battle manga has to have: a fighting tournament. Now, to be fair, we don’t get the tournament itself: that looks like it will be the next volume. But we get all the build up to it, as Nia has earned enough money for the King to put everything into position, and she finds that everyone is ready for this – and not just because of the money, either. She created a monster in the powerful adventurer Leeno, and everyone wants to measure themselves against her. Unfortunately for the reader, Leeno has another identity, and that identity is a creepy lolicon. We’ll ignore that for now, though.

So yes, the tournament is gearing up, but Nia has bigger problems. She’s finally starting to realize that the other two channels run by her friends are stomping her own into the ground, and racing dogs is not going to cut it anymore. She needs a new gimmick. She gets some help when Char, one of the school’s video crew we met last time, asks for her help with getting parts so he can repair a broken skiff. When she goes to see what he’s been doing, she not only sees how his drive to repair and ride the skiff will make for a great new TV show, but also that skiff racing may be something that she can put her money and power behind. It turns out that she’s not alone in thinking that, and in fact the ground floor is rapidly filing up – but fortunately, the contacts she’s made in previous books help her out. Now if only there’s not a little… accident.

If you worry that the tournament being next volume means there’s not as much beating people up as usual, fear not. Gandolph beats up a bunch of people, Nia then goes and beats up the SAME bunch of people, and there are also some assassin goons who are less mature than their assassin bosses and get ahead of themselves. There’s also Anzel, who has rapidly become almost the second protagonist of this series. Once again, he gets a subplot in the second half of the book where he has to prevent sabotage and act cool. He also gets beaten up a lot. Hopefully he can recover by the next book, as he, like so many other people, are in the tournament, and they have to win it no matter what. Fortunately for everyone involves, Leeno seems to be the pinnacle, as Nia is not participating. Yet. Can’t wait to see how that changes, cause I can’t imagine her sitting this out.

So, aside from the unfortunate “comedy” of young women leering over literal children, this remains a fun shonen fight series. for fans of such things.

Earl and Fairy: The Bright Star of London Bridge

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By Mizue Tani and Asako Takaboshi. Released in Japan as “Hakushaku to Yōsei” by Shueisha Cobalt Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Alexandra Owen-Burns.

Even before the author explicitly stated it in the afterword, I was thinking “this has the feel of a season finale”. Which makes sense. It’s the 10th volume, and wraps up a lot of the longest-running plot strands while also introducing some new, worrying ones. That said, the start of it was difficult for me, mostly due to my own personal tastes: I hate amnesia stories. Lydia spends the bulk of this book without any memory of anything beyond Book One, so remembers Edgar only at his most annoying. What’s more, Kelpie, who may be a supernatural water demon but has “unlucky childhood friend” written all over him, is doing his best to make sure that does not change. It can be a bit frustrating and feel like “the author is trying to string out getting them together by adding complications”. Fortunately, it doesn’t last the book. Those who are here for the romance should be quite happy with how this one wraps up.

Lydia may be back in Scotland with amnesia, and the Prince on the verge of gaining a new younger body, but, priorities, before anything else Edgar has to track down Lydia’s father and try to get his permission to marry Lydia. There is one slight problem: no one seems to trust him when he says that Lydia agreed to this. Can’t imagine why. He does manage to get up to Scotland, but Kelpie’s spell is hard to get around, even if Lydia seems to really want to remember and believe him, but can’t think why. She’s also upset when she hears that he’s going back to London to deal with the Prince once and for all, and so she and Nico head there on a fairy path… which leads to her being trapped under London Bridge, and Edgar having to infiltrate a mansion where a mind-swapping ritual is about to happen. Oh yes, and there’s an Ark on the Thames, and it’s going to explode.

This is a very Edgar-heavy book, and we sympathize with him, but it’s also very easy to see why everyone doubts him. The fact that he’s genuinely surprised that Raven didn’t really believe him when he said Lydia accepted his proposal says something about his levels of self-denial. And I am definitely worried about the new plot twist, which I’m sure will lead to more bad things down the line. Still, for now, he and Lydia are finally together and engaged. Indeed, the author seems to be in more of a romance mind that usual. Lotta, Edgar’s old companion, shows up again, and she’s still very much in “I am a boyish pirate captain” mode. Paul, Edgar’s sad-sack artist friend, is also here, and just as much of a chew toy as previous books. When the two of them first meet, you can almost hear the lightbulb go off over the author’s head, and the rest of the book contrives to put them in cute romantic situations. I have no doubt we’ll see more of this.

All this plus Ermine showing up to be vaguely mysterious and duplicitous. This was a very good “season ender”.

A Certain Magical Index NT, Vol. 4

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By Kazumi Kamachi and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan as “Shinyaku To Aru Majutsu no Index” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Alice Prowse.

When I reviewed the third volume of New Testament, I said that it was great, after two false stars, to finally have the Index series we remembered back again. Well, guess what, I’m eating my words once more, as this volume features almost none of the main cast, and even Touma, who is technically here, is defined in this book by his absence. And that’s a very deliberate thing. The book this volume reminds me of the most is Vol. 15 of the first Index series, which was a battle royale featuring actual deaths, including people who we (retroactively, after they were fleshed out later) liked.This volume also features a gimmick of pictures of characters that go dark when they’re “killed”, but over the course of the book the lights go on and off on those characters like a pinball. Who’s alive? Who’s dead? It doesn’t matter, because this Index is getting as close as it’s ever gotten to pure horror.

Welcome to Baggage City, located somewhere in Eastern Europe, which is having a fighting tournament that’s bringing all the desperate people with a cool ability and something to prove. Unfortunately for the competitors and all the spectators, this event is being hijacked. Both by GREMLIN, who have planted a few lovely little sociopaths into the event, but also the Kiharas (you may remember Amata Kihara from Book 12-13, where he was turned into a star in the sky by Accelerator). And, yes, Academy City has sent a bunch of soldiers as well, whose sole purpose appears to be providing the “horror” part of the book as one of GREMLIN enjoys doing things like magically changing a guy’s arms to faucets and turning on the taps so blood pours out. There’s also Maria Kumokawa, who we mostly remember as being the maid friend of Tsuchimikado’s maid sister. And there’s Touma… maybe? Boy, there’s not much Touma.

I used to do a breakdown of who the new characters were, as well as where in the timeline this took place. I’ve dropped that, as a) we’re well past the Railgun stories so the timeline is less important (though notably one of the “protagonists” in this book shows up in Railgun years later as an antagonist), and b) it’s hopeless, there’s just too much. Not only are too many characters introduced here, many of whom die before we even get a chance to see who they are, but we also have to deal with the fact that this series is very popular in Japan and not very popular here, so one of the villains we see towards the end, who is introduced as if we know her, turns out to be from one of the Railgun Short Story books. This is actually a pretty strong book, making the point that the reason for all the horror is that Touma is absent from the scene, and the moment he shows up people stop suffering and start getting saved. But unfortunately when Touma arrives there are too many bad guys doing things all at once, two of whom we meet for the first time at that moment, and one of whom, I know from spoiling myself, is VERY important to the whole series going forward. For now, though? Just another bad guy monologuing.

Fortunately, the next two books (yes, it’s a two-parter) seem to get back to more wacky Index shenanigans, possible with actual Index herself. Though I would not count on it. Till then, enjoy the darkness of a world with minimal Touma.