Goodbye, Overtime! This Reincarnated Villainess Is Living for Her New Big Brother, Vol. 3

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By Chidori Hama and Wan Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijō, Brocon ni Job Change Shimasu” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Rymane Tsouria.

One of the things that you see a lot in villainess books, and especially this one, is having your cake and eating it, too. Our protagonist is a villainess trying to avoid her doom, and turns out to now be smart, sweet, and beloved? That’s all very well and good, but you still need an ACTUAL arrogant girl in the book, preferably with drill curls. The brother and sister are wonderful nobles who are working hard to recover their family’s reputation and work for the sake of their people? Sure, but better show some stupid, evil nobles as well, because stupid, evil nobles are what this genre does. Ekaterina may be changing her fate, but the world itself still inspires bad actors to be around, and it’s implied that the nobles that flitter around the royal family are even worse. Fortunately, neither she not her brother have to worry about that, as they’re far too busy making everyone stare with their G-rated brocon/siscon shenanigans.

School’s out, after final exams show Ekaterina coming in… third! (It’s fine, the prince and the “heroine” are first and second, so this works for her not-so-secret agenda.) Now she and her brother are returning to their ancestral home for the first time in a long time… and for her, the first time since she got her memories from Japan/became a massive Alexei otaku. Back home she finds some servants who don’t like her, but that’s balanced out by the people who have been hired back after the death of her grandmother, who turn out to be fantastic. This will culminate in a ball where Ekaterina will make her debut as the head of house. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of scheming nobles who want to get their hands on Alexei’s power and fortune. Luckily, those scheming nobles are complete idiots.

I know I keep bringing up the incest, but it really is impossible to avoid – it’s the premise. And yet I still applaud the author for somehow managing to make it so these two are disgustingly in love with each other, and also that he is impossibly handsome (something she notices all the time) and that she is voluptuous and beautiful (something every male around her notices all the time), and yet it STILL is as sexless as you could possibly want. These two adore each other yet absolutely are not down to fuck, and that’s terrific. It’s terrific mostly because their shameless pawing and flirting, when contrasted with, say, the drill curled noble throwing a tantrum, is so sickeningly sweet it’s hilarious. They’ve somehow weaponized incest subtext, and are using it to kill off their enemies. Amazing.

I’m not sure where the series is going next, except that, as implied by the ending section, Ekaterina will be getting a horse soon. But as long as it continues to have these two lovey-dovey siblings be not remotely sexual, I’ll stick around for it.

The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival, Vol. 4

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By Harunori Biyori and Hitaki Yuu. Released in Japan as “Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyō Survival” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Camilla L.

After spending the last four books ignoring the otome game aspect of this world for the most part and being devoted to showing pages of stat upgrades and lots of monster fighting, we will finally be getting around to the actual game in the next volume, with academy hijinks and everything. That said, some aspects of the game still shine through, and one of them is that, though she doesn’t really notice it herself, everyone and their brother is falling head over heels for Alia. Random passersby on the street gawk at her. Royal knights all vow to protect her. Elena thinks they’re soulmates. And Karla… well, we’ll talk about Karla later. Alia’s got that heroine energy for sure. Heck, at the climax of this book she’s forced to get rid of having ash in her hair and let her peach flag fly. The trouble is, Alia does NOT think of herself as the heroine of an otome game, so all of this, with the exception of protecting Elena, is irrelevant to her.

Alis is finally, somewhat reluctantly, joining the Rainbow Blade, mostly as that’s the only way she’ll be able to help Elena, who is going to a very difficult dungeon, along with her brother, her brother’s fiancee candidates, an annoying uncle, and various retainers, in order to gain the fantastic “any wish” reward the dungeon can offer. After officially leveling up, and dodging a murder attempt, Alia and the rest of the adventuring party arrive and head through a secret door that allows you to skip seventy floors of the dungeon – which still leaves us with the most dangerous floors. Can Alia keep Elena and the rest of the royal family safe without getting murdered by dangerous ogres, terrifying minotaurs, and the scariest being of all, Karla?

As with the last book she appeared in, Karla is absolutely one of the best reasons to read this, as she is legitimately mentally disturbed in a way very few anime villains really manage to pull off. “Yandere” is a word I hate because it gets abused, but there’s no denying that Karla’s death wish revolves around her obsession with Alia, and her desire to level up – even if it means murdering piles of people, which she does here – is solely so that she can achieve her wish of fighting Alia in the ruins of the entire kingdom until Alia kills her. It is a grand guignol death wish, and I have no doubt it will be the series finale – hopefully NOT in the ruins of the capital. As for Clara, the other villainess in this story… meh. Even her name is easy to mistype when I mean Karla. I get that she’s sort of trapped, but she needs to get more interesting. (Arguably Elena does as well, but at least she manages to solve the worst of her problems by the end of this book.)

With a big YMMV reminder over the series, which always reminds us how young these girls really are, this remains a strangely compelling narrative. I’m hoping spending time at the academy with petty nobles and classwork might mean a few less stat screens, though.

Duchess in the Attic, Vol. 3

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By Mori and Huyuko Aoi. Released in Japan as “Yane Urabeya no Kōshaku Fujin” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by piyo.

(This review discusses a plot twist near the end of the book, but I will wait till paragraph three to do so.)

This is a very odd series, in that it’s technically meant to be a thriller of sorts, where we see Opal struggle against events that are conspiring against her. But she’s never seriously in danger, and knows it. And we, the reader, are fine with that. We’re not reading this series to see Opal being threatened by goons, we’re reading this to see Opal being smug, and boy howdy do we get that here. We also get another attic, and this time she stays in it for an extended period. I sometimes wonder if the author thinks of Opal in the attic, and then writes a plot to get her into it, rather than the other way around. As for the book itself, well, it’s taking the events of Books 1 and 2 and telling the reader we should have been paying far closer attention to them.

After the events of the last volume, which ended with someone trying to break up Opal and Claude, she heads off to their new lands without him. There she finds an old-fashioned, Satan-hating land maintainer, a butler who screams “I am evil”, and a footman that she immediately dislikes on sight. Fortunately, she does have her loyal maid Nadja. Unfortunately, while on her way to inspect mines, which requires her staying at a ludicrously opulent mansion that looms over a poor neighborhood, she finds herself kidnapped, locked in an attic, and held for ransom, along with Nadja. At least she gets things to read from that footman she dislikes. As for why she’s been kidnapped, well, the anti-royal faction have decided to have their revolution, and she makes a great hostage. Supposedly. If their revolution were going well.

So, one mystery I love is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie. It’s not loved by everyone, however, and gets into “is it OK to withhold vital information when you are a first-person narrator?”. This book does the same thing, with Julian, the footman. I already knew he was going to be more than just one of the three bad guys. For one thing, he’s on the cover, pictured happily next to Claude and Opal. For another, he gets a big interior illustration the moment he first appears. That said, I assumed that he would be, y’know, an old friend of Claude’s who’s being a spy. Which, admittedly, is 100% true. But he’s also someone we’ve been hearing about since the very, very start of the series, always present by his absence, and Opal’s immediate dislike of him should have been a bigger clue. No one fights quite like a brother and sister, after all. This also makes the climax of the book, which should be tense and anxious, hilarious, as the two cannot stop sniping at each other. It’s glorious.

The first book had a definite ending, and then it continued. This third book also has a definite ending, and yet there is more. I’m looking forward to it a great deal, though.