I worried this would be something of a disappointment because the author was clearly being told to end it with the fourth book. That turns out to be both true and false. it’s false as I think this contains some of the best writing in the series, with some great comedy that is also kind of horrifying. It also, like a good penultimate volume, starts giving us a lot of answers, particularly in regards to Bullshit-chan and Tougetsu. The problem, of course, is that it’s not a penultimate volume, it’s a final volume. As such, it’s pretty much a failure, as it does not resolve any of its important plots, it just reveals the answer sheet. It’s a good answer sheet! But the ending just made me sigh and go “well, this is what happens sometimes, and I suppose we should be glad the author wasn’t signed to Futabasha.” I do recommend that fans of the series read this last book. But temper your expectations.

After a confrontation that makes Bullshit-chan uncomfortable, she decides to finally come clean to Tougetsu about her past and her powers… or at least she says she is, but mostly she just takes Tougetsu out on a date and dresses her in a cat hoodie… which looks far more like fetish gear on Tougetsu than on Bullshit-chan. Unfortunately, as this is going on, Mud Hat has decided he’s going to have a giant festival with all the faction’s core members letting loose at last… which will probably destroy the city, but can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs! What’s worse, they’ve kidnapped Tougetsu… and then one of the faction kidnaps her again, having found the World’s Most Perfect pre-reader. Can Tougetsu’s harem weaponize itself to do something about this? And will Bullshit-chan admit her past, or will it all just be given as flashbacks to the reader instead?

I’ve talked about the issues with this book, so let me talk about what I really liked. The scene between Nara and Seiryoin in the car, where they talk about their dreams, is possibly my favorite scene in the series, if only as it’s hilarious. That said, if looked at objectively, these dreams are also horrific, which at least Seiryoin can admit. I also do really love that Mud Hat is such an utterly unlikable asshole here that even his collaborator and bodyguard lets Bullshit-chan have one free shot to almost break his jaw, because he’s just that much of a dick. Unfortunately, despite being warned that Tougetsu can amass a yuri harem to change the world, and also giving hints as to how the series would have ended had it gone on, this ends where it began, with Tougetsu and Bullshit-chan back in the apartment, and nothing much changed except the reader now knows their backstories.

So a solid series with a few big flaws, only some of which are due to the publisher. I still quite enjoyed it.

So let’s get the bad news out of the way, and it’s not really a spoiler. This volume came out in Japan on the same day as the 11th and final volume did, and they are clearly meant to be read as a pair – the author even says so in the afterword, which at least Yen translates properly. Unfortunately, that’s not Yen’s policy. On the bright side, the 11th and final volume *is* on the schedule, so we know vaguely when it will be coming out – six months from now. So you are reading half a book, and the ending is very abrupt. On the bright side, we’re pretty much in the home stretch, and as such the author does not have to faff around and delay things until the second half of the book as they normally do. This is a very solid volume, possibly the best to date, and folks who do choose to read it now and then wait will be quite satisfied. Lots of folks are cool, even the ones who don’t think they will be.

After the events of the last book, Menou is back to normal, Akari is back to normal, and Momo is cranky. Which is to say, she’s as normal as ever. Heck, even Ashuna, after making me worry for the cliffhanger of the last book, is pretty much back to normal. Which is good, as they’ll need everyone at their best to try to deal with both Hakua and Pandæmonium. It’s time to plan. Unfortunately, after the events of the last few books, Akari is no longer in control of time, but she can do a few things. Momo, of course, can kick ass. Sahara… exists. And then there’s Maya, who has the perfect plan – sacrifice herself to get rid of Pandæmonium. It *is* a sensible plan if you support the needs of the many philosophy, but after watching Menou do the same thing recently, I don’t think it’s where we want to go. They do have a complicated plan, which will send Pandæmonium back to Japan… leaving them to fight Hakua. Who decides to show Akari her tragic backstory.

I’ve made no secret of my favorite character in this series, and I was absolutely over the moon with how she was handled here. Sahara is grumpy and dour and wants to run away, and that doesn’t change. She also hates herself, as she’s made explicitly clear in this volume. But there is one thing that has changed, and that’s what makes her – finally – take a stand and fight. As for Menou and Akari, they’re both clearly still in love, much to Momo’s displeasure, but Hakua has just as much a right to Akari, seeing as they knew each other in Japan. Hakua’s backstory has a lot of stuff we suspected or could guess – and there’s some really disturbing stuff that does right back to the gimmick this series became known for – but it also shows how these powers everyone has are too easily corruptible. Gotta do something about that.

But we gotta wait, even if in Japan could could just reach for the next book. So goes life. This is a top-notch entry in the series, though.

Since it’s been over a year and a half since the last volume of this series, a series where I had a tendency to forget about the plot and characters already. I decided to review my old reviews to see if they jogged any memories. And they did! As with the bulk of this series, the plot involves Octavia stubbornly trying to fix her broken country and also score a man, which she is currently doing by having her bodyguard and obvious future love interest pose as her fake boyfriend. Unfortunately, every time she tries to break the story, the story keeps coming back. It turns out that I forgot all about the Tanya the Evil aspect of this series… she’s fighting with a pissed-off God! Who threw her into this world of BL tropes and wanted to watch her suffer. Job well done, God. That said, Octavia’s still got a few more tricks up her sleeve, despite more and more hot men getting mind controlled.

At last, Octavia has an official fake boyfriend. Sure, it’s Klifford, which is not at all what she planned, but it’s working out, and he seems strangely OK with it! Honestly, perhaps a little too OK with it. That said, there are other issues. Prince Yarsh is now in the castle as a royal guest and official suspicious person. Rust Byrne, who Octavia had been desperately avoiding, is not only at the castle but is now her second bodyguard (as Klifford is also her lover, he’s thought to not be objective enough). Alec has been desperately avoiding HER. Derek has also been avoiding her, and doesn’t even seem to like her anymore. And the Council of Feudal Lords is coming up. In the original game there was a drink spiked with aphrodisiac. But Octavia has already dealt with that plot, so surely it won’t happen anyway. Right?

There are quite a few good scenes here, so it’s been worth the wait. As the author notes in an afterword, several parts of the book are from POVs other than Octavia. The biggest being Edgar’s, as we finally get the full missing backstory that explains why he’s married to Enoch but seems to despise him. I like how his rage can’t really go to far as he knows this was his sister’s choice, and also how his revenge is also hampered by sympathy with what’s been going on with the king lately. We get more close examination of how utterly screwed up a world run on BL really is, and how there’s a lot more straight people in it than you’d expect. And we get a few more sexy scenes between Octavia and Klifford. The last of which may be aphrodisiac-induced, but come on, if we have to wait for Octavia to actually get a clue about her own feelings, we’ll be waiting as long as readers are going to be waiting for Book 8.

Which isn’t out in Japan yet, so here we go again. See you in 2028. Good, though, isn’t it?

KATE: Any week that includes a new installment of Hirayasumi and a re-issue of Pink is a good one in my book.

MICHELLE: I’m glad to see Pink reissued (somehow, I missed it the first time around), but my heart belongs to the second installment of Our Dining Table: Seconds, Please!.

ANNA: Pink is my pick of the week, or pink of the week as well! Great to see such an iconic manga get reissued.

ASH: I am likewise very glad to see Pink being released again. But as for debuts, Unsung Epics of the Hero’s Journey is the release I’m most curious about, mostly for the same reasons mentioned by Sean.

I have found that Chiramune is one of those series that glides along for a while till the author has a sudden explosive burst of inspiration where everything gets really good for the rest of that scene, and then it goes back to normal. This can sometimes be frustrating, especially if you’re reading it for the ongoing plot, but it does make those scenes instantly memorable in your head. Which is good given how this does not exactly release every three months or so. Here we get two such scenes, one short and one long. The short is the second conversation between Yuzuki and Kureha, where we start to see exactly why Kureha is doing things in this particular reckless way. The second is the final scene in Saku’s apartment, where Yuzuki drops all pretense of reserve and straight up tries to seduce him into sleeping with her. If you know Saku, you can guess how well this goes. But as a scene, it’s dynamite. The series works best in sprints.

The culture festival is almost upon us. While the core cast work on their cheer routine, Yuzuki also has a heart-to-heart with Kureha, and realizes that she’s going to have to stop trying to be “Yuzuki Nanase” and remove her limiters. This means suddenly she’s blowing away everyone else on the basketball court… including a dispirited Haru. This means that, when the Snow White play they’re putting on turns out to be literally the author writing the love triangle between Saku, Yuuko and Yuzuki into the plot – and having Saku improvise an ending – she wows everyone with her amazing acting skills. And it means that, when she gets the opportunity to cook dinner once more for Saku at his apartment, she puts on her best underwear and pins him to the couch. Unfortunately, talking to Kureha also gave her Kureha’s desperation.

I liked Kureha better here… or at least understand her more. Everyone’s annoyed at her for upsetting the status quo, but to her it feels like she’s started a race where everyone else is on the last lap. When you literally can’t catch up, sterner measures are needed. I also really loved the conversation between Yua and Asuka, where they both reflect on their breakdowns from the last book and both admit it’s their fault rather than Kureha’s. This book has a lot less Saku narration than usual, which makes sense as the series is getting into the second half and needing to resolve things, but also as Saku is discovering that trying to figure out who he loves and trying to figure out what he wants to do in the future involve the same things… and he’s reluctant to do anything – STILL – as he knows how much pain it will cause. Hence the final scene, which manages to be very painful and also pretty erotic.

This is the first of a two-parter, and I’m not sure when Book 9 will drop, but Chiramune fans should be quite pleased, especially if they think Yuzuki is best girl. Though the book is also hinting we should enjoy that while it lasts, like Yuuko.

I think I have come to the conclusion that Reki Kawahara, much like Ryohgo Narita, has too many balls in the air. The last time a Progressive volume came out here was in 2022. It is now 2026. That is bad, mostly as I can remember literally nothing about the last book other than “Kirito is a vampire now”. And I have bad news for you, 10 isn’t out in Japan, as he’s also writing the main series and Accel World, as well as supervising all those Alternative spinoffs, only some of which have been licensed over here. As such, it sure would be a shame if this volume got off to a slow start and really dragged through the first half, as I’m already a bit grumpy that it’s been so long and I have to try to tell dark elves alike that I haven’t seen in a while. Heck, even the plot regresses back to the fourth floor. That said, as with many books, the second half really picks up, and has some surprises.

Kirito and Asuna, having met up with Kizmel again, are trying to get back the keys stolen by the fallen elves. This ends up, as I noted, taking them back to the fourth floor, where they have a happy reunion with their boat, as well as with the dark elf they broke out of prison with. He wants to have a chat with the leader of the Dark Elves, and asks the three of them to get him out of the castle so they can talk. This requires Kirito using his new vampire powers (which, by the way, means this entire volume happens at night) to tame a Kelpie so they can ride it without the castle guards realizing their viscount has flown the coop. When they finally engineer the meeting, it ends up leading to a duel, but more importantly, backstory that’s actually interesting.

Not gonna lie, I worried I would have nothing to talk about when I reviewed this through the first hundred pages or so. Then Yofilis reveals his tragic backstory and my jaw dropped. Not just because it once again shows off how well coded these “AI” NPCs are (and I mean, almost everything Kawahara has ever written has involved AI becoming human in some way), or even how Kirito and Asuna picking the dark elf rather than the forest elf may have messed up the plot to the point where the frontliners are all in danger of being killed, but mostly because said tragic backstory revolves around Yofilis being gay, and how that messes with the way this game treats elves and aging. Essentially Elves age as they gain roles, such as “parent, grandparent, knight captain”, though obviously I’m simplifying. And the fallen elves specifically aren’t aging after “falling”. So we get an odd dovetailing of how a gay character might be coded in a fantasy like this one, as well as the fallout of same, which involves a literal metaphor for sinning and falling from grace. It’s… interesting.

And Kirito and Asuna are adorable and everyone except them agrees they’re a couple and should just kiss already. Rest assured, it still has that. Next time we resolve another cliffhanger, though a more happy one this time. Will it be another four years? Maybe.

Sometimes I pick a book to read based on vibe, and only afterwards do I realize the actual creative team behind it. This is definitely one of those books. I got it as I like the mini-genre of “alchemist in a remote land a la the Atelier series”, and it felt cute. And then I finished it, and it turns out it’s freaking Morita AGAIN, with I believe his fourth LN series licensed over here, not counting spinoffs. And then I realized how an awful lot of this felt familiar if you’ve read Killing Slimes for 300 Years, especially the main character picking up two fighting monster girls who bond with her. That said, Killing Slimes for 300 Years is a very static series, with little to no growth or change. This one seems to know it can’t be that. Because when we meet Freya, well, she’s kind of horrible, and getting exiled to the middle of nowhere to learn to be a better person is what she richly needs.

Freya Corvidge is an orphan girl who ends up at a premier academy for alchemists, and ends up with the highest grades of her year. We don’t see any of that. We start with her graduation speech, where she talks about finding a cushy job where she can be lazy. And when other graduates accidentally summon a massive wolf monster, she steals supplies without asking to paralyze it and make it invisible so it’s not killed. All this means that, far from a cushy job in the capital, she’s being treated like the bottom of the class, and sent to a remote island where she should reflect on her actions. When she gets there, while the locals are very friendly, her alchemist shop is so overgrown it will take her weeks to uncover it. Then she meets the island’s god… who seems very familiar.

Freya is a hoot, frankly. Her obnoxious tendencies are to a certain degree a front for the fact that she’s a nerd who had no friends and was bullied a bit at school. Unlike Killing Slimes, her character journey over the course of the book, where she grows to like island life and discovers the joy (and embarrassment) of doing good things that others praise her for, is the point, and it’s handled well. I also liked Lilil, the wolf god who ends up becoming her apprentice and tsukkomi, there to bring Freya back to reality when need be. Given the author, it’s not surprising that there’s a bit of yuri in this title, though thankfully it’s not punctuated with reassurances that everyone is straight like their other series. There’s also a lot of “this is how we do alchemy” stuff, which is the norm in these sorts of titles, and unlike, say, Management of a Novice Alchemist, Freya is talented but also inexperienced and is not going to be OP right off the bat.

So yeah, this is a lot of fun, and I will cut the author a bit of slack and cheerfully read the second in the series, which will no doubt add another cute girl somewhere.

ASH: Minecraft and Kirby are the ones currently in demand at my house.

SEAN: Viz Media starts us off with Assassin’s Creed: Forgotten Temple 3, Battle Royale: Enforcers 5, Centuria 2, Choujin X 12, Hirayasumi 9, Hunter x Hunter 3-in-1 6, Kingdom 7, Mujina into the Deep 4, and One-Punch Man 33.

ASH: I really do need to start reading Kingdom.

SEAN: Tokyopop debuts Nagi & Hayasaki (Nagi-kun to Hayasaki-kun), a one-shot BL title that ran in from RED. I really don’t want to break down the summary of this one, so let’s just say rivals who hate each other find spicy common ground!

MICHELLE: Yeesh. Good call on skipping the summary.

SEAN: Shinjuku 69 Heaven is also a from RED BL title. A reporter shares a night with a sex worker, then when they become roommates is upset to discover the sex worker is only nice and open when he’s on the job and being paid!

MICHELLE: Okay, when one of the characters is described as “snarky” and “sneering,” I’m in. I choose not to examine what this might say about me, personally.

ANNA: I feel like people don’t have to be self-reflective all the time!

SEAN: Also from Tokyopop: Eternal Covenant 4, Monster and Ghost 2, and The Tale of Luvelia Kingdom 2.

Titan Manga has Farewell, My Odin 2 and Sanda 3.

ASH: I’ve not read the first volume yet, but I have been eyeing Farewell, My Odin as it does seem to be up my alley.

SEAN: Steamship has Outbride: Beauty and the Beasts 9.

Square Enix Books gives us Final Fantasy IX Picture Book: Vivi and Grandpa’s Memories for the Sky, which is self-explanatory. For the kids!

Square Enix Manga has a 2-in-1 one-shot, A Cat Is a Cat in Any Life (Tenseishitemo Neko wa Neko). This Gangan Online title has a cat reincarnated into a fantasy isekai-style world… that has no cats!

ASH: Hmmm.

SEAN: They also have Just Like Mona Lisa 9 and 10 (the final volumes) and The Otaku Love Connection 4.

Seven Seas starts us off with danmei, as they have Joyful Reunion 4.

There is a giant pile of Seven Seas, but no debuts. They have Choking on Love 5, The Demon King is Way Too Overprotective! 3 (the final volume), Dinghai Fusheng Records 3, Hope You’re Happy, Lemon 3, Level 1 Demon Lord and One Room Hero 11 (the final volume), Magical Buffs: The Support Caster is Stronger Than He Realized! 6, My Kitten is a Picky Eater 8, No Longer Allowed In Another World 11, Otaku Elf 11, Our Dining Table: Seconds, Please! 2, The Princess I Loved in My Past Life is Now a Middle-Aged Dad 3 (the final volume), She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 14, The Too-Perfect Saint 6, What It Means to Be You 4, and A Yuri Love Story That Begins with Getting Dumped in a Dream 2.

MICHELLE: I look forward to more of Our Dining Table: Seconds, Please!.

ASH: I almost missed seeing that in there!

SEAN: One Peace Books has the 9th volume of The Death Mage manga.

Noir Caesar has the 2nd volume of Deep 3.

KUMA has a one-shot, Only My Psycho, a BL title from iHertz. A guy who is recruited to be an assassin makes fast friends with another guy… but is there more going on?

ASH: Signs point to yes.

SEAN: Kodansha Manga debuts Dragon Circus, which runs in Hero’s. This is actually “Volume 0”, but it does seem to be the first released here. Dragons appear in the skies, and a motley crew has to be sent to battle them!

Magical Karina is another dark take on the magical girl drama, with a girl being called upon to save the world when she’s barely able to cope with the death of her grandmother. It runs in Comic Days.

ANNA: Ok, I’m a little curious about this!

SEAN: Also in print: Am I Actually the Strongest? 10, Blue Lock 30, How I Met My Soulmate 7, Kusunoki’s Flunking Her High School Glow-Up 6, Ninja Vs. Gokudo 13, Parasyte Paperback Collection 6, Senpai Is an Otokonoko 6, Tank Chair 8, Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun: IruMafia Edition 4, and Whisper Me a Love Song 11.

The digital “debut” is Pink, the legendary Kyoko Okazaki manga that came out in print 13 years ago. It’s a one-shot, and ran in NEW Punch Zaurus. A young woman moonlights as a sex worker in order to be able to afford her pet crocodile. But it’s so much more than that. Go read it.

MICHELLE: Somehow I never read this one!

ANNA: I think I did read it back in the day? But I’m not sure. More Okazaki in print is a good thing!

ASH: Pink specifically and Okazaki’s work more generally are excellent.

SEAN: Also digital: The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses 21, Elegant Yokai Apartment Life 33 (the final volume), Killing Line 5 (the final volume), Matcha Made in Heaven 14, and Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms 21.

MICHELLE: Somehow, I was expecting Elegant Yokai Apartment Life to never end.

ANNA: I need to get caught up on Matcha Made in Heaven!

ASH: I still really appreciate the title.

SEAN: J-Novel Club has more debuts, as their May is filled with Volume 1s! Miss Medic’s Diary at War (TS Eiseihei-san no Senjou Nikki) is a dark reincarnation series, as a young woman with recovery magic who loved playing FPS in a previous life finds it’s not as fun when the battlefield is real.

ASH: I’m assuming that became pretty clear pretty quickly.

SEAN: The Path of an S-Rank Adventurer: From Deadweight to Weapon Master (S-kyuu Boukensha ga Ayumu Michi: Party wo Tsuihou Sareta Shounen wa Shin no Nouryoku “Buki Master” ni Kakusei Shi, Yagate Sekai Saikyou e Itaru) is another “thrown out of the hero’s party” book. You know how those go. This is on the “revenge” end of the spectrum.

ASH: I tend to enjoy a good revenge tale, but the the “thrown out of the party” stories aren’t usually a draw for me.

SEAN: Sister Mafioso (Gisou Shishita Moto Mafia Reijou, Nidome no Jinsei wa Zettai ni Ikinobimasu) stars a woman who fakes her death and starts over, but sadly her previous life is not going to leave her alone.

ANNA: I hate it when that happens!

ASH: Right?!

SEAN: Tearmoon Empire Short Story Collection 1 is what it sounds like. Mia antics in short form.

ASH: Marvelous.

SEAN: Unsung Epics of the Hero’s Journey (Yuusha no Tabi no Uragawa de) doesn’t star the hero, who has an unfortunate prophecy that she’ll die, but rather two people who have to change fate and stop the prophecy. I have heard this is yuri?

ASH: I could be convinced to find out.

Other light novels out next week from JNC: The Fearsome Witch Teaches in Another World 3, The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan 19, In Another World with Household Spells 5, Isekai Walking 6, The Misfit of Demon King Academy 12 Part 1, My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World 12, Revenge of the Soul Eater 5, Royal Spirits Are a Royal Pain! 3, and Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles 27.

For manga they have The Invincible Summoner Who Crawled Up from Level 1 7 and Sometimes Even Reality Is a Lie! 7.

Ize Press has no debuts, but they do have Beware the Villainess! 7, The Boxer 13 (the final volume), I Love Amy 2, Kill the Villainess 6, Lady Devil 5, Overgeared 10, Revenge of the Baskerville Bloodhound 2, and See You in My 19th Life 10.

Hanashi Media has a 4th and final volume of The Abandoned Reincarnation Sage.

ASH: There are so many publishers to keep track of these days! (I keep forgetting about Hanashi Media …)

SEAN: Ghost Ship gives us 2.5 Dimensional Seduction 18, Let’s Make a Harem in a Zombie World! 2, and A Reincarnated Carrier’s Strategy for Another World 2.

Alien Books has Kinryo Rock – Code Amrita 2.

Airship has print books! The debut is Venus Mission: I Was an Assassin-for-Hire Who Died, Now I’m Hunting Heroes in Another World (Venus Mission: Moto Koroshiya de Youhei no Chuunen, Yuusha no Ansatsu wo Iraisare Isekai Tensei!), about an assassin who can kill anything except the cancer that he has. When he dies, he wakes in another world… where he has to hunt down heroes!

Also in print: She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 16 and A Tale of the Secret Saint 10.

Early digital has My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s 5 and The Too-Perfect Saint 6.

And ONLY digital has When a Clueless First-Person Shooter Player Falls into Another World 2.

There’s something for everyone here, I think. Am I wrong?

This is a slow-life series that has things happening, but it can be a bit difficult to review as, due to its nature, deep character development is just not on the table. The closest Arata gets to it are his struggles to fight back against everyone judging him by his god-like powers and insisting he’s human, and even he is half-hearted about it. There is a more interesting plot happening… away from the island, where the hero’s team are still being hunted by the Church as heretics. This means that they’re being hunted by two Celestial Archmages, who are ludicrously powerful… till they do another summoning, and pull not Arata this time, but Reina and Zelos, who are suddenly in front of their former allies. The interesting bit is they’ve lived with Arata and the other OP folks on the island so long that they’ve also gotten much stronger than anyone else, to the point where they can easily fight off colleagues who used to beat the stuffing out of them before. It pays to be around Arata!

Arata and Reina are headed to the Alfin village where Katima lives, there to meet up with her Village Elder and mostly have fun at Katima’s expense. While there it is revealed that the Great Spirits that normally watch over the village have been absent for a while, so Arata and Katima go searching for them.. and find that the Great Spirits are, unsurprisingly, a lot like humans, which is to say that two of them are having a “man’s battle” while the third has locked them in a sphere to shut them up. It turns out they’re fighting over who gets to raise the new Great Spirit who’s just been born… but when Arata, with all his power, interrupts, the Great Spirit ends up choosing him as her new “Daddy”. Now he’s raising Snow, the Great Spirit, along with her “mommy” Reina. The trouble is, Snow is having a bit of trouble controlling her ice powers…

The main reason to read this series remains the still adorable, still virginal romance between Arata and Reina. Indeed, it’s astonishing to everyone except Arata and Reina that they’re not already lovers. Every time they talk to each other the folks around them complain about the flirting. It also goes without saying that when they’ve got to take care of Snow, who calls them Mommy and Daddy for good reason, they become the perfect parents. There’s even the obligatory “we’re finally giving in to our feelings and leaning in for a kiss when we’re interrupted because this book has seven volumes to go till the wedding” scene. That said, I’m pretty sure we’re getting him more than one wife in this series. It’s hinted heavily that polyamory is OK, and Tailtiu has made it very clear she’s not going to be an unlucky anything. But the thrust of the goopy romance is still these two.

Island stuff is all well and good, but I do hope we dovetail back with the main world again soon, as that adds a bit of spice to this otherwise very relaxing series.

There are series rich in depth, with multiple layered plots and character development galore, the sort that you read by a roaring fire in your study. And there are books that you read when you’re lying on the beach and want brain candy, something that really does not require you to think. Take a wild guess which one this falls into. There’s a smorgasbord of all the things that you’d expect from a series that looks like this cover and with this title. Overpowered guy, cute girls of elf and beast variety, adventuring parties, lots of monster killing, and even a backdrop of racial discrimination crushing the souls of everyone who isn’t a human. OK, not all of it is brain candy for the beach, but I’m letting people know not to raise their expectations above about knee level. If you manage to keep them there, this isn’t all that bad. It hasn’t really made any of the more egregious errors titles like these do.

It’s possible our nameless Japanese guy was hit by Truck-kun, but as he doesn’t remember anything we won’t find out. God, talking in his head, tells him he’s been reincarnated in another world! And he’s overpowered! In fact, ridiculously overpowered. His stats are about 25 times stronger than the strongest humans. Oh, and his physical appearance looks just like, well, God. Surely this will not lead to misunderstandings! No sooner is he dumped in a forest full of monsters than he saves a desperate elf girl. Unfortunately, no haughty or powerful elves in this world. Here elves are treated like dirt. What’s more, after arriving at the nearby town and going to the obligatory adventurer’s guild, he meets a beastgirl… who is also despised, despite being really strong. Why was he reincarnated into racism world? To make things better, of course.

I do appreciate that Merlin (said nameless hero has a name in fantasy world) has an immediate and visceral reaction to all the prejudice going on around him, and that he takes pains to be extra nice to the elves and beastgirl as a result. (Oh yes, cute elf has a dying sister. It’s OK, Merlin is powerful enough to heal anyone.) The girls are all cute, and due to the genre I can let slide that they are torn between worshiping him and falling in love with him, and sort of decide to do both. There’s also some obligatory fanservice, but Merlin is the “I will blush and turn away they’re like little sisters” sort, so don’t expect any romance anytime soon. For the most part, though, we’re here to watch Merlin be awesome and then try to cover up the fact that he’s being awesome. It’s hard enough getting a slow life in a series like this without being gorgeous, all-powerful, and a budding activist.

This is a DRE series, so should not run too long. Recommended for folks who like what the cover art shows them.