This one kicks off with an intriguing situation. Viola's stuck in an engagement with a guy who's just short of being hostile to her, but who won't dissolve the engagement. When she gets knocked out in an accident, she realizes it's a chance! She's going to pretend she's amnesiac, remembering nothing and useless as a partner, to get their families to call off the engagement. Except that when her fiancé learns of her amnesia, he turns into a completely different person, and starts making up complete lies about what their relationship was like. Just what is going on?

However, this pretty promising opening gets buried under a pile of total blandness. Nothing really stands out - not the characters, not the situations, and not the resolution either. For instance, the heroine: I don't think we learn a single thing she's actually good at over the course of the book. We learn about stuff she's terrible at, like cooking, baking or embroidery, we see her do some hobbies like reading, but we never see her being actually capable at, well, anything. She doesn't have any job or a responsibility, she doesn't even go to tea parties or soirées. Beyond talking to her fiancé, talking about her fiancé, or thinking about her fiancé, she doesn't have anything in her life. "Cute" is probably the most specific positive quality anybody attributes to her in the whole book. So utterly bland.

By the way, I'm starting to suspect there must be some kind of rule to light novel romance that gets strictly enforced by the light novel police. What the rule most likely says is that anybody who understands a situation the protagonist doesn't must keep a total silence about it, for reasons. Only once the protagonist goes through all the work needed to figure out the situation for themselves are others allowed to reveal they actually knew all along. And that's how you get people letting their friends struggle through a decade of misunderstanding instead of, you know, dropping a hint or two.
Sigh.

The final volume has at last gotten a Japanese release date of January 2024.

When I started reading the first volume, I would never have guessed, but by now it's evolved into a full blown farce, everybody is an idiot and the titular villainess twice as much, and things are so out of hand that Yumiella's own guards have instructions to run away from her on sight so as not to give her ideas like powerlevelling them all up.

It's not absurdly overpowered in quite the same way as Misfit of Demon King Academy is, but I feel like it's the closest title out there. Villainess' own brand of absurd is less about breaking the laws of logic and nature, and more about Yumiella bringing her JRPG-thinking into situations where it doesn't apply, or at least doesn't help, and never managing to praise herself without contradicting herself in the very next sentence. She's causing only slightly less trouble than she solves, and describing her as a force of nature seems like something those around her would do a lot.

There's definitely not a lot of depth, and it consistently chooses jokes over, well, consistency. I'm not getting tired of it quite yet, but both the style and the characters are completely different from where the whole series started.

Favourite part: The great evil god Kugelschreiber (working title)

This is the one series out of J-Novel Club offerings that gets teenage love right*, in my opinion. It's not about proud declarations, love wars, harems, and people being surprised by the most obvious things; it's about all the uncertainty and worries and honest misunderstandings and things you want but can't bring yourself to do, and getting what you want but realizing you never knew what you're actually getting, and so much insecurity and pain and awkwardness you can barely fit it into one heart.

*) Step Exes is close, though.

And even though you might argue Haibara is missing some very obvious clues, it doesn't feel forced to me; that's just the way things are, with nobody understanding their own heart, and things somehow getting a lot more confusing and difficult when they involve you.

This volume ends on a very sharp cut. Not quite a cliffhanger, rather the sort of moment where it slowly dawns on you just what all the implications of what you've just learned are; and I honestly have no idea where the story goes from there. Probably a pretty dark place, though.

@LemonMochi said in Haibara's Teenage New Game+ Vol. 5 Discussion!:

Haibara is a sports novel.

They got me interested in the match even though I didn't even know what a layup is.

@Lex said in Haibara's Teenage New Game+ Vol. 5 Discussion!:

So next book might be about bullying, then?

I suspect it will. And it's probably not going to be very lighthearted, either way.

@George-Wang-a98vag7 Ah, but Carol is in the Knight program! Though being serious, the fact that he and Carol just returned from a campaign as heroes means they're likely to be forced into marriage even if they weren't sleeping together. And while Carol may genuinely not be sure about marrying him just yet, she also clearly has no intention of ending the relationship any time soon.

I imagine the first expedition didn't find the Caribbean isles because they were farther away than expected. With the change in the Earth's axis, this is either a Tanya-type parallel world with slight geographical differences, or far into the future where the Atlantic ocean has expanded.

Volume 5 (Premium Edition): 4 Bonus Short Stories Brawl Qualifiers Glenn Walker's Round 2 I Want a Pet Aim for the Top of the Academy, Part 5

My impressions:
Despite being so over the top all the time, it's not losing its charm. Maybe it's even getting better at keeping a straight face while being utterly absurd. Which is why you get a school education that opens with "as part of the first lesson, you will be dying, preferably two or three times each" and you just know this is going to be a wild ride again...

What I love about the series is how the villains aren't the people with the craziest plans, or those who endanger the world around them - that's all par of the course. The villains are consistently the people who think of others as lesser beings, as somebody beneath them, as just tools to be used and not as real people - in short, nazis. And Anos not just defeats them, but also always undoes their plans and helps those they endangered. After all, just because he's overpowered doesn't mean he can't be kind, and vice versa.

There's a lot of plot threads (and threats) going off at the same time in this volume, and a lot of people getting involved. Which is the second thing I love about the series - while Anos is overpowered, he doesn't fight alone, and he doesn't win alone. There's always an opportunity (and space on the pages of the book) for others to have their heroic moments, big or small, to fight and win the battles that are important to them, to sacrifice and learn and give their best and grow. Even the very side characters, like the fangirl union or all the humans in this volume, get to shine.

While Eldmed, the bombastic villain turned equally bombastic teacher, is a delight, the best character around this time is definitely Emilia. She's been appearing in the books from the very start, and has probably changed the most from her first appearance. And I love that it wasn't easy for her - it's not just that she was defeated and proven wrong, but she's struggled with her past and present identity, with her guilt, with the resentment towards Anos, and she's a wonderfully deep character who often manages to be good and bad at the same time. Some of her scenes in this volume made me really tear up, both some of the quiet moments, and the plot where all the side characters are heroes of their own fight.

Favourite moment: Hard to say. Lay and Shin talking things out by fighting with Anos serving as a translator to actual human speech was great, but so was Emilia and Anosh talking over canned food. It's hard to beat Emilia and the students fighting the dragons, though.

@Shaun__ Spreading out the release of a work helps foster deeper discussions and more invested fans. Animation fans are relatively familiar with this phenomenon.

Will, there's only one reason she would complain about not being able to make an echo. Just keep up the good work in spreading her faith, and maybe Gus can get those grandchildren after all.

I know the chances of anyone reading this are slim-to-none but I have to get this off my chest.

What this novel says about mayonnaise is downright incorrect. First of all, I wouldn't trust eating an egg raw straight from the shell anyways, cause the salmonella checks aren't so thorough that it's guaranteed safe, at least where I live. Secondly and lastly, mayonnaise IS perfectly safe to eat because the acidity of vinegar and/or lemon involved in the process of creating kills not only Salmonella but protects it from a variety of other potential bacteria. To quote an article I found in literally seconds, 'A seminal study from 2000 took a look at the fragility of mayonnaise and set the record straight: "Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, E. coli, L. monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, and Yersinia enterocolitica die when inoculated into mayonnaise and dressings."
To put it just as plainly, but in layman's terms, store-bought mayonnaise contains enough acid (from vinegar or lemon juice) to not only kill food-borne pathogens, but also to prevent them from forming.'

Mind you, this does not mean it cannot go bad and in all likelihood your homemade mayonnaise will not keep as long as storebought one, but you also certainly won't contract salmonella from your freshly made mayonnaise.

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WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF.

I love the growth of Citrina. She's might be my favorite side character of the series, certainly my favorite Etolie. A petite but graceful poison master with the unflappable sweet smile is a good character combination. I like how her friendship with Bel is genuine now and that she displays minor yandere tendencies. I also like how she is the most capable Etolie of the bunch, being able to act independently on covert operations.

Sign me up.

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Mommy? Sorry, Mommy? Sorry, Mommy?

I had gotten behind on this and now getting to get caught up. Just finished volume 10.

Now that Marguerite has joined their party, and their stories about how the original 3-person party formed described what their roles were within that party, it occurs to me that they now have a party that almost exactly mirrors Belgrieve's old party. There's a person in each of the same roles.

Percival = Angeline = the front line fighter that brute forces their way through everything
Satie = Marguerite = the front line fighter that also brute forces their way through everything and happens to be an elf
Kasim = Merry = the support mage
Belgrieve = Anne = the brains of the group keeping track of their surroundings and providing tactics

Volume 7 (Premium Edition): A Bonus Short Story Untitled

Volume 5 (Premium Edition): A Bonus Short Story Always Drink Responsibly

Volume 2 (Premium Edition): The Orthodoxy’s Combat Clergy Corps Enlistment Welcome Party

Volume 2 (Premium Edition): A bonus short story Group Cooking