@Weird_Wizard

I dropped it because, while I’m pretty tolerant of and even enjoy a fair bit of Mary Sue-ness (or whatever the male equivalent is), it just…takes itself so seriously. And it’s so dry. It should’ve been titled “an encyclopaedia of how I got revenge while pretending not to be attracted by my waifus” or rather “I loved Eminence in Shadow a little too much but I also don’t know how to write comedy so I gave up and wrote this totally-not-EiS textbook disguised as a story.”

@whyohwhy1 I belive it was in Sep that 1 site started selling .https://jpbookstore.com/products/the-greatest-magicmasters-retirement-plan-17 Unless it is a pre-order kind.
Also there are 2 colored ilustration already

Alright, just finished it, here's my random thoughts about this volume:

Overall I liked it as I do basically all of these. If you're only going to read one series on this website... it should probably be Tearmoon tbh, but if you've got time for a second series, this one's the one I'd recommend for sheer funny factor. The author's strange sense of humor always just kinda clicks with me.

These books really do have accurate titles, "Chillin'" is right. They almost never have what you'd consider a conventional "plot" and are just "seeing what's up with the massive stable of fairly well defined characters the author came up with today", which I for one am totally fine with. The series' plot resolved way back like 8 books ago and these days we're just seeing how all these lovable goofs are getting along.

Much has been said about the author's weird habit of liking to re-introduce everyone every issue, and I don't know what I think about it. On one hand it's repetative, on the other hand... seriously this series has one of the largest casts of characters I've ever seen and they come out 3-4 months apart so it is kinda nice to get a refresher on who the heck some of the minor characters are.

I think I speak for everyone when I say I love Rys. Everybody needs a wife that looks at them like Rys does Flio. Her totally self-serving support for everyone's love lives is hilarious. More couples means more children means more fighting strength means Rys' status as alpha female increases. It makes perfect sense out of what is essentially a wolf disguising herself as a human's perspective to go out of her way to support the comically large love shack that is Flio's entire household's love affairs.

I actually really like the once-an-episode aside to HGH's affairs. I find him and his many tribulations very funny and I do like how the author has actually made the guy change slowly and slightly over the series' extremely long runtime. He started from the top, hit rock bottom, and has actually found a nice little crew and method to being at rock bottom and is more or less making it work. I liked seeing him and Tsuya's, uh, kiss... scene... thing. I mean I know it didn't really count but it was just nice seeing something good happen to that poor girl for once.

As a side note I do hope eventually our blonde friend gets pardoned for his crimes against humanity. I think Ellie and soon to be King Garyl are reasonable enough folks, they'd do it.

Speaking of "basically become the main character", Garyl's almost completely incidental accession to the throne is coming along nicely. Older woman respecter Garyl could do a lot worse than Ellie as wife 1 and weird spectral samurai babe Ben'ne as wife 2. I wouldn't be complaining. I love that he's followed in his dad's footsteps of taming a questionably sane dangerous spectral hottie. His is even explicitly female unlike whatever the heck you'd call Hiya. What a chad.

Just dropping casually to me that Blossom sleeps naked. Author, please. You're giving the audience the vapors. :^)

I'm glad she's finally gotten herself a nice man in her life that's as enormous and muscular as she is. And here I was hoping I had a chance with her, alas. :^)

I do find it funny how by FAR the most normal and well adjusted member of the new generation of Flio's place residents is the daughter of Sleip and Byleri, probably the two strangest and least well adjusted members of the original generation.

I'm rooting for you, Reptor, my man. Byleri's gotta intervene in this, if anybody understands a young woman's desire to get busy with a questionably human demon it's her.

And finally: Why did Tia's name change in this volume? Am I missing something there? My main man Calcium's honey used to named Tia and just kinda wasn't this volume.

Also in one of the illustrations at the end of the book, Blossom and Kora are mislabeled. Knowing nothing about how this stuff works that may just be an error the illustrator made but I figured I'd point it out anyways.

We're at the end of another volume. Reading it cleared up a few things for me at least. I remember reading the manga, but it was messy and didn't explain enough (or anything at all really).

Volume 10 (Premium Edition): 4 Bonus short stories Cooking Lessons in Another World The Melancholy of Saint Anna Chat with the Goddess of Fate and Her Nonbeliever Makoto Takatsuki Talks with an Elf Hero

Is the series continuing? Been a while since volume 6 was completed.

@saidahgilbert said in I Could Never Be a Succubus! Vol. 1 Discussion!:

Did they tell the marquis that all those people were dreaming, that there was no attacker? Or did they offer up a scapegoat so Liz could go her merry way?

It's hard to imagine that Liz would have been able to return to her previous life as a noble after amnesia if anyone knew she had dormant succubus powers.

So, while I don't think we're told what Cain told the marquis, I imagine Cain kept Liz's secret. I'm guessing he informed the marquis that people were losing their vitality to a succubus, and the succubus had been defeated, and so the situation had been resolved.

@Daniel-Perez-Apreza-fymrbja said in Moon Blossom Asura Vol. 2 Discussion!:

any idea of when is the next update?

Volume 3 doesn't come out in Japan until January 10th, 2024, so probably some point after that.

@Jon-Mitchell said in The Frontier Lord Begins with Zero Subjects Vol. 1 Discussion!:

the 'creeper rule' (probably has other names but that's the one I know)=
age of younger partner must be greater than or equal to 1/2 the elder partner's age plus seven , any younger than that and the elder partner is being a creep

I love your "creeper rule"'s history. That it originally described that the ideal age of a bride was half the groom's age plus seven. But in modern times it's morphed into the opposite.

It isn't creepy or ick-inducing to me at all; my parents broke it.... because my mom was looking for an experienced older man with kids who would stay at home and raise their kids while she pursued her own career, lol. Rules are made to be broken, as long as you understand why they're rules.

In this case, Alna's hardly dependent on Diaz for his wealth or social status, and I can't imagine him being able to manipulate her with experience. Rather he's pretty dependent on her for anything other than dispensing violence and doing manual labor.

Silly, funny, hearwarming, and also silly. Takes the story in a lot of unexpected directions, with a lot more side characters than the first volume has. (Alas, almost no appearances from my favourite delivery person.) Main duo pretty overpowered, except when it comes to matter of love, where they're adorably awkward. It's still a very light entertainment but it's unexpectedly satisfying to read.

Did I mention it's often silly? There's not many stories where a seven years old girl being a top delinquent at an academy would be as unremarkable as it is here.

Better than a lot of romance in one aspect. Since Allen's employing, mentoring and protecting Charlotte, there's an imbalance to any potential relationship, and I love that the book stopped and spelled that out, on more than one opportunity, and that Allen seriously put his feelings aside until Charlotte herself mentioned she wouldn't mind. Kudos!

This was interesting. I hope it's a short series, maybe two or three books max. It wouldn't be as funny to me if it was longer than that.

This volume has some "first major arc ended, what now" vibes, but it's not a big drop. It still has a lot of chuckle-worthy moments, a cast full of rather eccentric personalities without getting one-note, and a pleasant atmosphere that's not quite slow life but not a full adventure mode either.

What always makes me happy is the way our cast could be overpowered without letting that become their personality. Sara in particular is ridiculous, but her motivations come from caring about others, both her close ones and people in general. And even though she could be the badassest hunter that ever badassed, she doesn't like killing so she doesn't. I really like her as a protagonist.

This volume ends with our cast having left the previous plot mostly behind, and somewhat aimless. It's not bad to have a lighter volume, but I hope the action and drama picks up a bit for the next part. There were seeds of it throughout the volume - the distant nobles plotting, the not-so-distant nobles being annoying and dangerous, the incompetent guildmaster - but a lot of it got left behind unresolved, without being obvious if it's going to be relevant ever again, so there could be a lot of foreshadowing, or a lot of filler, depending on where the next volume goes.

Favourite part: Sara's meeting with the mountain wolves was the best illustration I've seen in quite a while. Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as effective if the books didn't spend so much time setting it up...

Favourite quote: "Anyway, first you say I'm a child, then you say I'm just a girl, but as soon as you realize I'm worth something in a fight, you try to order me to do the impossible. That's what's so gross about you." - Sara, laying a verbal smackdown on a very deserving target

@Travis-Butler said in Knight's & Magic Vol. 2 Discussion!:

@endoftheline said in Knight's & Magic Vol. 2 Discussion!:

and I guess that also means students who enter the academy are effectively conscripted into a dual enrollment with his knight order.

I… don’t think so?

The way I read that part, it’s the current students who go into the knight order - the ones who already worked with him and built the knights. That was the point.

New students wouldn’t have that bond, so no reason to include them.

Yeah I think so too, no idea how big normal knight orders are, but if everyone in the school was conscripted, I don't think that would fit the definition of a small order.

Well, the 2nd one's out now and it's titled "Aftermath", as well as the series now being marked as completed. So, probably more of just a wrap-up volume for what came after the main events finished. I'll give it a read.

Can't be bothered going to each of their forum topics to make a comment but DRE series had a busy week so looks like we'll be getting Stuck in a Time Loop 3 (final) & Jeanette the Genius 2 soon as well, on top of Blade & Bastard 3 which we got here immediately.

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)

@Joshua-Resto-m82sexa We do not allow any spoilers here, not from future light novel volumes, manga, web novel, or anything. Use spoiler tags if you have to post spoilers for some reason, but most readers here are English only, do not follow any Japanese releases, and only read what JNC has released.