Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a review of Lycoris Recoil Ordinary days (リコリス・リコイル Ordinary days) in Japanese. Today, I am looking at the collection again, this time in English, from Yen Press. I will not lie, I was very tempted to simply cut and paste my review from 2023 to this post, on the assumption that no one but me remembers I wrote it it all. ^_^
Lycoris Recoil Ordinary Days Light Novel is really more of a short story collection tied together by a ribbon story of daily life at the cafe. Written by Asaura, the writer for the Lycoris Recoil anime, this book reads exactly like a series of stories written by a middle-aged male anime fan about teenaged girl assassins, which is, of course, exactly what it is. Chisato is Chisato, ebullient and full of the kind of thinking that teenaged girls only express in stories written by adult men. Takina is an uncarved and uncarvable block. Mizuki is a drunk and too “old” at 25, which…whatever. Kurumi plays board games and does computery thingies. Mika is, as always, the most interesting character – interesting enough that one of the adult males in the series goes so far to admit that if he were a woman, he’d be into her, which…cool story bro. I really liked the Lycoris Recoil anime for all of it’s delusion, because little girls running around with guns is as much my jam as anyone else’s. ^_^
This short story collection is 3/5ths very entertaining. The opening story is a slog since I am not a middle-aged man who wants desperately to believe teenaged girls might be into me. Ugh. To quote myself from my original review, “it will surprise no one that I didn’t care about Doi-san or his shoes. ”
The next few stories wobble between DA activities – y’know two girls, one shooting rubber bullets, somehow taking out an entire gang of heavily armed and armored bad guys – and coffee, depression, Japanese sweets, and Takina’s inability to understand cooking because literally no one has sat down and explained anything they want to her. I take back my above statement, Takina is not dense, she’s neurodivergent and the people around her are idiots. But haha, she can’t cook.
“LycoReco of the Dead” remains the best and brightest story in which a dream about a zombie invasion gives us the most fun action segments. And, to quote myself again, “Takina literally awakening to her interest in the idea of being alone with Chisato, forever.” So there is Yuri for those folks who hoped there would be. ^_^
Lastly, the books ends on a story so awful that once again, I quote myself from my previous review, “The final story was the most problematic. More problematic than setting adult men on dates with a young teen girl? Yes, actually. It was problematic in the sense that the bulk of the story forces us to watch a middle-school girl being bullied and tortured, and gives us only the promise of future retribution.” I suggest skipping this story unless you enjoy scenes of a helpless young woman being physically and psychologically tortured. And I question the age rating for this volume based on that story – there is no 13 year-old that should have to read that. I’m not exaggerating. It was, as Sean Gaffney says in his review of the volume, bleak. It’s a pretty awful way to end a book that feels otherwise like Asaura unable to just let go of his fun characters and use some ideas he had for another season of anime.
Ratings:
Art – 6 Moe heads floating in a panel with largely the same one expression. Chisato smiling, everyone else looking at her.
Story – I would have said 7, but the final story really tanked it.
Characters – Same ones you know from the anime. Mika’s an 8
Yuri – 6, BL – 6 Now that we know Mika’s gay, we do have to mention it. It’s in the contract
Service – No, until that final chapter, then ewww
Overall – 6
Many thanks to Yen Press for the review copy of this book. It was exactly as fun and not-fun as I remembered it being.
