Archive for the Light Novel Category


Light Novel: St. Cross Gakuin Stories, Volume 1 – Welcome to the Mysteries Club! (聖クロス女学院物語　ようこそ、神秘倶楽部へ！)

November 23rd, 2015

321307000253St. Cross Gakuen Stories, Volume 1 – Welcome to the Mysteries Club! (聖クロス女学院物語　ようこそ、神秘倶楽部へ！) ends up a little like Maria-sama ga Miteru meets Scooby-Doo. But the path it takes to get there is a rambling one.

Back in the 1930s, the beginnings of girls’s culture was born and bred in the hothouse environment of girls magazines. These spread the idea that girls’ schools were a place where older girls chose and mentored younger girls, all in the name of becoming fine upstanding young women. This ideal was rewritten, redrawn, rethought, twisted, knotted and unraveled for the next 100 years as creators took “girls culture” and reimagined it for themselves and their audience.

In the early 2000s, this ideal was once again established for popular culture with the Maria-sama ga Miteru light novel series. And, once again, the same ideal was remolded into a hundred new copies, each with their own specific focus. And somehow the ideal has remained intact, mostly. Sort of. ^_^

Here at St. Cross Gakuin, a Catholic school, Hana and her best friend Nana are planning on joining the Fine Art Club. They have been together since they were children and have exchanged Mary medals as a symbol of their eternal friendship. When Hana loses her medal, she is extremely upset. Thinking she lost it in the art museum, she runs back, but starts to cry when she can’t find it. The beautiful and kind Student Council President, Shiori-sama, offers her comfort and Hana hopes that Shiori-sama is her onee-sama.

At St. Cross, we learn at the beginning of the book, underclassmen are taken under the wing of a secret onee-sama, who can only be communicated with by letter that must be posted to the secret post box on campus. It moves every year and must be found first. With diligence, one of Hana’s classmates, the eyepatch-wearing Kanon finds it up a tree.

So, we have the secret onee-sama, the lost medal, Shiori-sama, and plenty of stuff for a plot, so instead of any of that, the story digresses into the creation of a new club. The Mysteries Club, run by Kanon, will investigate the paranormal. Hana is strong armed into becoming a member and wackiness ensues. I don’t want to spoil the end, but you’ll have to trust me that everything works out and it’s really quite adorable.

There were some very interesting things to note about this book. Firstly, while the concept of Catholicism in books like this contains some of the more obscure ritual trappings of Catholicism, the one nun who has even the remotest grasp of doctrine is the antagonist. ^_^

The girls sometimes talk like actual girls their age might actually do, which is surprising and refreshing. I found it amusing that the concept that private school girls say “Gokigenyou” as a greeting is mentioned, only to be dismissed as an urban legend or “Sometimes we say it, as a joke.”

Hana and Nana’s “eternal friendship” is never mocked, nor presumed to be fantasy. This book is from 2014, we don’t marry girls off after school anymore, otaku fantasy notwithstanding. They can be friends forever.

There was a teeny bit of Yuri service when Student Council VP Mitsuki-sama is embraced by Shiroi-sama in a shockingly intimate way. (They hugged!)

This book is an easy read, an interesting many-times-filtered Catholic Girls’ School adventure;  it’s cute and a little goofy. The series is on Bookwalker Global, so you can enjoy it for about $5/book. I also found a page of reviews on Kadokawa’s Tsubasa Bunko site, which warmed my heart, as the average age of readers appears to be 11-12 year old girls. And me. ^_^  After all, who doesn’t want to read a paranormal mystery series at a Japanese Catholic Girls’ School, with a club run by an eyepatch-wearing 12 year old who had had a near-death experience? ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8 Cute and fun
Story – 8 Random, unfocused and fun
Characters – 8 Fun and odd
Yuri – 3 Teeniest little bit of service for fun
Service – Nope

Overall – 8 Fun enough that I’ll read the next one. Me and all the 12 year olds. ^_^

Oh, before I forget, my favorite utterly random line describes Kanon as having “a smile like a marshmallow.” What?





Light Novel: Miniskirt Pirates, Volume 5 Shirogane Kyuunansen (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 5 白銀の救難船)

October 12th, 2015

MSPSR6When we left off the narrative in Volume 4, the Bentenmaru, Odette 2nd (formerly one of the “original 7” pirate ships of the galactic war, the Whitebird) and the Barbarossa*, captained by Marika, her mother Ririka and Kenjo Kurihara (Chiaki’s Dad) respectively, have teamed up to take on the irritating Jackie Fahrenheit and his plan to takeover the Odette by using the lost “original 7” ship the Blackbird as bait.

In Volume 5 of Miniskirt Pirates, Shirogane Kyuunansen (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 5 白銀の救難船), we learn why. But not for a really long time. The first several hundred pages are what can only be termed “a submarine battle in space.” Yes, the boot finally dropped and this was a novel chock full of military and scifi geekiness, throughout which I missed a good of 53% of what was being said, because I am way too lazy to look up every kanji combination. (This is the reason I want ebooks digitally. It would be so much easier to translate on the fly with digital ebooks.)

So for about 300 of 400+ pages, they maneuver slowly around a red supergiant (coincidentally, a kanji combination I could read, although I have no idea how it’s pronounced) on the verge of going supernova (same), while they shifted positions in 3-dimensional space and put me to sleep every night with brilliant dialogue like “Turning 3 degrees to starboard.”

When we finally learn why Jackie wants the Odette, it’s kind of horrible, really. He has the code for a legendary weapon, the Stellar Slayer, and we don’t have to guess too hard what that does. But it can’t be used without a single piece of critical equipment….that happens to be part of the Odette’s bowsprit. (Bowsprit is the actually word used. I found that interesting.) Jackie’s “client” wants this weapon…and wants to be able to use it.

In order to protect himself, Jackie calls in the Galactic Imperial Navy and the final 100 pages or so are a slow battle with three Galactic warchips, with more turning of three degrees, then two degrees. The final climax comes as, rather unexpectedly, they find that tucked away in an old unused relay station, the Blackbird, a grand heap of junk, with a working transponder, about to be disintegrated in the approaching supernova.

And in the end…it doesn’t end! Argh! I am very ready to see the back end of Jackie, and also find out what’s going to happen, presuming anything does. When (I mean, obviously when) they get the Blackbird, who will captain it? Does Ririka take it over? I hope so.

Back with the crew members, we had a couple of good scenes; Lynn’s computer skills impressed Ririka, and Nora, the Barbarossa’s navigator and Hyakume, the Bentenmaru’s radar and sensor specialist, bond rather cutely on the Silent Whisper.

Volume 6 takes me halfway in the series, but I’m going to have to say that if this arc doesn’t end, I might not read the volume after that. Jackie’s very annoying and I don’t read books about submarine battles for a reason. ^_^; Oh, who am I kidding, I probably will anyway.

Ratings:

Overall – 6

Much more for military and scifi fetistry fanatics than people who follow the characters. I expected it much earlier on, so we’re pretty lucky. There’s almost no service in the book, other than this skanky cover and a bit about Misa’s clothes. The next most servicey thing in the whole book was a detailed comparison of which ship was bigger than the others. Barbarossa wins.

The title translates to “Silver white rescue ship”. As opposed to the black shipwreck of Volume 4. Volume 6 has a red ship in the title.

*Yes, I know they call it the Barabalusa. It still should be the Barbarossa.





Light Novel: Tabisuru Shoujo to Shakukunetsu Kuni (旅する少女と灼熱の国)

June 24th, 2015

TsStSnKIt is a hallmark of how predictable Tabisuru Shoujo to Shakukunetsu Kuni (旅する少女と灼熱の国) is, that 20 pages or so before I have completed it, I am writing this review. Or, as I like to describe it to other people, this was written with the help of the “Big Book O’War Novel Tropes.”

Do you remember the end of Madlax? No? Neither does anyone else, so don’t worry. It was a great series, and had a lot of everything, happening all at once, so it’s not surprising that you don’t. Well, the main point to remember is that at the end of the series the entity known as Margaret Burton at the beginning of the series, doesn’t really exist any more.

But her maid, Eleanor Baker, who has been traveling around war-torn Garth-Sonika for ten years, does not know this crucial fact. In those ten years she has been looking for Margaret without success. And it is into her (somewhat fruitless) quest we find ourselves catapulted in the beginning of this Light Novel.

Eleanor is looking for Margaret, without success. 10 years have passed, but she remains undaunted. Right away, this fact depressed the hell out of me. We know Margaret doesn’t exist as such anymore. And here’s Eleanor still looking for her. How depressing is that?

So, while looking for Margaret, she meets Dieu, a woman whose husband wandered off to war ages ago, and has struggled to keep her little cafe running, while being used and abused by local guerrilla fighters. Eleanor brings both hope and despair, but helps Dieu beat off the guerrillas long enough to be reunited with her husband. In addition to kicking guerrilla fighters in the balls, Eleanor cleaned the cafe for many pages.

Eleanor meets Nigel Wingate, a British Intelligence Officer who is too clever for his own good, and with whom she rescues a kidnapped child, Alissam, from a group of kidnappers. We were treated to many pages of the cleaning the filthy kitchen in the kidnapper’s apartments. After this segment, if you did not recognize the Japanese word for “roach” you were not paying attention.

In the third section, Eleanor and Wingate foil more bad guys, this time at a resort casino. We learn that, along with her amazing fighting and cleaning skills, Eleanor also is a casino-class card dealer.

The books ends (will end) with her and Wingate coincidentally traveling together.

There was, of course, as much service as could be crammed into a book that included guerrilla fighters intimidating the owner of a small cafe, kidnappers having kidnapped a female child and casino pool scenes. And, we learn details of cleaning in a war zone, which surely will be useful one day.

I can’t even say this book was bad. It was *exactly* what I expected from the official post-series Madlax novel. “Big Book O’War Novel Tropes” is ever so popular. Which is to say, who else but me and a bunch of freaks would ever read this? ^_^

Ratings:

Art – Meh
Story – Absurd
Characters – Ridiculous
Yuri – Of course
Service – Gobs

Overall – Laughably awful, unless you actually liked Madlax, like I did. Then it’s a depressing, dismal, 3.





Yuri Light Novel: Gakuen Yuri Stories (学園百合ストーリーズ)

May 25th, 2015

GYSsYesterday, I talked a little about the series Seonam Girls High School Investigators, and why it’s far more important in terms of same-sex representation that a mere lesbian kiss.

Today I want to look at a series that purports to do the same thing and fails in every possible way to be anything expect excruciatingly bad porn.

Gakuen Yuri Stories (学園百合ストーリーズ) is a light novel that is set up as three stories about female couples in a high school. Right from the first moment, the book indicates that it has no intention of taking anything seriously and is just a 14 billionth reiteration of “first time” porn starring unrealistic girls in trope-y and uninteresting situations, while the language dwells lovingly on the creepiest of details and not at all about anything that girls actually might think.

I got to the first kiss between the first couple (hyper doofus and monotonal glasses girl), realized that they were segueing immediately from a first kiss straight to sex and closed the book, thus missing my chance to enjoy the adventures of Sachiko/Yumi clones and teacher and student.

Ratings:

Art – Yuck
Story – Ick
Characters – Types
Yuri – Yes
Service – 100%

Overall – 1

No thank you.





Yuri Novel: Kanoe-san no Hidari Te (鹿乃江さんの左手)

January 5th, 2015

kanoeleftKanoe-san no Hidari Te  (鹿乃江さんの左手) “Kanoe-san’s Left Hand”, is author Aoya Mami’s debut novel and a winner of the Poplar Book’s Newcomer Prize…and a truly wonderful read.

You may remember from my recent trip to Japan, that I mentioned  that the Toranoana in Akihabara had a truly “Yuri” section, with comics and novels from multiple publishers. I picked up a number of books there that I either had never heard of or might not have otherwise bought, just because they were there.  I grabbed this up, saw that it had won an award and thought, okay, why not. This book has no illustrations, although I wish it had. There were at least two scenes that would have been spectacular to see illustrations for.

If you want a really, really good book on which to practice reading Japanese, this is the book. It was compelling, I kept staying up too late to read 2 pages more, well, 5…okay 10, heck I’ll just go to the next break. That kind of good.  ^_^

At Daishima girl’s school, there is a rumor that a witch will appear if a girl has a sincere enough wish. Once you’ve sealed the contract with a kiss (which does not have to be on the lips) your wish will be granted. And, as we learn in three unrelated scenarios, this rumor is absolutely true.

In the first story, a transfer student who draws pictures to pass the time, finds herself captivated by a member of the Kyudo club, Kanoe-san. When she asks the witch to be able to draw realistic pictures, she finds that she isn’t just drawing pictures that are true to life, but that reality appears to following her pictures!

The second scenario follows the events when a class decides to do a ballet as their culture festival performance. A girl who had previously studied ballet ends up directing, while a former karate competitor ends up starring in the production.

The final story follows the school doctor whose entire life has effectively come to a complete stop after the girl she liked in high school, so many years ago, left her.

In each story, the atmosphere was so thick with tension, so ripe with possibility, that I wasn’t actually sure if the story would be a horror story or not until the very end. The ballet scenario, particularly, could have been a bloodbath – and I’m not being symbolic when I say that. It easily could have been a really bloody, violent story. But it wasn’t. It was – they all were – absolutely delightful to read.

In terms of Yuri, the first story really sets up the book being “Yuri-ish,” with constant mentions of two girls acting “Yuri-ish” (“Yuri’ppoi”) and that intensely thick, anticipatory atmosphere. The second story had some breathtakingly sexy/intense scenes, without any actual Yuri. The third story – the least intense of the three, but still pretty full of tension, was the most Yuri of all.

I am absolutely going to check out Aoya’s other book, although it looks like a Yokai/mystery comedy. But hey, that falls comfortably into my wheelhouse too. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 10

A real, honest-to-goodness page turner.