Archive for the Light Novel Category


Yuri Light Novel: Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 3 Cosplay Minarai Kaizoku (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 3 コスプレ見習海賊)

August 11th, 2013

MPV3The Light Novel Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 3 Cosplay Minarai Kaizoku  (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 3 コスプレ見習海賊) may have been even more enjoyable than the two arcs it covers in the anime. It’s a very close race, at the very least.

If you’re reading Okazu, then this was the novel you were waiting for. Are Jenny and Lynn as overtly a couple in the book as they were in the anime? I won’t keep you waiting. Yes, they are. ^_^ Having established this important fact, we can now look at the plot, which is once again similar to the anime.

The professional crew of the Bentenmaru have come down with an influenza-like disease carried by improperly shipped cat-monkeys. This would be merely an inconvenience, but the Bentenmaru’s Letter of Marque can only be maintained if the ship is properly hired to conduct piracy within a certain period of time. The crew is quarantined for a month, but the ship needs to do something within the next two weeks. Marika and Gruier take to the pirate’s hangouts to find a replacement crew (where they meet Chiaki’s dad, Captain of the Barbarossa*) only to find the perfect crew waiting for them at home in the form of the Hakuoh Academy Yacht Club. The girls jump right in and the adventure begins.

The first hurdle is the boarding and robbery of the cruise ship the Princess Apricot. This ship is a repeat customer, so things go relatively smoothly. And the cute girl pirates in cosplay goes over well – they are asked back almost immediately.

Having assured the Letter of Marque will be renewed, Lynn hires the Bentenmaru to rescue Jenny from an unwanted marriage. Jenny, of course, needs no rescuing, but arrives on her own, with a stolen vehicle. She and Lynn are reunited – with a kiss, in front of the crew. Jenny hires the Bentenmaru to safely escort her to Space University after negotiating a contract with the Bentenmaru’s agency.  Their agent Sho explains to the pro crew (as they reset settings altered, customized and hacked by the apprentice pirates) that the new crew acquitted themselves well on all three jobs.

Looking back, I’m really torn, now, to say which was better. Jenny and Lynn’s story gets more detail in the anime – all to the good, as we see them win the situation by making good decisions and using their brains. Also Jenny is set up as a business leader who will clearly own the universe soon enough. Also, I like the anime addition of Mami’s interest in clothing design as an excuse for the cosplay. (Mami was an important addition – she provides “Marika the school girl” with society, before she becomes “Captain Marika”. Mami remains her friend and supporter throughout.)

The novel has the cosplay scene pared down, but it sets up (and really, can only have existed to set up) Lynn wearing a knight’s costume to Jenny’s wedding dress. For once, there are extended scenes about the repair, navigation, piloting and equipment aboard the space ships – and I had to smile, because my Dad is an old-school sci-fi fan. Most of what I read as a kid was books that were 300 pages of that kind of ship fetishtry, with 20 pages of plot thrown in. ^_^

I also like that the novel presumes that Marika and the rest are going to figure things out.  Not that they are instantly competent, but that we’re not lingering over their incompetence as a fetish. They figure it out – and move on. On the other side of that, we’re not given quite as much time to watch Jenny negotiate the stuffing out of her Uncle, it’s all handled with minimum fuss.

I can’t honestly think of another series in which the female characters are allowed full agency so completely. They are fully, completely competent, self-empowered and present.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Anime and manga, this series still impresses the heck out of me. It’s a really tough call which is better.

The next book is wholly original – I wonder if I’ll be able to make heads or tail of it. ^_^; I’m not going to even have a chance to start it for months, so don’t hold your breath. I hope to pick it up when I’m in Japan next fall.

* Yes, I know the ship name is transliterated as the Barbalusa. It should be the Barbarossa.  :-p





Yuri Light Novel: Adachi to Shimamura (安達としまむら)

July 17th, 2013

Of the several things I have been slowly making my way through, the Yuri-ish Light Novel Adachi to Shimamura  (安達としまむら) is the first I’ve finished. While reading it (slowly, so very very slowly) I ran a little contest with myself to create similes with which I could describe this book . Here’s the winner:

Adachi to Shimamura is like a trifle made from chocolate, limes and mayonnaise, with a red bean filling. What might have otherwise been a pleasant, if sugary, Yuri narrative is made unpalatable by combining infinite inconsequentials with utterly meaningless distractions.

***

Shimamura and Adachi are two second-years in high school. They blow off class and meet nearly daily to play ping pong in the rec room on the second floor above the gym. That fact is well-established in the first third of the book, then dropped and only briefly referred to again.

Shimamura and Adachi spend hours together every day and know nothing at all about one another. They have no conversations about their likes, dislikes, dreams, thoughts…or anything. When they are not playing ping pong, they sit in mostly silence. One of Shimamura’s friends points out that that is strange – then it is never mentioned again.

That same friend, Hino, likes to go fishing. Hino takes Shimamura fishing and introduces her to the alien.

Adachi has a dream in which she kisses Shimamura. After an uncomfortable encounter with the alien (who appears to be a child, but insists she is an alien from the future) Adachi tells Shimamura she likes her. This is about oh, 190 pages into the 240 page novel. She’s shown no sign of liking her, except randomly thinking that Shimamura’s hair looks soft 90 pages previously, so its like jellybeans on the top of the chocolate, lime and mayo trifle – random, and it doesn’t make it better.

Having established that Adachi likes Shimamura, the fact is trotted out periodically. The only tension in the entire book is when Adachi visits Shimamura’s house and finds herself wanting to kiss Shimamura, so she runs away. This is naturally followed by an extended scene with the alien, in which they take her around a mall, get her donuts and go bowling. And then the book ends.

The entire book had the feel of something written about an emotion by someone who was wholly, vastly unfamiliar with it. At no point did Adachi or Shimamura give the slightest sense of connection. In fact, the only way to make the book work was to presume the point was that neither Adachi nor Shimamura (but Adachi more) had any comfort level making connections with people. If we read it as if Adachi is disaffected and relatively emotionless, the book can sort of be seen as being about her shifting to care for Shimamura and learning to be friends with Hino and Nagafuji. But it’s not worth it. And it doesn’t explain the alien, the fishing, the ping pong, the Chinese restaurant or the bowling.

Ratings:

Overall – 4

I’m sticking with the simile. The individual parts are bland if used badly, yummy if used well, but merely perplexing in this combination.

Did I not explain the point of the alien? Oh well, the book doesn’t either.





Light Novel: R.O.D. Volume 10

March 24th, 2013

I just don’t even…I…don’t…know what…/shakes head/

In R.O.D., Volume 10, Yomiko is sent by Joker to a fancy girl’s school to…something. She’s enrolled as a student, the main point of which is to get her in a school uniform. I gather this because it is mentioned about 8750 times that she is wearing a school uniform. At the school she finds a veritable book heaven. Books are everywhere, *all* the clubs are about reading and writing. Her roommate Kaku Izumi’s name refers to writing, as Yomiko’s does to reading. They become best friends.

There are a few disturbing things about the school – all the teachers are named Haga and they look identical. And while books are revered, romance novels, light novels and other light reading are forbidden. This means there are no books by Sumiregawa Nenene in the school. Heaven turns to hell instantly for Yomiko. But Izumi has one of Nenene’s books in their room. Phew!

Yomiko learns of the “Read Fight,” during which two girls read a book and are quizzed on small points of detail until one fails to answer correctly. Yomiko dominates Read Fight, utterly destroying the barely-in-existence-sanity of the champion, Mitsusei Utsuo. Mitsusei is also the chief dog and enforcer of the Student Council President, Kuniya Kino-sama, thus making their names two of the most tortured puns ever. (Kino Kuniya is easy enough to figure out, if you’re familiar with the Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya. Remembering that “mitsu” can also be read “san” and the character used for “Utsuo” is also “do”, instead of Mitsusei Utsuo, one gets Sanseido, another large Japanese bookstore chain.)

Kino-sama as Student Council president is beautiful, charismatic (we are repeatedly told) and prone to vomiting up blood.

…

With Izumi’s backing (who turns out to have a secret – she was the former Vice President) Yomiko runs for Council President and, after corruption in the count is uncovered, wins. As President, Yomiko gets the key to the secret book room, fights off multiple Haga-senseis and retrieves whatever Joker sent her there for. The end.

Aside from clone teachers and a Student Council President that vomited up blood, what made this volume particularly hard to read was the intrusive presence of the author, who not only made aside comments to us, and talked at Yomiko within the narration, he actually inserts himself randomly in two places. The first is an utterly pathetic aside in which he tells us he’s at Anime Expo 2004 in his room working, watching girls playing volleyball outside his window. Later there is a second scene in which he gets a text message on his phone.

These, and oh, the fact that two volumes ago the story was left hanging, unresolved, made this a particularly irksome read. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4 I think it’s getting worse
Story – 7 It might have been okay as the second book of the series.
Characters – 7
Yuri – 0
Service – Other than the frenetic repetition of “Yomiko in school uniform!” – 1

Overall – I can’t even….

Do you remember the Monty Python album named Contractual Obligation? This book had that title written all over it.





Light Novel: Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower (English)

March 7th, 2013

BookGirlv6In 2011, I reviewed a Light Novel, Book Girl and the Famished Spirit. In that review, I noted that there was a character who had all the signs of being a classic anime/manga lesbian. Attractive, smart, accomplished and far more mature than the characters around her, Maki was a perfect candidate for the “Yuri” character. Her apparent obsession with Tohko, the Book Girl of the title, clinched the deal for me.

In the first volumes of the series, Maki is a peripheral character, half deus ex machina, half Mephistopheles. And while she appears from time to time just enough to torment Tohko, her existence has not been a major presence. Until now.

Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower revolves around Maki, her family history and a curse and a duty that she bears and would very much like to be rid of.

As in the other Book Girl books, we are introduced to the “book” around which the entire narrative is built, given the true history behind the relationship of that book to the story and a new, alternate ending to the historical narrative and the current matter at hand. If that sounds a little complicated, it’s only because it is – and that is exactly why it’s worth reading the series.  The lead character is a bit of a carp, but he and everyone around him are fleshed out to a considerable extent in these first 6 volumes.

Which is both good and bad. One hopes that the characters do what we want them to do, rather than what they do do. For us, that would mean Tohko letting her apparent tsundere facade drop and allowing Maki to paint her nude, a meeting of hearts and minds, followed by… Yeah, but that’s not happening here. ^_^;

Once again, I agree with the age rating on the back. There’s some adult concepts, themes and scenes that I could have handled at 11,  but your mileage – or the mileage of a YA you’re giving the book to –  may vary.

Ratings:

Art – 6 I wish the pictures were of scenes I wanted illustrated
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 1
Fanservice – 4, for the ultra-coy way the end was presented

Overall – 8

If you don’t mind that Maki is not really a lesbian, but she may be bisexual, that Tohko reads a lot, but doesn’t learn much about human nature, and that Inoue is more naive than anyone ought to be at his age, this series is well worth your time for the sheer love of books and storytelling in which it revels.





Light Novel: Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 2 Ougon no Yureisen (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 2 黄金の幽霊船)

February 21st, 2013

Miniskirt Space Pirates, Volume 2  Ougon no Yureisen (ミニスカ宇宙海賊 2 黄金の幽霊船) opens with a stowaway on the Bentenmaru and ends with two transfer students into Hakuoh Academy’s Yacht Club. In between is a centuries-old mystery, a gene bank in the form of a golden spaceship, and several space battles, all of which make for a rollicking tale of intrigue and space piracy.

If you are watching the Bodacious Space Pirates anime, this novel is the arc on Disk 2 of Volume 1. Seventh Princess of the Serenity Royal Family, Gruier Serenity, (with an uncanny resemblance to another princess named Serenity,) hides away on the Bentenmaru, in hopes of hiring the pirate ship to assist her in finding the Legendary Gold Spaceship.

Marika befriends the Princess and accepts the commission because who wouldn’t? ^_^

We get to experience Marika’s newfound confidence as Captain of the Bentenmaru and watch her crew rally around her with complete support of her decisions.

Nothing in the novel is significantly different from the anime, right down to the secret underground restaurant at the space relay station where Ririka works. (Or, I should say, if there were differences my Japanese wasn’t up to noticing them.)

The key point of the arc is that Marika has stepped into her father’s shoes and found that they fit rather well. And now we have a Princess or two on our side. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

Interestingly, this book series is getting links for Kindle versions which don’t yet exist on Amazon JP. I’d love it if they put this series on Kindle, I’d like to see if I could buy the next book that way. I bet there’s region restrictions, though. Oh well, on to Volume 3, however I can get it. ^_^