A lot of my criticisms from the last volume still stand--namely, the fact that the Magical Kingdom seems if not inept, then at least pretty oblivious,A lot of my criticisms from the last volume still stand--namely, the fact that the Magical Kingdom seems if not inept, then at least pretty oblivious, not to mention the question of what they're trying to accomplish by creating magical girls in the first place. However, the wrap-up of this second game is interesting enough to counterbalance that to a large extent. There are fake outs and backstabs galore, more creative examples of ways to use the various powers the girls have at their disposal, and an admirable job done of keeping us guessing as to the identity of the traitor, right up to the end.
The writing on a technical level continues to be a bit over-explained and at times repetitive, but I think that might be something in the translation. The events that play out, however, are engaging despite that. I will say I find the way the mastermind in the real world was defeated felt a little...off, but I have a feeling it'll be elaborated on in a later volume.
Bottom line, if you like games of death, and inventive uses of superpowers, there's a lot to enjoy in Magical Girl Raising Project. I'm not entirely sure where the series is going to go from here, but I'm excited to find out....more
With the way volume 1 ended, I really wasn't sure how things were going to go as the series went on. I certainly wasn't expecting it to just jump to aWith the way volume 1 ended, I really wasn't sure how things were going to go as the series went on. I certainly wasn't expecting it to just jump to another game of death scenario, with a completely new cast. But there's enough that's different here that keeps volume 2 from feeling like a rehash
First, rather than competing against each other in the real world, this time around, the game puts the new cast into a virtual "training ground" of sorts, with environments ranging from a post-apocalyptic wasteland, to a labyrinth of underground caverns.
Second, the girls aren't explicitly trying to kill each other this time around...mostly. It does happen, and it's heavily speculated that there's a traitor in their midst who's working for the mastermind running the game to nefarious ends, but it's not the stated main motivation/goal. Instead, the cast is fighting their way through this virtual world for life-changing amounts of money--but only the first team to unlock a new area, or the one girl to land the killing blow on a monster gets the reward, setting the stage for things to get pretty cutthroat.
Third, it's slower-paced. Whereas volume 1 had magical girls dropping dead left and right, in this one, we actually get a chance to get to know some of them. And as it turns out, they're flawed people, who often use their powers more for personal gain than saving people, or upholding justice, or whatever. Pechka has no confidence or self-esteem as her actual self, so she's using her magical girl persona to try and win the affections of the boy she likes. Nokko hates conflict, so she uses her powers to ensure that everyone around her in real life gets along...whether they want to or not. These characters have a chance to breathe and grow, and actually feel like real people.
There are a lot of improvements in this volume compared to the last one--so why the lower rating? Well, it's because I'm starting to get a little confused about what this is all for. Like, just why is the Magical Kingdom trying to recruit more magical girls? Are the people who live there (wherever "there" is) human, or is this a land of fairies and elves and things? They have familiars, but also high technology, and I really don't know what their aim is, turning regular humans (who presumably live in a different dimension/plane of existence from them) into magical girls. Especially since those magical girls really just seem to go around, finding lost pets and cheering people up; it's not like they're fighting aliens or demons or something. There's even a whole subplot about how magical girls aren't supposed to make themselves known, or interfere with real-world politics/history.
Which brings us to the survivors from volume 1. At the end of that volume (and sporadically here), we see them doing things like taking out terrorist cells: high profile, actual "saving the world" stuff. And yet, the Magical Kingdom seems pretty lax about reining them in. Really, the Magical Kingdom seems pretty lax about...well, everything. From the rogue experiment in volume 1, to the seemingly unhinged mastermind behind the current game, they seem pretty blind and incompetent. And really, at this point they feel like little more than a plot device to have a bunch of super-powered girls running around having adventures. For right now that's...okay, since the scenarios and characters are entertaining enough, but it's far from ideal. I really hope the Magical Kingdom gets fleshed out more as the series goes on.
Still, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by Magical Girl Raising Project. Especially with the game-ification of the adventure in this story arc, it could've easily turned out like So I'm a Spider, So What?, and gotten so bogged down in exposition dumps and in-world terminology that it forgot to actually have anything happen. Instead, it's a compelling setup populated by characters with a wide array of powers and personalities. Glaring, unanswered questions aside, there's a lot to like here....more
I think I only picked this series up, because RightStuf had a bundle of the first five or six volumes for cheap, right before they got absorbed into CI think I only picked this series up, because RightStuf had a bundle of the first five or six volumes for cheap, right before they got absorbed into Crunchyroll. My experience with light novels had been decidedly mixed up to that point, but I like game of death scenarios, so I bit the bullet. So far, I have to say I'm glad I did.
Magical Girl Raising Project focuses on a free mobile game of the same name, that has a caveat that a tiny percentage of players might actually become real-life magical girls. And since mobile gamers are all about that RNG (random number generators/generation), the city where this all takes place has no fewer than 16 players who've gotten lucky. This, according to the game's mascot character, Fav, is a problem, because they're draining too much of the city's mana, so their numbers have to be reduced. But quitting the game, or breaking any of the rules is just as much of a death sentence as having the lowest score at the end of each week when someone gets eliminated, so it quickly becomes a desperate--and ugly--situation.
Decent setup, and while I wish we could've gotten to know some of the characters a bit more, with a cast this large and stakes this high, that's not always easy. Alternatively, the series could have stretched out its pacing a bit, but that doesn't happen either, as magical girls start dropping like flies.
It's quite an entertaining competition at least. Each girl has her own powers, and some of the fights make quite creative use of them. And the characters we do get a chance to know are distinctive enough to carry the story through the sequences between the bloodshed.
I'd been thinking this book was a solid 4/5 for most of it...but then the ending happened. And I really don't know where the story is going to go from here, exactly, but it has to be something different from what we got in volume 1. By all rights, Magical Girl Raising Project is not a short series, and after this satisfying beginning, the prospect of whatever's coming next being largely unknown and new is pretty exciting....more
I remember rather liking the first Yokohama Station SF book, and being excited at the prospect of there being a sequel, because the story left a lot oI remember rather liking the first Yokohama Station SF book, and being excited at the prospect of there being a sequel, because the story left a lot of things hanging. And, well, the second book set in this world disappointed me on a variety of levels.
First, it isn't a sequel. It's a collection of short stories, many of which don't seem to have any real relevance to anything, and only a few that directly connect to each other. So what we get are snippets of the lives of people we barely know, and aren't given much reason to care about. There are some recurring characters in the androids, but they don't really tie up the loose ends from the first book, so I really have to wonder why this collection exists.
Especially because everyone in this book just sounds and feels so utterly lifeless. The voices tend to sound the same from one character to the next, and even the ones that do sound a little different read like something a chatbot might spit out if you told it to construct a "normal human conversation."
This whole thing was just a slog to get through. A military recruiter gets murdered. A pair of scientists tries to predict when a volcano is going to erupt. One of the androids meets a hermit on a little island. And there's no real reason to care about any of it. Their stories usually don't have much of an impact on the world (not even the volcano), and they don't work as character studies, because everyone involved feels like a mannequin. This is a major letdown as a follow-up to the first book, because at least that one told a cohesive, if incomplete story. But this book? It's just idle musings that do nothing to expand on the first book in any meaningful way. It's navel-gazing rendered even worse by the fact that there's no next book (as of this review). And we're left with an interesting world with no resolution to its conflicts, or anything approaching a satisfying payoff....more
Normally, I tend to deduct points for books that end up on my "Who Knew It Was Part of a Series?" shelf, but somehow, it actually worked in this one'sNormally, I tend to deduct points for books that end up on my "Who Knew It Was Part of a Series?" shelf, but somehow, it actually worked in this one's favor. If this had been a standalone story, the entire inclusion of Toshiru's story halfway through would have felt like nothing but the setup to a sort of deus ex machina near the end. But knowing now that this is the first book in a series, I have some hope that his journey will be fleshed out in the sequel(s).
Now that I've got that out of the way, I'll say that Yokohama Station SF is set in quite an interesting world. It's a post-apocalyptic dystopia that paradoxically also has some utopian influences in parts. Yokohama Station, itself, is a self-perpetuating, autonomous megastructure covering nearly all of Japan's largest island, Honshu. The station does provide for the needs of the people living within it--and even some of those few who live outside its walls, hence the slight utopian bent; it's not a glamorous life, but it can be a comfortable one for those inside as long as they follow the rules and pay their debts. Similarly, those living on the outskirts benefit from the cast-off leavings that the station dumps outside.
Those further afield view the station as a mindless cancer, merely mimicking whatever it absorbs, and a threat that will spread everywhere it can possibly reach unless it's kept at bay. An in each of these areas, there are different factions and philosophies at work and in conflict with each other. Given the book's short page length, at times all of this feels more like it's told through info-dumps, rather than shown, but it's still an interesting world full of androids, bandits, military-industrial organizations, people trying to uphold the status quo, and those looking to tear it down.
So yeah, rather than being annoyed to discover at the end that this is a series, I was actually rather relieved to know the story continues, because I want to spend more time in this world. Especially with the chaos rising in the wake of how Yokohama Station SF ends....more
The Executioner and Her Way of Life is proof positive that a concept is only as good as the writer behind it. The idea of your standard, overpowered iThe Executioner and Her Way of Life is proof positive that a concept is only as good as the writer behind it. The idea of your standard, overpowered isekai protagonists being summoned to another world as essentially living WMDs is one that's immediately appealing. It's an inversion of an incredibly stale formula, which had a lot of potential...potential which was then utterly butchered by two things.
First, the writing, itself. For a long while, I was wiling to chalk this up to something being lost in translation, but eventually I realized I was lying to myself. I've read other Japanese novels that didn't feel this shoddy, banal, and downright repetitive. Allow me to illustrate what I mean:
" 'This is the power of a Pure Concept. Otherworlders can cause massive calamities.' Human Errors--these calamities on a world-ending scale--were the work of Otherworlders."
Or how about:
"She chose one of the two crests etched into the dagger and charged it with power. Guiding Force: Connect--Dagger, Crest--Invoke [Guiding Thread] An ultrafine thread emerged from the pattern on the dagger. She'd used one of the two crests on the dagger to create it."
This crap happens constantly, to the point where I swear the book could've been at least 15% shorter if they'd cut out all the redundancy. And that part in italics above? That's how magic is presented in this story; and that's not even the most stilted and labyrinthine example. It reads like someone transcribing a Yu-Gi-Oh match, and it's freaking terrible.
The other thing that completely destroys this book's potential is Momo. I hate Momo, to the point that I very nearly put the book down for good, after a few pages of her dialog. See, she has this haaaabit of drawing out the sound of random wooords, often at times that make her sentenceees incredibly awkward, and/or putting the emphasis on the wrong syllaaaable. I gather the intent is to make her sound "cute," but she really just sounds like she has brain damage. Another character, Akari, ends up being pretty insufferable too, but not to this extent.
So, why then isn't this a one-star review? The short answer is, I wanted to like this. There's world building in the background that's cool and evocative; there are some uses of magic that, once you get past the half-assed faux computer code of how the incantations go, are creative and intriguing. It's just that Sato seems determined to crap on it all, every step of the way, in favor of filling space with the same information constantly repeated, and immersion-breaking fanservice. It's like reaching for a refreshing beverage after a long, grueling day, only to discover it's been left out in the sun all day, and gone flat and warm. Also, it's a La Croix. You could've had something worthwhile, but the end product is a pale shadow of what it should be....more
Otherside Picnic is hard to describe. On the surface, it's about a pair of college students who team up to explore a world adjacent to our own for varOtherside Picnic is hard to describe. On the surface, it's about a pair of college students who team up to explore a world adjacent to our own for various reasons. But underneath that, it's also a story about jealousy, infatuation, and abusive relationships.
Sorawo is a loner; having been raised in a very dysfunctional family, she doesn't really know how to go about making friends or really interacting with most people. So, when she finds her way into the Otherside, a place seemingly devoid of any other human beings, she sees it as a kind of refuge--that is, until she crosses paths with Toriko while over there, and discovers that this world of hers isn't as private as she thought. Or as safe.
Toriko is in the Otherside because she's searching for the person who introduced her to this parallel world in the first place. The two bond over their shared familiarity with the Otherside, as well as the fact that Sorawo is attracted to Toriko, but doesn't know how to express it. This is where the main abusive (or at least, unhealthy) relationship develops--Toriko only has eyes for Satsuki, the person who she followed into the Otherside, but she uses Sorawo's growing fondness to rope her into joining in the search. Even when it puts the both of them into increasingly dangerous situations. Sorawo is keenly jealous of Toriko's tunnel vision toward Satsuki, but she can't bring herself to cut ties with the closest thing to a friend and romantic interest she has--even to the extent that she spurns other potential friendships that might've developed if she wasn't so obsessed with Toriko. And in the midst of this, there's strong evidence accumulating that Satsuki, if she's even still alive, probably isn't the wonderful person Toriko thinks she is...
There's a lot going on here, on an interpersonal level, but it's told against the backdrop of a world inhabited by Lovecraftian entities that can only try to communicate with humans through fear, because our brains process fear differently from other living things. (i.e. We sometimes actively seek out scary situations, whereas everything else avoids them--this is an oversimplification of a fascinating approach to completely alien intelligences and they way they might try to communicate with us.) There is a lot of really weird stuff that happens in the Otherside (and that bleeds into the real world on occasion), so if you're just here for the crazy supernatural elements, you'll find a lot to like, too. Some of it can feel a bit "monster of the week"-ish, so I hope there's a bit more cohesion later on. Given how the last chapter here played out, there is at least an overarching plot developing, so I have high hopes for future volumes.
That said, the writing itself can be a bit...wooden at times. I'm not sure if that's due to something being lost in translation, but the actual prose can feel a little off. Still, the material being presented is interesting enough to make up for shortcomings in the presentation to some extent. If you like urban legends, the supernatural, and high-concept explorations of horror, you'll probably enjoy Otherside Picnic....more
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