Caught up to Elaina v5. v4 was great cuz it was pretty much 100% yuri, so it's a bit tough to swallow when v5 toned it down. A bit. Characters nagging Elaina if she's a lesbian is an excellent touch, though.
86 vol 8: naval warfare volume. absolutely kickass setting for the big battle of this vol. Also interesting conflict between the 86 that are making big steps in moving forward with their everyday lives and the ones that feel like theyve been left behind.
Spoiler:
Finished Volume 7 of Tomozaki.The likely OVA coming up is one thing, but if we get a second season, I hope it ends up being 16 episodes somehow. I'd hate for any of this material to get the shaft. This was a really satisfying volume, and I'm excited to see where the series goes next.Spoiler:
Welp, that was quite the experience. Grateful for the depth of v15, crushed by the content. Shiratori, come oooooon.
Finished Magistellus Bad Trip Volume 1.
It took a bit to get into, but the pulpy action satisfied quickly enough. I noticed some annoying repetition of points regarding Pavilion; Kamachi probably did it for dramatic emphasis, but it read as amateurish. Seeing all of the references to other Kamachi series was a neat little touch. Overall a fun read. I'm looking forward to Volume 2 in September. Also Midori is very cute.
Huh, I didn't know it was licensed. If you ok with fan-translation and don't want to wait it's pretty easy to find epub/pdf versions if you search by fan-translated name Magisterus Bad Trip.
That's pretty random license - iirc from Kamachi's LNs only Index is licensed, so I would expect something like Heavy Object that already have anime than pretty obscure newer LN.
Reread Crest of the Stars and Banner 1-3. Man Banner 2 was such a nice foretelling of stuff that would happen in the modern world.
As a small synopsis, the two protags of the series are put in charge of the administration of a prison planet of hundreds of thousands of people after they occupied the planet in war. Their space empire doesn't hold prisons/corrections facilities in such mass amounts generally leaving that to be the discretion of the planetary administrations. Not only that almost half the planet wants to leave and be evacuated because 9/10 of the planet is more along the lines of gangs from the likes of Necromunda from 40k. The planet required immediate rations when again, their space empire doesn't normally have the trade networks to support land worlds that can't operate self sufficiently, so the supplies they can bring while a war is going on is limited while also organizing an evacuation and of course navigating a bureaucratic and byzantine mess makes for a fun story. But it also unintentionally draws parallels with the future on the US evacuation/withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite being written like 15 years prior. Its really fun scifi as I don't know many scifi stories that overly focus on the tedious administration systems of the future.
Other series I have been reading is:
Nanatsu no Maken Shiai Suru, a story I am honestly convinced is written by 449 (Muramasa/Hanachirasu) of ex-N+ fame under a new pseudonym. The way the author infodumps during the swordfights about both techniques and just the wizardry is so reminiscent of stuff like the maken in hana and stuff like kabutowari and shishikus techiniques in Muramasa (really, go read tell me the splurges on the Fourth and Second Maken in vol 1 and 4 and try to tell me it is not exactly like how in Hanachirasu the text stops the final fight for the narration to explain physics in a very dramatic way just to explain how Akane/Igarasu's maken works before finally cutting back to the fight). Very good and fun series despite being called sword hogwarts.
Demonlord 2099: seems like it would be a fun anime, not that good but it is silly.
Ryuu to Sairei: vol 1 was nice. Would recommend, don't know what to say specifically about it. its a pretty good mystery where no one needs to explain everything to another. Haven't started vol 2 though.
Last edited by Cruor; June 28th, 2022 at 03:37 PM.
The Hall of Selected Cruor Praise
King of the Labyrinth
What a fun ride and I appreciate everything in the series. The first novel is pretty much that mafia mobile game meme where a level 10 gangster becomes the level 99 boss. It is the story about the cow lord, the minotaur king who likes brutally killing human adventurers out for a fight, the series however is far wider in scope then that.
Book 2 and book 3s world building is so good, book 3 literally has like a 40 page chapter on the history and line of the family that serves as the 'villain' of the series and why and how their territory even got as strong as it did, and how the philosophies of both the region and how the house developed over time caused them to be/appear to be adversarial to the 'main character''s house and alliance.
The opening segment of book 2, which comes after an entire book where we had a mostly static sentient cow barbarian (who is also 100% who everyone secretly cheers for) going from being an early game boss to being the master of the Labyrinth, while fun did not tell you much about the world. But you did have glimpses of it. The first like 20 pages of the second book glosses over the entire other story unfolding outside of the Labyrinth, and then starts you from there while you are still overwhelmed by the huge info dump at the start. Makes for some glorious fun and really sets the stage for what the series is actually going to be about, but don't worry we still get chapters on the great Cow.
But even all of this does not even properly go over all of the underlying tales within some of the more 'episodic' chapters which all further develop the setting but also progresses the other themes the series wants to inform you about. As while rather episodic (some of those chapters are straight up called interludes), they all develop one long side story going on like one really long rpg quest.
All in all I suggest it for anyone that likes fantasy series or history. I have to say though, while a lot of series have come out in the last 5-10 years that like challenging the classic jp fantasy tropes and commonly used story elements, they often end up using a lot of similar themes with both each other but also the elements they are trying to poke holes in. King of the Labyrinth is pretty forward with a lot of its rpg elements, so you would think that this would hurt it and leave the delivery on its other views feeling flat, I found this not to be the case. As between limitations in design, and the tone and pace leaves a lot of headroom for it.
All of this in three novella sized novels.
Last edited by Cruor; August 22nd, 2022 at 12:18 PM.
The Hall of Selected Cruor Praise