By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan as “Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

There are certain long-running light novel series that I review that I consider “grandfathered in”. What that means is I’ve been reading them for years, and I know that they’re not really all that good any more, but I set a lower bar just because… well, I’ve been reading them for years. Now, obviously, sometimes a series doesn’t even clear that low bar, and I drop it some 15-20 volumes in. In Another World with My Smartphone was blessed with an obvious “please stop reading here” volume, whereas The Irregular at Magic High School decided to shove its homophobic right-wing protagonist in my face one too many times. Realist Hero has not hit that low bar. It’s still readable, I feel no desire to stop one volume before the end. That said,. there is a moment here where our heroes are fighting the villain, and get mad at him for still being single and not having married like everyone else in this series, where I wondered if this was written by the ghost of Shinzo Abe.

We left off with Souma having revealed that there’s a whole new world of adventure to be had in the North, thus impacting the morale of all of Fuuga’s troops, as well as Fuuga himself. Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough to stop the battle that’s going to be happening today, and now Fuuga knows he has to deal with everything right now or he’ll lose. What follows is a lot of battle, and Fuuga loses. (I don’t regard this as a spoiler because you have read the previous 18 volumes. Did you think Souma would be killed?) Souma manages to swing the battle in such a way that Fuuga is able to retreat with honor (persuaded to do so by, you guessed it, a pregnant wife), but his dreams are dashed. Unfortunately, he is smarter than some of his generals, who have a “war or nothing” mentality. The fragile peace can’t last forever…

This series, for the most part, does not kill people off, something I joked about last time, when it killed off the two oldest men in the cast who had already lived full lives and didn’t have young wives and children. This penultimate volume can’t QUITE do that, but it does manage to avoid killing off any of the named supporting cast on Souma’s side. The same cannot be said of the enemy, and I spent most of the book wondering if the author actually had the moxie to legitimately kill Fuuga off. (The answer is that they leave it vague, but I’m pretty sure the 20th volume will answer “no, he did not”). That said, Yuriga’s family definitely suffers some deaths, as they’re divided between two warring states, and some of them are simply battle hungry. Of all the “it’s better to have a family” hammers that get dropped on our head by the book, the best is Aisha’s fight with Nata, where she declares him boring because his battle style has nothing he cares about behind it but his own bloodlust. She kills him as an afterthought. That was some actual good writing.

Most of this, though, is Realist Hero writing. It’s ending in the next volume, which the author already says will be “epilogues” about all the characters. It’s long overdue, but I’ll read it when we get it. (And hopefully it won’t come back with After stories. Looking at you, Arifureta.)