By Ageha Sakura and TCB. Released in Japan as “Tensei Saki ga Kiyowa Sugiru Hakushaku Fujin datta” by Overlap Novels f. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Bérénice Vourdon.

This is not an isekai title, and it’s not QUITE a reincarnation title, even though it features that, mostly as they’re not reincarnated from Japan. Everyone in this fantasy world seems to have been born in it at some point. But it is one of those titles, like Reborn to Master the Blade or A Tale of the Secret Saint, where our protagonist was an incredibly powerful and influential person in the past, and now that they’ve reincarnated into the future, they find that their past is not so easy to get rid of. This is more literally true for Lam than others in this genre, as not only was she forcibly reincarnated via a spell, but all of her disciples are there as well. And unfortunately, this gets to one of the parts of the title that I wish weren’t the case… all of her disciples are, to one degree or another, yanderes. Fortunately, she has minimal interest in anyone but Char… who gets SLIGHTLY more than minimal.

Things start off fairly normally, as Lam decides she wants to attend a tea party for nobility, which goes about as well as you’d expect, given that she’s still assumed to be an introverted coward by those who haven’t met her new self. After that, though, we get the real plot, as Lam is asked to go to the country of Levres, whose prince wants to meet her. Naturally, Char comes along, and they take Canon as well. It turns out that the prince is the reincarnation of her second disciple, Glacial, who was reincarnated properly with his memories from the start, unlike Lam’s broken reincarnation. Now Prince Fleche, he wants Lam to marry him and live with him forever – much to Char’s displeasure. Unfortunately, the hatred of mages has also followed them to this kingdom, helped along by the Church.

This series has a very big problem for me, which is not a deal breaker so far but the ice is getting thinner. The problem is that while I like the basic situation, I usually want to sympathize with… anyone. Lam is fairly emotionally stunted, quick to deal with “insects” when she’s annoyed, and, while she’s not aromantic per se, she might as well be given her inability to get anyone’s point. The men in her life are all various shades of obsessed with/in love with her, and Char is possibly the only one who actually cares about what SHE thinks about this… and the implication is that if he finds out she was actually Aurora, he won’t care about her own feelings either. The bad guys are also mostly immature brats with far too much power and a tendency to not care about anyone or anything. And given they all have magic, even the people trying to prejudice the world against magic, that’s not a good thing. You want to smack them.

This ends with a cliffhanger, so we’ll see how all these men decide to resolve who gets to marry and have sex with a woman who really doesn’t want to be married to anyone but Char, and who still tends to blush and have a look of horror if sex is mentioned. I’ll keep going, but buyer beware.