By Shoji Goji and Saku Enomaru. Released in Japan as “Hitoribocchi no Isekai Kouryaku” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Andrew Schubauer.
Given that a large chunk of this series consists entirely of the same goddamn thing over and over again (Haruka going from level to level of a dungeon, battling monsters, and gaining new power-ups/items), I hope you won’t be too disappointed that I talk about things I’ve talked about in previous reviews. The series’ reputation, both here and in Japan – indeed, more in Japan than here – is that its writing is incoherent and obtuse. This is true. It’s also clear that the author is trying, and slightly succeeding, in making that deliberate. Haruka is so busy telling us about the stream of church guards that he and Nefertiri are slaughtering and the cool +30 Eccentric Item Set A he’s acquired that he glosses over the abused, mentally broken slaves they’re freeing as they do this, the sheer fury that they’ve got on their faces, and Haruka’s battle with trying to save everyone and not destroy his body. Oh, and his depression. Which he hints at briefly. Once.
Haruka and Nefertiri are sneaking into the Cathedral, there to essentially take down the church. On the way there, Haruka comes across a gorgeous woman in a coffin… but he’s just her dead body, there’s no soul. What’s more, seeing her makes Nefertiri start to cry, though she can’t quite remember why. They have to deal with a lot of goons, a lot of monsters (including the husband of his chickenatrice), and the mother of the bunny girl and wolf girl from the previous book, who was tricked by the church and is now in cursed armor. That said, killing the pope and the evil clergy only turns out to be part one of what they need to do, as there’s another dungeon emperor, and Haruka is pretty sure that if he finds them he’ll find the soul that belongs to the body he found earlier.
Haruka’s exterior face and tone when others see him talking don’t always match his narrative blather. Class Rep and the others are used to seeing when he’s actually serious and when he’s just being a loon, but the reader sees it less frequently. That’s why the highlight of the book, frankly, is his confrontation with Faleria, the aforementioned Dungeon Emperor and holy saint, who is drowning herself in guilt and asks Haruka to kill her. You can imagine how well he takes this, and for once it actually shows, as he literally slams her head against a wall multiple times to get her to accept that the people whose lives she is mourning would not want her to simply give up on her own life – indeed, the plot of this entire book was engineered centuries ago in the hopes that someone will come along to save her. Haruka’s not going to let anyone around him (especially a woman) be anything less than insanely happy. And yes, that’s why she falls in love with him.
There’s the usual character bio errors (what is it with these? It’s not just Seven Seas, all the publishers struggle immensely with matching a character bio with the picture), but otherwise this is well adapted… I’d say it reads smoothly but you know it doesn’t, and that’s by design. In any case, next time will likely be Haruka trying to fix his new body, which lacks all the stuff he learned before, so I expect *even more* dungeon crawling and *even more* sex. Recommended for masochists who like puzzles.
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