By Harunadon and raemz. Released in Japan as “Replica Datte, Koi o Suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.
When I’d finished the first volume of this series, I felt it was very much a done-in-one, and felt a little wary that there was more of it. Then came the second volume, which had a couple of nasty cliffhangers at the end that made the reader desperately want to pick up the third, so I figured the author got a hold of where it was going. Having now researched it a bit, it appears that there are four main volumes and an “after story” volume. Which is good, because egads, that ending of the third book. But it’s also a bit of a shame, because if the third book had indeed been the last, the ending we get would have been an absolute banger, making desperate readers write into Dengeki Bunko saying that there’s a missing page and to find out how it actually ended. But, that’s not what’s happening. And honestly, that’s probably good, as there is still stuff to deal with.
As the book opens, Sunao has been doing the “going to school” thing, and is interacting with her classmates almost despite herself, as they prepare for the class trip… which is still going forward, despite the Student Council president vanishing in thin air in front of everyone and then ending up dead a week earlier. As for Nao, she is back at the house, unable to do anything except sit there every day and mourn Ryou. Fortunately, Aki and Ricchan stage an intervention and remind her that she is more than just a replica… or is she? As the book goes on and Sunao goes off on the class trip, Nao and Aki go on their own trip to the town where Ryou lived with her grandparents… and end up staying with said grandparents, where they get told something very shocking but also very obvious if you know what replicas REALLY are.
As with the first two books, it’s very difficult to talk about what’s really great about it without spoiling the whole thing, but let me once again take a whack. This volume gives us the biggest dose yet of Sunao, and we really get to see what’s making her tick and what she’s trying to do here. Her relationship with Nao is slowly killing her, and while I don’t mean that literally there are a few literary references in this book that allude to a story where it is taken literally. Sunao is not in a good place now, nor is Sanada, who is also back living everyday life while his replica stays home. Do we get to meet another replica in this book? No, bjut we meet someone who once had one, and that proves to be the key, as it shows not that Sunao and Sanada having replicas isn’t as unique as they think, but that the way they have replicas is uniquely wrong.
All this leads to one belter of a cliffhanger… sort of? Anyone who has read the series at all knows what Nao will say, but it’s the after that’s the important thing, so let’s see what happens next with Book 4. The writing remains excellent, and his is genuinely Harunadon’s best series in English right now.
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