By Piero Karasu and Yuri Kisaragi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo to Tensai Reijou no Mahou Kakumei” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell.
Ah, the good old .5 volume. This one even helps us out by telling us where most of the original short stories were seen – they were in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Magazine, which frequently has short story extras for its popular series. This is good news, as it means they’re all chunky short stories written for an attentive audience, rather than, say, the “these are all 2-3 page stories written for bookstore giveaways” short story volumes. In fact, I’d say this is just as strong as the regular volumes, and some of the stories I’d call essential. They mostly, with the exception of the first, examine life after Euphie takes the throne, and deal with the fallout of what comes from that. As we saw in the last volume, it’s still ongoing and nasty, and is destroying a number of families and lives. That said, we know where our sympathies lie, because the families whose lives are getting destroyed are trying to marry Euphie off to a man and still hate Anis.
The stories: 1) Near the start of their relationship, Anis shows Euphie how she collects spellstones, and they have a nice bath and are attracted to each other; 2) Anis tries to repair her relationship with her mother, which is difficult as they’re both very awkward and blame themselves for everything that happened between them; 3) Ilia’s family has gotten rid of her abusive parents, and are trying to get her to come back to them and marry her cousin, but Lainie isn’t going to let that happen; 4) in an original story for the book, Anis tries to ruffle Euphie’s coolness by being her maid for the day; 5) We get Tilty’s backstory as she tries to avoid reconciling with her father; 6) Halphys is getting married but a surprise succession change may mess things up for her at the last minute; 7) In another original story for the book, Euphie asks Anis if she can sometimes wear nice dresses and actually socialize.
The relationship between Anis and Euphie has always tried to toe the line between “codependent, but in a good way” and “codependent, but in a terrible way”. There’s a scene in Halphys’ story where a noble admits he’s abdicating simply as Euphie terrifies him, and given what happened in Book 8, I absolutely get it. Anis may get upset that Euphie always seems to be the dominant one in their love, but that’s more down to Anis’s embarrassment, whereas with Euphie being overly affectionate is how she holds on to what’s left of her humanity. The best story, I thought, was Tilty’s, where we meet her father and realize that they’re the classic case of two people trying to be considerate of each other who only end up hurting each other instead. It’s a must read if you like her character.
Hopefully we’ll get the 9th book a bit faster than we got this one. Another great volume in a series I really love.
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