Currently Reading - 幼女戦記 / Youjo Senki

Kafka - I'm currently reading v.3 of the Youjo Senki series subtitled "The Finest Hour".

I am sure you are familiar with the series because of the success of the anime, but the premise is that a Japanese salaryman who views the world in a very methodical way, heavily influenced by the Chicago school of economic thought, gets pushed in front of a train by a desperate man he fired earlier that day. Before dying, he has a conversation with a mysterious being that claims to be God. This being, angered by the man's lack of faith and dispassionate demeanor, decides to reincarnate him in a low fantasy world on the brink of war in an unclear attempt to force him to change his ways. Reincarnated as an orphan in the bleakest circumstances, but with magical ability, the main character becomes Tanya Degurechaff, the youngest mage in the imperial army, where she quickly becomes, almost by accident, a war hero. The story follows the war as Tanya attempts to build a bridge to a future out of harms way, and stick it to the one who threw her into this whole mess, unknowingly becoming an almost mythical centerpiece of the war in the process.

By about halfway through volume three, we pass the point where the anime stopped, but that does not mean there isn't a ton of non-anime content between this point and the start. I was looking back and comparing things and noticed that a good 100 page section was referenced with a single throwaway line. The anime also approaches the story in a very different way, more focused on character portraits, even going so far as to create a good deal of anime original content to add flavor, including making substantial changes to Mysterious Being X.

I mentioned that this was a low fantasy setting, and the book goes to great lengths to describe how things work, down to the nitty gritty, as opposed to a few magic words and motions blowing everyone out of the sky. True to Tanya's described original salaryman character, Tanya goes to great lengths to only put herself in positions where she has a clear advantage, even if that advantage is not obvious to those around her. This makes her seem overpowered to others, far more overpowered than she actually is at any rate.

The focus of the novels is more on the war than on Tanya herself, and she is very often not the narrator. Narrators range from Tanya and enemy fighters, to a grumpy Winston Churchill in a parliamentary meeting, to newspaper reporters and historians decades after the war. A lot of the story needs to be pieced together by the reader; all sides often have misconceptions about the other, and very few people know everything that is going on. Additionally, Mysterious Being X is far less involved and more mysterious (though clearly moronic) in the book. The book leaves little seeds of doubt everywhere as to what might be coincidence or accident, or if a higher being is really interfering in the war greater than we know. A lot of paper goes not only to addressing specific strategies, but also the politics surrounding the delicate balance of power among countries.

Now let's cut to the prose. First of all, never have I read a book in Japanese series with the prose so filled with sarcasm. From jokes the soldiers pass amongst themselves and knocks here and there in different narrator's thought processes it is rich in it, and it's fun to read. However, there is a bit of unnecessary repetition in parts and narration jumping can be blunt and sometimes off putting. Several times, you are thrown into a narrator without knowing who they are for several pages. This has been done well to great effect at times (like when you're thrown into a 'rescued' soldier dying on a hospital bed, or mages getting fired on without warning by the frightening Devil of the Rhine), but sometimes it's just confusing, because it rides atop of the usual ambiguity and lack of pronouns we're used to in Japanese. Sometimes you're thrown into a narrator that's having a conversation, and you're not sure whose thoughts you are hearing. You may hear two or more people talking, one person thinking, and no other clues - not even if the person whose thoughts you are hearing is even talking.

Generally, the vocabulary isn't too insane, but you have to quickly become familiar with some military terms. Some of these terms are defined in notes, but not all of these notes appear on the pages where you first see the word. Some words that appear in the book won't show up in most dictionaries, but there's usually enough context to make the meaning clear. If you are used to light novels made up mostly of dialogue, you might stumble on some of the long sentences where it's not perfectly clear what block is describing or modifying another, but it is something you can get used to.

I plan to be reading this on and off throughout the year. I have all nine currently published books, but I see myself needing to take a break before I finish the whole series. I may write a review of one or a few of the volumes once I've made it clear past where the anime has ended.

Is anyone else reading or planning to read Youjo Senki? What do you think?