#and she gets to have a big plot about agency and being a vassal for a dark god and shit OK

[yoolee]

Lately as I have been mindlessly listening to a hundred and a half “I was reincarnated/transmigrated into a book I read/otome game I played” I can’t help but imagine such a story with SLBP as the game in question.

Misc thoughts: Most of these stories have to do with changing one’s fate / avoiding some disaster or doom or fav character’s death and that would be so hard with SLBP from a which is actually one of the reasons why I think it would make a great story. The sort of inevitability of war and its influence is so deeply woven in and it’s not like there are “oh so and so attacked from x river as spring turned to summer in this year” details that could be used. To me such a big theme is just finding moments of meaningful happiness with the important people in your life, and I really like that as a story over a lot of these ‘save the world’ ‘win the war’ ‘overthrow a tyrant’ clear win/lose goals. How would that influence this kind of transmigration story? What would someone who woke up in SLBP have as a goal?

I think it would be interesting because even with knowledge of the supposed inner workings and secrets of characters, and some knowledge of future events, if the protagonist woke up as chef - it’s not like she would have money and influence to act on it. It’d be an interesting challenge, IMO.

Or embracing the more stereotypical storylines you could go:

The semi-serious route of just ‘try to stay alive during warring states era’ which involves NOT being a poison tester perhaps.

The ‘go romance favorite side character (Toramatsu? Tired single dad Kanetsugu? Kansuke?) who didn’t get route’

‘Play matchmaker and find people similar to who nameless chef becomes over course of route because there’s only one of her and you and want all biases to have SOME happiness in their lives’ (protag reincarnated as Umeko? As nameless retainer/vassal?)

Protag realizes they’re in the game only after little brother has left to become a poison tester, and hurries after to get the game back on track (perhaps not knowing which ‘route’ they’re on until they catch up) and then has to you know, not die despite now being extra suspicious

Get unexpectedly attached to a character who wasn’t one of your favorites by virtue of actually experiencing things (eg—Inuchiyo)

Try to find a way to gain enough power and influence that they might be able to actually change things - go try and find Iga and train as an assassin to take out the lords they liked less? Uses the extreme cliche of somehow remembers enough detail about a modern invention or process to develop it (I remember salt being a brief produce plot point in Shingen/Kenshin’s route) but would still have to get around heroine’s agency or lack thereof and availability of resources to enact said inventions.

You could also scrap the idea of protag wakes up as chef and instead have it be like—protag wakes up as one of the lords or named vassals and that solves the influence problem but ups the likelihood of dying in battle or being named a spy problem.

If I were to write it, would probably be the usual slapstick. Go the route of protag waking up as chef, try and keep chef dad alive, leverage childhood friend status to preemptively bribe/lure Inuchiyo over to Kai’s side, maneuver to end up on Yukimura/Saizo prologue path since Kai has the highest concentration of favorites, trying to get Shingen/Kenshin into an alliance (or relationship) trying to develop a business plan for a sweets business (focused on Nobunaga and Ieyasu’s favorites) with maybe Francesco as an investor to try and gain enough mercantile influence for future negotiations.

It would require too much research to rally do well but such is life 😂

[rofax]

“I'm the darkness you're feeling”

[recentanimenews]

Strike the Blood, Vol. 12

By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

At the end of my review of the 11th book in this series, I had a lot of questions that I wanted to see answered in Vol. 12, and unfortunately, and somewhat frustratingly, none of them are. Natsuki isn’t even mentioned, and since it takes place entirely off the island we’ve no idea what things will be like the next time she sees Kojou. Yukina does run into two other members of the Lion King Agency, but they seem to get along just fine, and there seems to be no real consequences as of yet to her breaking off from doing what the Agency says last time. In fact, Kojou and Yukina almost end up being guest stars in their own series, as while they do eventually show up and figure in the climax (and yes, the “this is my/our fight” running gag is present and correct), much of the book seems designed to introduce us to those two other Lion King Agency members, one of whom gets stacked on the harem pile. As you’d expect.

In case you’re curious, Yukina is the heroine on the cover of this volume of Strike the Blood. It’s always interesting to see who’ll be featured next. Meanwhile, she and Kojou do finally get off the island, mostly due to Vattler, who is here to save the day and even donates his harem of young princesses – who also seem to be a crack combat squad A-Team style – to help with this latest crisis. And it is a crisis, because kidnapping Nagisa to try to kill off what’s inside her proves to be a big mistake, and now there’s lots of things to deal with. For one, there’s a dragon named Glenda, who can also turn into a young teen girl (and gets to be Koujo’s snack of the week so that he can get a new beast vassal). And there’s also the JSDF, who seem to spend half of all Japanese light novels being useless until our heroes arrive, and the other half being evil. It’s a little of both here.

As always, the book reads fast and the fight scenes are good. Thre’s always one bit of annoying fanservice that I twitch at, and this time around it’s Asagi spending the entire volume in a school swimsuit-like plugsuit for no real reason other than to be humiliated and gawked at. That said, as always Asagi doesn’t do much but her scenes count – I liked her relationship with the descendant of the Second Primogenitor, Iblisviel, and her complete lack of fear or loathing at his existence – not to mention her airport ramen recommendations, which may be the funniest scene in the entire series to date. That said, at the end of the book I have even MORE questions (we also find Asagi may not be the ONLY Priestess of Cain) and even fewer answers. If I’m going to sit here and read about Yukina getting jealous at every single thing Kojou does, I need to have some sort of plot payoff. Maybe I’ll get that next time when we get back to the island. Till then, enjoy some fights and heavily dropped hints.

By: Sean Gaffney