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From the Bookshelf: Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki Lv.6.5
When I got to the cliffhanger ending of the sixth volume of the Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki “light novels,” I already understood the volume to follow would be “short side stories.” That status just happened to be signalled by a decimal point in the volume number; I’m familiar enough with that from the My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As I Expected light novels, even if thinking of them gets me bumping into how their own setup seems it would be a bit more “realistic” than Tomozaki’s and yet their translation makes them a slog for me to read through, which then leads straight to “so why are you reading all these lightweight novels with numbers on their spines: is continuing on from their anime adaptations that important?”
As I’ve said before, though, there’s something about Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki’s translation that makes it a rare standout for me. (Perhaps I might yet say “a standout for Yen Press’s Yen On line”; before reading this latest short story volume I returned to the first Otherside Picnic volume in a print omnibus from J-Novel Club, and didn’t find it that hard going.) The side stories of this volume were easy to get through, although I did wonder a little if fitting in ten of them, in with a certain brevity resulting, had something to do with that. At least some instalments might amount to “illustrative vignettes” rather than “self-contained tales,” but there remained something interesting to them. The first happened to get away from first-person narration to get back to Aoi Hinami in junior high, thinking her way through self-improvement and a potential relationship with that analysis staying that much more enigmatic than Tomozaki’s. The second story just happened to go back to Tomozaki’s perspective as Aoi orders him to buy a stylish outfit without the crutch of “I’ll take everything displayed on that mannequin.”
One of the more intriguing stories was narrated by the “bookworm” Fuka Kikuchi, getting back to her own junior high days. She manages to become friends with a female librarian at that old school and starts reading the “Michael Andi” novels mentioned in the series, with a description of one of their plots rather than just “I like reading them.” When she makes an effort on her own to start talking to other students, though, it doesn’t work out. In another third-person perspective tale Yuzu Izumi tries to work through relationship issues, which might have brought to mind a certain dismissive comment from Aoi in the last volume before things seemed to work out.
A story narrated by Minami “Mimimi” Nanami got my attention straight off when I had a distinct sense of a different character voice than Tomozaki’s; I did get to wondering if I’m any good at picking up on that in many other cases. On the other hand, there was a moment where she was looking at herself in a bathroom mirror she’d just got some of the steam off and thinking “if all I’ve got going for me is looks and figure, that won’t last forever.” (An appropriate if carefully composed illustration is provided by Fly.) Aoi had made much the same comment in a previous volume. The story, though, was also the closest we came to Hanabi “Tama” Natsubayashi featuring at all.
While some of the pieces allude to the sixth volume’s cliffhanger, the last of them did take place moments afterwards from a different viewpoint, happening to mention “I’m not the only one he might be interested in.” Yuki Yaku’s author’s afterword then touches on “stretching out the cliffhanger” (while still enthusing at length about Fly’s cover illustration of the junior high Aoi), and there happens to be an ad for the anime adaptation on the very last page of the volume. In any case, while I’m still not managing to get to “even the titles I’m most interested in” as soon as I receive them, I did manage to finish this volume some time in advance of the inevitable next and whatever happens in it.
As I’ve said before, though, there’s something about Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki’s translation that makes it a rare standout for me. (Perhaps I might yet say “a standout for Yen Press’s Yen On line”; before reading this latest short story volume I returned to the first Otherside Picnic volume in a print omnibus from J-Novel Club, and didn’t find it that hard going.) The side stories of this volume were easy to get through, although I did wonder a little if fitting in ten of them, in with a certain brevity resulting, had something to do with that. At least some instalments might amount to “illustrative vignettes” rather than “self-contained tales,” but there remained something interesting to them. The first happened to get away from first-person narration to get back to Aoi Hinami in junior high, thinking her way through self-improvement and a potential relationship with that analysis staying that much more enigmatic than Tomozaki’s. The second story just happened to go back to Tomozaki’s perspective as Aoi orders him to buy a stylish outfit without the crutch of “I’ll take everything displayed on that mannequin.”
One of the more intriguing stories was narrated by the “bookworm” Fuka Kikuchi, getting back to her own junior high days. She manages to become friends with a female librarian at that old school and starts reading the “Michael Andi” novels mentioned in the series, with a description of one of their plots rather than just “I like reading them.” When she makes an effort on her own to start talking to other students, though, it doesn’t work out. In another third-person perspective tale Yuzu Izumi tries to work through relationship issues, which might have brought to mind a certain dismissive comment from Aoi in the last volume before things seemed to work out.
A story narrated by Minami “Mimimi” Nanami got my attention straight off when I had a distinct sense of a different character voice than Tomozaki’s; I did get to wondering if I’m any good at picking up on that in many other cases. On the other hand, there was a moment where she was looking at herself in a bathroom mirror she’d just got some of the steam off and thinking “if all I’ve got going for me is looks and figure, that won’t last forever.” (An appropriate if carefully composed illustration is provided by Fly.) Aoi had made much the same comment in a previous volume. The story, though, was also the closest we came to Hanabi “Tama” Natsubayashi featuring at all.
While some of the pieces allude to the sixth volume’s cliffhanger, the last of them did take place moments afterwards from a different viewpoint, happening to mention “I’m not the only one he might be interested in.” Yuki Yaku’s author’s afterword then touches on “stretching out the cliffhanger” (while still enthusing at length about Fly’s cover illustration of the junior high Aoi), and there happens to be an ad for the anime adaptation on the very last page of the volume. In any case, while I’m still not managing to get to “even the titles I’m most interested in” as soon as I receive them, I did manage to finish this volume some time in advance of the inevitable next and whatever happens in it.