Youjo Senki
The Saga of Tanya the Evil

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While the fan-translation effort is fairly slow for this light novel, the pure quality of both the actual content and the translation effort is nothing short of stellar. To get a good idea on how Youjo Senki reads, take a read of the prologue and the first chapter. Those two chapters sum up exactly how it is going to read. The language and concepts used can be a bit difficult to read through which unfortunately makes the fan-translation difficult.

The knowledge of the author shines through and the plot is very well thought out. Normally, in light novels with the 'reincarnation' trope, the character makes the ... character seem intelligent by simply having them outsmart other characters or makes them flat out overpowered. In this case, the main character shows their intelligence through detailed, well thought out logical plans, interesting philosophy, and incredible application of high level military tactics.
While a bit of the plot leeches on some real world events, it is absolutely justified.

Overall, I absolutely recommend this light novel to anyone. While I am aware the reincarnation genre is very overdone, this one rightfully stands out and is very worth reading.

A very hardcore and concrete story among the vast amount of light novels which are 'sexually-polluted'.

This novel series is noteworthy for readers who have at least some interest in stories of wars and battles. The writer's comprehensive knowledge of war histories can be known through the detailed battle plans explained and the various examples of past battles quoted.

What makes this novel appealing to me is that the story has largely eliminated the popular 'naive' characteristic of most protagonists in other novel series. The realistic inclination of Tanya (Both male/female protagonist of this story) will be giving readers a feeling of fulfillment reading how ... she/he destroys the enemies without any hesitation.

ALL HAIL TANYA !

"Kind Mr. Josef was worried.
The expectations of all who believed in him were weighing on his shoulders.
Thinking only of the people’s happiness, he thought it was time to work hard
at developing the Federation.
But…
Its citizens, spoiled by his kindness, only fell into decline.
How awful!
...
What in the world is this job?
The answer:
... The environmentally friendly job of counting trees in Sildberia.
It was work that soothed the tired people’s hearts with the power of nature
and would surely protect the environment as well.
People could enjoy forest bathing while gazing up toward the clear starry sky
while spending their days devoted to this noble task.
It was truly labor by the people, for the people."


This is the funniest light novel I have read.
"But how can it be? This seems grim and edgy, not to mention political. It isn't even listed as a comedy."
But that is the point! The comedy is effective precisely because of the dark touch and powerful political satire.

Do you want to commit war crimes but don't want to end up convicted? Looting civilian property? Bombing population centers? Reducing local churches to piles of rubble? Don't worry; Tanya has you covered. She has come up with all kinds of outlandish legal excuses.

So here we are, "waving the flags of ethnicity" or not, witnessing how appealing to patriotism is the first and last resort of crooked politicians. When the protagonist is expressing her patriotism or religious beliefs, it is all lies. The communists have also sold out their beliefs, and God is a cruel tyrant. This is Cynic City, and the mayor is Carlo Zen, one of the wittiest, most sarcastic authors on the light novel scene.

He is also a hard worker, considering the outrageous level of technical, tactical, and conceptual detail in this. He won't settle for anything less than ultra-realistic warfare and relatively detailed philosophical arguments, by the standards of fiction, at least. The volumes in this are actually quite long and densely written. If you have seen the anime adaptation, it is pretty obvious that they had to cut an outrageous amount of content, both in plot events and internal monologue, to fit in the very minimal screen-time they were allotted. I am writing this review after reading 7 volumes, which have already provided a mountain of content.

I have some criticism though. Sometimes the technical details are explained in too much detail and at too great a length. Often I would have understood it with a briefer explanation. Some of the fight scenes also drag on a bit. More generally, sometimes the plot really should move along faster. I appreciate the attention to detail, but let's get the important events done as well. And there should be more tension between the various characters in their interactions. They too often agree with each other for the most part, or their motives are rather similar. This is especially true of the soldiers under Tanya's command. Oh, and Loria's crush on Tanya is unnecessary and does no favors for the narrative, even though it only pops up on rare occasions.

It is worth noting that Tanya often throws around terms like "the free market" and "the ideal market" even when they are not very relevant. For instance, if you support broad social liberties, it is not really a matter of economics, at least if taken literally. The same for opposing authoritarian governments. It is entirely possible to be authoritarian but still support relatively free markets economically. And, besides, Tanya constantly runs her comparisons between all-out communism and unconstrained capitalism. Most economic systems are between those extremes, and I have a hard time discerning which policies Tanya would support or object to in a more realistic situation. I realize that it has probably been done on purpose, to offer satirical critique of the inconsistencies within the protagonist's belief systems, and highlight that she is not alright in the head and not exactly the most virtuous person. After all, the English title is "The Saga of Tanya the Evil," not "The Saga of Tanya the Good."

If you have read isekai light novels, you may have noticed that many of them are borrowing ideas from each other. Where are all the copycats of this one? If you are going to draw inspiration from other authors, might as well go for this one. We need more light novels in which Stalin gets a phone call from heaven.

Having read all seven currently translated light novel books of Youjo Senki/Saga of Tanya the Evil, I feel confident enough to give you an idea of what you're getting into.

I've watched both the animation and the movie, as well as started reading the manga a few weeks ago.

!! I'll assume that most of you reading this have seen the Anime & Movie, and perhaps read the manga.

THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS ACCORDINGLY !!

Having said that, it'll bring me to the most important part about the novel in case you are interested:

Both the Anime and especially the Manga have a much bigger focus on action ... and if that is one of your necessities, chances are that you'll be bored by the novel. A large part of it is Tanya's internal monologues and going into detail over her plans, actions and general historical strategy & strategists (obligatory mention of Sun Tzu). You'll even have your fair share of economical concepts talked about. And of course coffee (not even joking, I stopped counting the amount of times Tanya was confessing her love of it, thanks Carlo Zen). Nonetheless the novel doesn't lose its sense of humor, which I really appreciate. For example, Tanya even mentions how she tries to add jokes to her conversations when speaking to her battalion, and sometimes fails miserably at it because they don't catch onto her sarcasm. It shows nicely how little empathy she really has, and how much of her interaction is what she thinks are social norms. Over time, she warms up to her battalion though, and I like to think she's developing some humanity.

A lot of the wickedness/edginess of her character isn't so emphasized in the novel (especially in comparison to the manga), and during the majority of the time, you will be witnessing her cold and opportunistic character over anything else. As mentioned in another review on here, a large part about her "evil" stems from her treating war as a clash of human capital. In her own mind, she is simply being efficient and expects everyone else to think the same way. So while in anime and manga she is portrayed as a maliciously evil (for example the pill bunker at the very beginning of the rhine front & her sadistic smile), the novel makes it quite apparent that she's just doing what she considers efficient. People want to die? Sure, she'll give them opportunity to die in a way so she isn't handicapped by it.

She quickly earns herself the reputation of a cruel warmonger because of the way she prioritizes efficiency over morality. This is motivated by her desire to get off the frontlines as fast as possible, ironically resulting in her being sent there over and over again. So whenever she gets an easy job, she beams with happiness and people around her think that she's thirsty for war, resulting in an even worse reputation. She's pretty much oblivious to this as well. It's why I find it misleading to actually call her a sadist.

Overall, I believe that Carlo Zen sort of lost sight of what he was trying to achieve with this novel. He wanted to make knowledge of WWI more appealing to the japanese, since it's not a well known subject in Japan, which I think he does a fair job of. On the other hand, he was trying to show the flaws of Fascism (with alter-germany), but their success makes this questionnable. And with Tanya, he wanted to have an unlikable main character, by whose suffering you were supposed to be amused. With her unconvential personality and Mary-Sue characteristic, I think he achieved the exact opposite, simply judging by her popularity alone.

tl;dr

the novel has a heavy emphasis on strategy, history and some economics at the cost of being less action oriented. Tanya's character is more fleshed out and less cartoon-ishly evil, as some scenes in the anime and manga might suggest.

Might also be worth mentioning that the novel and the anime have quite some differences in their story, which will be very apparent when reading it.
few examples: Anton Sue's death is during a mission which is not even covered in the anime. Neumann and König basically don't exist in the novel (at least up until book 7), only Grantz, Weiss and Visha are "main characters" of the Battalion. there's a lot more but you get the idea.


Personally, I very much enjoy the novel and am excited about the next book.


If you disagree about anything, or think I'm misrepresenting something, feel free to send me a message

I don't know how far I've actually read since I read it online. I initially watched the anime for this and absolutely loved it, and it is still one of my favorite animes of all time, even if it differs greatly from the source material. But yeah, this is awesome, and so is the anime, but this has a lot more focus on the philosophy of war. In the anime, Tanya just seems to know about certain things like military tactics/strategy, but in this you actually see that she is actually just remembering the historical battles in her original timeline/world and applying that to where ... she reincarnated. You also see a lot more of the thoughts the characters have instead of just what they say, on top of more nuance in the development of the story. Read this, it's gud.