Nogi Wakaba wa Yuusha de Aru

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This review will be short and objective.

What is a masterpiece? Nogi Wakaba is the answer.

This is the first arc of the amazing Yuusha de Aru franchise. Actually, it wasn't the first arc to be published, but it is the first chronologically. This novel introduces the world in a great way, so I'd say that this is the best gateway to start in the franchise.

[STORY]: 10

The story starts in 2015, when celestial monsters named Vertex invade Earth and become human predators. The hope of humanity are the heroes, girls blessed with the power to fight against the Vertexes and protect humanity. Seems simple, right? But there ... are lots of original concepts that are explored throughout the story that can't be said here to avoid spoilers.

[CHARACTERS]: 10

That's the best part in my opinion. The characters are deep. They suffer a lot, they fail to achieve their goals, they fight with each other, they make mistakes... The cast is great and the dark side of people is explored in such an awesome way that makes you really into the feelings of the characters.

[ART]: 10

As usual, BUNBUN(the same artist of the Sword Art Online light novels) did a very beautiful work here too. The art is consistent and the character design is very memorable.

[ENJOYMENT]: 10

It was just the best reading experience I've ever had in my whole life. It made me really interested in the concepts and in the ideas covered by the work.

[OVERALL]: 10

That's it! Nogi Wakaba is a got tier light novel that should be read by everyone. I'd recommend that after reading it, you should go and read or watch Washio Sumi and Yuuki Yuuna too, because this franchise works even better as a whole.

Young magical girls, violence and suffering – not really an outliner these days but rather par of the course.

Nogi Wakaba does have an additional theme and that is a fight against government that is oppressive against its subjects but in a way that one could say that objectively they are doing it for a perceived greater good rather than hiding a greedy objective. In other words, the power of propaganda used as a morale boost in otherwise pretty grim situation.

Now the issue is that there is not much confrontation there. While it’s understandable that bunch of teenage girls won’t usually do much against ... “the system”, they still are much too headbowing for my standards. Not only are teenage years the prime age for some rebelling against authority, those girls hold the strongest bargaining cards of being the only ones available for saving humanity, yet we don’t ever see them using this chip to bargain, not even an attempt at bluff of no longer helping with the fight. Even if it would fail I strongly feel that at lack of even an attempt of doing so breaks the suspension of belief for me. So despite strong opening with highlight of censorship and possible government overreach, the novel does little with the topic, which is a pity.

What is on the other hand overdone is the angst and how bitter is the general population shown to be. While hero being confronted with juxtraposition between their heroic deeds and the still bad lives of common people is a common trope for a reason, here the behavior feels really rushed, like there’s a volume of development missing, as there isn’t much justification for people turning against the heroes co quickly. Yes, people will get unreasonably angry, but they in generally wouldn’t be so unreasonable as to do a 180 of their behavior towards literally the only people keeping them alive after one failure. Sure, possible symbolism and all that, but the plot element just feels way too hamfisted in and not prepared for enough. But credit when it’s due, the writing does really good job at making you hate the hateable characters, so you do end up clashing with your rational side telling you it is too over the top while the emotional side is enjoyably wishing for downfall of the fools who dared to hurt the protagonists.

Overall, this title doesn’t do anything other titles didn’t already do, so I’d recommend it mainly for fans of the franchise – it is a supplementary prequel work after all.