#Past Life Countess Present Life Otome Game NPC

[justusrstone]

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! An upcoming light novel from @CrossInfWorld

English Title: Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!  Japanese Title: 元伯爵令嬢は乙女ゲームに参戦しました — “Moto Hakushaku Reijou wa Otome Game ni Sansen Shimashita” Author: Sorahoshi  – そらほし Illustrator: Yuki Kinami Translator: Amber Tamosaitis Genre: Isekai, Romance, Shoujo, Slice of Life, School Life, Comedy, Otome Game Original Run: Published on Shōsetsuka ni Narō from December 2018 to December 2019 En…

[starryocean]

Okay, finally doing it. I know I said I was gonna do this a while ago but then didn’t so now I’m finally doing it. My thoughts on the books I’ve read since my last post, sans Kumo desu ga 12 since I need to reread that to remember what I wanted to talk about.

These will be in no particular order. Also, please no spoilers in the comments, and also there will be spoilers for these mentioned books in the post proper:

First off, I ended up buying Starless Sea, Mistborn 1, Wayfarers 2, and I think one non-fiction book the last time. I won’t be reviewing the non-fiction book since I’m only really doing these for fiction novels. I also bought a one-shot light novel on the kindle called Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! some time after buying and reading those. I’ll go over them all now.

Mistborn 1 was really good, like I’ve heard. I remember thinking at various points that the characters felt like the sort of people I’d want to get to know, just from their dialogue alone and how they bounced off each other. The story was also fairly light on the darker parts, leaving most of it up to implication and off-handed mentions to help raise the stakes. This surprised me since the setting and premise of the story is so dark. It certainly helped me stomach reading it, although it took a while at first since I wasn’t really in the mood for darker stuff at the time and I had no idea how far the story would go with its themes.

One thing that surprised me for instance was Elend not secretly being an asshole. I was fully expecting him to betray Vin, or else cause her serious problems down the line, especially in one moment where Vin let slip some details about how the skaa get around. Like, I was fully prepared for that to bite her in the ass, but it didn’t. It didn’t even come up after that moment. A different writer would probably have used that slip up to throw a new wrench in the works, but Brandon Sanderson didn’t go for it, which was honestly refreshing. I’ve gotten so burnt out on “everything is horrible for everyone forever” after binging too much worm fanfiction a few years ago, so it was really nice to see an author take a different path than the most cynical one.

Also, despite starting the story with a (mostly) off-screen attempted rape, Mistborn was actually very light on the sex? Like, again, considering the premise, I was expecting more than just implications/references to rape, but it never even happened. Again, refreshing. I guess my main thing was that I expecting the story to get so much more dark in general, and I kind of built it up in my head that way, only to continue getting shown that no, this is not what Sanderson is about. He definitely errs on the more hopeful side of things, I think--that scene where the skaa managed to gather together after Kelsier’s death and form a proper riot despite all the Soothers working on their minds for so long proves it.

As for the whole mystery angle with the fallen hero...I was honestly expecting the Hero of Ages to be the Lord Ruler. A lot of the snippets we got from his journal had given me confirmation bias about it, and so it was a good twist that it wasn’t him. But also kind of fucked up? Like, the Hero of Ages mentions wanting to see more mountains breaking up the countryside of their continent, and then the Lord Ruler went and recreated those mountains in the form of the Ashmounts. And then there’s other little things here and there that were clearly inspired by some of the Hero’s vision for how the world should be once the Deepness was gone, but just so horrifically twisted by the Lord Ruler. I still can’t tell if it was meant to be mocking or spitting on the Hero’s dreams or if it was meant as a sort of screwed-up apology/“He’s still in there somewhere” sort of thing. Would be fascinating to analyze, if only we got a bit more about the Lord Ruler/Hero. I’m sure the other books expand upon it, but...I haven’t read those yet.

Now, Starless Sea. Most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, hands down. Equally beautiful ode to storytelling across various forms of media as a whole. Loved this book, want more of it, although I didn’t quite get the ending at first. It was more...bittersweet, I guess, than I was expecting. An end to the Harbor, and a birth of a new one, with Zachary and Dorian wandering the ocean alongside Eleanor and someone who’s implied to be Simon joining them.

I loved the little inserts of the various books that Zachary picks up and reads along the way, as well as inserts of books and stories that he doesn’t find. The whole mythology of the Starless Sea is fascinating to me, it really feels like an old epic that has spanned centuries and times and places that you’ll never go to and yet is preserved in the form of those remaining texts. The only thing I wish for from that book is that there was more to it, but I also understand why it had to end where it did and expanding it unnecessarily would probably cheapen the whole thing. But it’s a book about a world that I’d love to find and live in, and it does an amazing job building it.

Hard for me to find other things to mention, because there was just so much that I loved I really have no disappointments or critiques at all. There’s just so much I could talk about and I’m a bit overwhelmed with choices. I guess one thing I noticed was that the author’s usage of sentence length was very different from how I would have worded things myself, and it was a bit strange for me to read. Sentences that I would have ended in earlier places went on for longer in a way that felt like run-ons to me. And yet it also contributed to the beauty of the prose, I think, making the whole thing seem much more magical. It was a little bit weird and hard to get used to, but it definitely helped sell it.

Now, Wayfarers 2. A Closed and Common Orbit made me tear up and/or cry at multiple points, let me tell you. There was just so much more emotion to this book than I felt like I got out of the first one, what with Pepper’s story and Sidra’s quest to find her place in the universe. From what I’ve heard about the third book (which I will definitely order when I have to money to spend on it) I have a feeling it’ll be full of the same sorts of emotions, too. Pepper’s story really spoke to me, though, being forced to grow up in such a hostile environment and being raised by an AI who then gets forcibly separated from her because people don’t understand that these AI are people. By the end of it I could definitely understand why Pepper does the things she does, believes what she believes in, and how if her circumstances had been any different she could have lived all her life without ever learning these things.

I really liked Sidra, too, but I don’t think I connected with her like I did Pepper. I mean, I did, just not in the same way. I really liked her friendship with the Aeluon Tak, though, and I liked how Tak managed to get over xir prejudices in order to better understand Sidra. What I didn’t like about after that is how Sidra ended up roping xem into things that were only technically legal, being outside of xir comfort zone. The reprogramming thing I can easily excuse as it was necessary for Sidra to not be caught due to being unable to lie, but the getting xem to (technically) break into the museum to get at Owl I’m not so sure on. Yes, it was important in order to rescue her, but Tak clearly wasn’t comfortable with it, even as xe went along with it. They both managed to stay friends afterwards, though, so I guess it wasn’t as big of a deal to Tak in the aftermath as it was in the moment.

Past Life Countess, Otome Game NPC?! is a weird one. It’s actually an isekai, where a noblewoman from a fantasyland ended up getting reborn as the titular Otome Game NPC. There’s another girl who got reborn as the Otome Game’s protagonist, and they end up working together to try and help Protag-chan (I can’t remember her name atm) win over one of the popular, pretty love interests from the Otome game. There’s also some stuff going on with a girl called Chouko Tsukuyomi where the three girls have to compete with one another in a series of tests so Chouko will approve of their relationship with one of the guys.

I wasn’t really expecting anything from this one. I mostly picked it up because someone mentioned it in a thread on SV and it sounded interesting, so after reading the sample I knew I had to buy it (It was only like, 7 bucks, so it was cheap too). It ended up being way denser textually than I expected any LN to be, and at multiple points I was thinking to myself that it felt like a western novel rather than a Light Novel just from prose alone. I suppose that fits with the setting, but it was still a bit jarring since LNs usually aren’t so textually dense. It wasn’t as dense as say, any of Robert Jordan’s books (which I can say because I’m reading one, more on that in a minute), but it was denser than the standard LN.

Anyway. What I got was actually...kind of cute in parts, but incredibly disappointing in others. Protag-chan initially starts out as someone you’d think would fall into the “secretly evil heroine” stereotype that’s common in villainess isekai, but she ends up turning into a good friend of noble lady. All the characters end up getting along just in general, although it’s not a bisexual harem like in Bakarina. The author was a bit too cowardly for that. There was also a scene where one of the male love interests starts showing interest in Protag-chan in a very cute way, only to be mercilessly shot down and have his rival in love get confessed to by Protag-chan right in front of him.

Like, it was so damn savage, I honestly felt sympathy for the guy. It ended up coming off as mean, even, since the way he was trying to show his interest in her was by sending her pictures of his cat, which the novel stated he never did to anyone unless he liked them a lot. And then Protag-chan ended up going and pulling this, and nobody even said anything about it. and you have to keep in mind, this was also in the middle of a public place. As in, a store. They did this all in the middle of a super-fancy clothing store.

Yeah.

More on the author being cowardly--Chouko and noble lady are shipteased quite a bit throughout the book. Since they’re both girls, I was hoping that they’d end up going for a yuri route with noble lady and Chouko. But then the author pulled a bait-and-switch such that Chouko was actually a guy pretending to be a woman all along. And he wasn’t even a trans guy or anything, he was just cross-dressing as a dude because his parents forced him to. I don’t think I’ve ever said it, but I legitimately hate that type of plotline so much. Just make the dude trans? Or else commit to the lesbians? Either way the author was a coward.

Anyway, that’s it for the books I’ve finished since last time I posted about my reading escapades. Right now I’m reading Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (hence my comment on the density of his writing earlier, by god is this book textually dense) and I’m going to try and pick up The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman again, as I’ve left it sitting for too long tbh. Both readings are extremely slow-going, especially now that I’m attending classes and my accelerated 8-week course as started today. I hope to eventually get them done, though--I have a feeling I’ll be able to juggle my classes fine for the most part, so that should free up some time on weekends at least to do some reading. If I don’t end up having to work over the weekend, anyway.

Will try and reread Kumo desu ga 12 again if I can, so I can finally post my thoughts on it. I’m still kicking myself for forgetting to when I first read it.

[ikemenfangirl]

[Light Novel - English language]

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

By: Cross Infinite World

Author: Sorahoshi

Illustrator: Yuki Kinami

Genre: Shojo Romance

ASIN : B08C567KG1

Website: http://www.crossinfworld.com/news-articles/New-Light-Novel-Past-Life-Countess-Present-Life-Otome-Game-NPC.html

Oh dear, it seems I was reincarnated into a modern otome game from a fantasy world!

All I ever wanted was to be free of my responsibilities as a countess and I finally got my wish when I was reborn as a commoner in modern Japan.

Everything was going perfect, except it turns out this is the world of an otome game and some crazy girl who goes around calling herself the “heroine” is upset at me for stealing all her “events” with the “love interests”

… Now she wants me to team up with her against the “villainess”.

I’m supposedly just a random NPC, so why am I being dragged into this?!

[Amazon]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C567KG1

#Novel #Romance #นิยาย

[crossinfiniteworld]

Tired of all the isekai fantasy settings, but still want an otome game story? Then you will love Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! a standalone light novel that plays with the popular subgenre of being reincarnated into an otome game, but this time the main character is reincarnated into a modern day otome game after living as a countess in her past life! She doesn’t even know what an otome game is, but the “heroine” isn’t happy with this random NPC stealing all her events. Meanwhile, the love interests all think she’s a spy sent into their ranks because there’s no way a commoner could be as poised as she is! If you’ve been craving a modern otome game setting with school life events, this is the novel for you! Get it today!

[rowel-anime-trends]

The question, therefore, becomes how author Sorahoshi manages to take what should be a very silly concept and make it into a story that has a surprising amount of emotional weight.

[recentanimenews]

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

By Sorahoshi and Yuki Kinami. Released in Japan as “Moto Hakushaku Reijou wa Otome Game ni Sansen Shimashita” on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Amber Tamosaitis.

First off, this book comes out of the gate with a killer premise. We’ve talked before about the idea of a “reverse isekai”, where a fantasy denizen dies and is reincarnated in modern Japan, but this is, I believe, the first time we’ve seen it in English. And Urara (formerly Annerosa Ortegamo) is not just in modern-day Japan… she’s in a Japan based on an otome game! She only hears about this when she meets Shizuku, a girl who, as it turns out, is the ‘poor girl reincarnated as the heroine of the otome game she loves’ that we HAVE seen before. Only Urara ends up charming the pants off of everyone, while Shizuku ends up being subjected to horrible comedy violence much of the time. What I just described is about the first fifteen pages of a 320-page book. The good thing about this book is it takes a multi-layered ‘reincarnation’ premise and makes us enjoy slowly meandering towards the ending.

The book is based straight off of a webnovel, rather than a webnovel that’s been picked up and edited by a publisher. This is the modus operandi for Cross Infinite World, and it tends to lead to books that are pleasantly long and stuffed with content, including things that would probably get cut down for length elsewhere. The benefit of this is that the character development feels less rushed and more natural, particularly with Shizuku, who starts the book as unlikeaqble as she possibly can be and slowly, over the course of the next two hundred or so pages, becomes Urara’s best friend. She doesn’t particularly change per se, but we get to know her past and her (somewhat warped) reasoning, and more to the point, she likes Urara, once she’s determined that Urara does not, in fact, have her eyes on one of the many male targets in this “otome game”, but is instead falling for… a woman?

Well, OK, no. The book gets this out of the way a fifth of the way through it, which probably was a wise move, as leaving the revelation that Chouko is a guy who dresses as a girl for family reasons for the ending would likely have angered yuri romance fans. Because wow, this reads like a yuri romance otherwise. The school they attend feels very Maria-sama Ga Miteru, though it’s co-ed, and if you can imagine a romance between Sachiko and Shimako you come closest to seeing how Chouko and Urara interact. The guys, unfortunately, do not come across as well, and I do admit that throughout most of the book I kept having to remind myself who was who, though eventually you learn to separate out Shinmyou (the jerk) and Shimozuru (the one who falls for Shizuku). There is also an epilogue set in Urara’s past life that left a very bad taste in my mouth, and I did not really like the implication at all. It added murder and mental torment to what was otherwise a nice, sweet romance novel.

But you can just stop before reading that. Most of this is the equivalent of a long, leisurely boat ride down the river that takes up the entire afternoon. It’s not all that concerned with anything but its heroine and her “perfect princess” manners causing everyone to turn her way. It’s a good read.

By: Sean Gaffney

[theannypetite]

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

My newest review features otome games... in book form! How novel! Read about my thoughts on the light novel Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! @CrossInfWorld

“…I see. I understand now. Hehehe.”When she finally managed to get something out, her voice was raspy. Maybe she had hit her harder than I thought?“You’re quite a strange NPC, aren’t you? You’re a character whose existence I can’t seem to override. And yet that very existence makes this different from the world in my game.”My existence itself was being rejected.“I mean, I wasn’t selected as the…

[mangabookshelf]

Manga the Week of 9/9/20

Manga the Week of 9/9/20

SEAN: My computer rebooted while I was typing this up, so I am now typing it up again and mad.

MICHELLE: Ugh.

ASH: I have been there before and empathize.

MELINDA: Sadness.

SEAN: Cross Infinite World has Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome NPC!, a reverse Bakarinawhere the fantasy world countess ends up reincarnated as a modern-day commoner girl in an otome game. She’s still stealing…

[justusrstone]

New Cross Infinite World License Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

New Cross Infinite World License Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! 

Cross Infinite World has announced their latest acquisition, the one-shot light novel, Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! 

The book is a play on the current reincarnation in an otome game genre. Only this time, the main character is a fantasy character reborn into a modern-day Japan based otome game. And, instead of being the…

[crossinfiniteworld]

Most protagonists know the game world they’re reincarnated into, but Urara was originally a countess from a fantasy world without otome games, so she doesn’t realize she’s stealing events from the game heroine just by being her graceful self! How will this countess survive in an otome game's high school? Find out in Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

[crossinfiniteworld]

There's nothing quite like being an NPC and getting accidentally pushed into the cast of love interests by the game's "heroine" who looks more like a vengeful spirit in this image 😆 Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! has some great comedy!

[crossinfiniteworld]

Tired of all the fantasy settings, but still want an otome game story? Then you will love our newest acquisition of Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?! by Sorahoshi and Yuki Kinami, a standalone light novel that plays with the popular subgenre of being reincarnated into an otome game, but this time the main character is reincarnated into a modern day otome game after living as a countess in her past life! She doesn’t even know what an otome game is, but the “heroine” isn’t happy with this random NPC stealing all her events! If you’ve been craving a modern otome game setting with school life events, this is the novel for you!

[recentanimenews]

Manga the Week of 9/9/20

SEAN: My computer rebooted while I was typing this up, so I am now typing it up again and mad.

MICHELLE: Ugh.

ASH: I have been there before and empathize.

MELINDA: Sadness.

SEAN: Cross Infinite World has Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!, a reverse Bakarina where the fantasy world countess ends up reincarnated as a modern-day commoner girl in an otome game. She’s still stealing events from the heroine, though.

ASH: Huh, that’s an interesting variation.

SEAN: J-Novel Club debuts Black Summoner (Kuro no Shoukanshi), a 12+ volume novel that features a man who sacrificed his memories for more power. OP fans will like this.

The other debut is Holmes of Kyoto (Holmes at Kyoto Teramachi Sanjo), an antique-store oriented mystery that feels like the antidote to titles like Black Summoner. It’s a J-Novel Heart title, and is 15+ volumes in Japan.

ASH: That sounds like it could be fun!

SEAN: There’s also a 3rd Cooking with Wild Game manga, a 3rd Demon Lord, Retry! manga, The Holy Knight’s Dark Road 3 and Seirei Gensouki 11.

Kodansha debuts in print the first Clover collector’s edition. They’ve also got I’m Standing on a Million Lives 7 and The Seven Deadly Sins 39 in print.

ASH: Clover is one of my favorite CLAMP works; I suspect I will be double-dipping for the fancy hardcover omnibus.

MELINDA: I may as well!

SEAN: Digitally the debut is We Must Never Fall in Love! (Zettai ni Tokimeite wa Ikenai!), a Dessert series from the author of The Walls Between Us. It’s… well, it’s stepsibling romance. Which Japan sure loves more than North America.

MICHELLE: I didn’t realize that, but I might give it a shot anyway at some point.

ANNA: Maybe…..

SEAN: Also out: Ace of the Diamond 28, Giant Killing 22, and Tokyo Revengers 17. Quiet week for Kodansha.

MICHELLE: I suppose comparatively it is a quiet week, but two of those titles are among my favorites, so I’m happy.

SEAN: One Peace has a 14th volume of The manga version of The Rising of the Shield Hero.

So much from Seven Seas. The print debut is BL novel Sarazanmai, which we’ve discussed before.

ASH: I’ve still not delved into Sarazanmai… I need to get on that!

SEAN: Who Says Warriors Can’t be Babes? (Onna Senshi tte Motenai desu ne!) is a fantasy comedy from Kodansha’s Palcy. A girl has a crush on the hero, so she trains to be a strong warrior. Sadly, she trained TOO hard, and now he doesn’t see her as a woman!

MICHELLE: One-punch woman?

ASH: Hmmm. I could see this premise going either in a direction that I would really like or in a direction that I really wouldn’t.

MELINDA: I’m. Hm.

SEAN: And we see the 2nd print volume of Adachi and Shimamura, The Dungeon of Black Company 5, Failed Princesses 2, Gal Gohan 4, The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter 2 (digital version), The Ideal Sponger Life 6, The Invincible Shovel 3 (digital version), the 2nd Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear manga, Monster Girl Doctor 6 in print, the 11th Mushoku Tensei manga, and Skeleton Knight in Another World 6.

Square Enix has a 2nd volume of Cherry Magic!.

MICHELLE: I liked the first volume more than I expected to, and look forward to the second!

ASH: Maybe I should give the series a try, then!

SEAN: SuBLime gives us Caste Heaven 3 and Therapy Game 2.

MICHELLE: Caste Heaven was not for me, but I did mostly enjoy Secret XXX, of which Therapy Game is a spinoff, so I should check that out too.

ASH: I’m surprisingly behind in my BL reading and already have some catching up to do.

SEAN: Tokyopop has the 6th omnibus volume of Aria the Masterpiece.

Vertical, in print, has the 5th APOSIMZ. Digitally, they have a 15th volume of Ajin: Demi-Human.

Viz debuts Fly Me to the Moon, a new romantic comedy series by the author of Hayate the Combat Butler. A young man meets a very strange, possibly alien girl, and they get married almost immediately. What happens after that? And who the heck is she? This is getting an anime soon.

MELINDA: Maybe?

SEAN: Also out from Viz: Pokemon Sun & Moon 8, Rin-Ne 35, Splatoon 10, and YO-KAI WATCH 15.

Are you a reincarnated countess? A lovestruck warrior? A possible space alien? What manga are you buying?

By: Sean Gaffney

[rowel-anime-trends]

Sorahoshi's story follows countess who is reincarnated into modern-day otome game