Light Novel Review: Seireitsukai no Blade Dance Volume 1

Who Would Like this Series/Volume?

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It’s not really harem yet, but probably a harem-to-come series so I say fantasy-pokemon-battle-harem-romcom-something! And it’s far from original, if you ask me. So you gotta be a real fan of especially battle stuff to enjoy this.

For: People who enjoy ordinary fantasy-battle themed thingies.

Difficulty

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The story isn’t hard to get, nor is the grammar. But the thing is that the kanji are (characteristical for fantasy stuff) a pain in the arse to read here and there. There are lots of fantasy-battle related terms, after all. My tip’d be to not try to understand everything. Just go with the flow and skip parts you don’t get. It’ll probably not throw you off the story train. I’ll give it a 4, tendency to 5 rather.

Difficulty 4/10

Translation Where?

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There’s one! Yes, really! At Baka-Tsuki to be exact! And the latter volumes are done by zzhk so they’re very readable! The first two or three aren’t, though. So tough luck.

Translation: Baka-Tsuki, once you’ve braved the first two or three volumes, it’ll be very readable. Tough luck for volume 1.

Premise

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This might sound a bit half-assed, but: Protagonist is the only male person in the world who can do summonings but is reluctant to do so since he lost a summoning that had taken the form of a human girl years ago due to unknown reasons. However, he’s powerful and a certain chair(wo)man of a certain academy wants his help. On his way to the academy he meets the main heroine, whose sister is branded to have betrayed humanity years ago leading to a certain tragedy. She wants to clear her sister’s name and hence struggles to become the world’s strongest “Bladedancer” and win a tournament that’d give her the privilege to be granted a wish.

Contents

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NOTE: This volumes/series has an anime and/or complete translation somewhere. Hence, the contents section will be reduced to the bare minimum as you can get the experience more or less by yourself.

Conclusion

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This series has one very big problem: I’ve started reading it in late 2015. There’s literally nothing new or interesting in this for me. Wait, there is something that caught my interest: the personification of the sword spirit. It’s a nice, alas not very original, idea.

If you’ve already read a bunch of light novels, manga, seen a few anime, then you’ll be underwhelmed, really. I know it’s unfair to say this novel’s unoriginal, since it’s much older than other novels and it’s very likely that they did copycat from this one. Take OreDorei for instance, after I’ve read BladeDance, OreDorei dropped yet a few more scores on my personal chart. It’s basically copycatting vast parts of the setting.

But maybe this is also helpful to some people out there. By a “modern” viewpoint, this novel’s mainly interesting for people who want to educate themselves in light novel history, I guess. Let’s try to unravel it a bit more.

First, the characters. I like the personified sword spirit somewhat. She feels refreshing within the blatant tsundere harem that the remaining girls form. The main heroine’s… well, basically Sherry from OreDorei but less intrusive and more tsun. Or rather, Sherry from OreDorei is like BladeDance‘s main heroine, but less tsun and more intrusive. Anyway, been there, seen that. Of course, everyone in the academy distrusts and more or less hates the protagonist’s guts as he’s a man and it’s a girls academy. Been there, seen that. The protagonist himself is the ever-sighing type with something regretful that happened in his past. Been there, seen that. I think you get my point by now.

The plot itself is – in volume 1 – still all over the place. Some more or less random events just happen while the main heroine either cries or bitches and the protagonist either grumbles or sighs. Even if I see it from a reader’s viewpoint who read it way back, what hooked them on to read volume 2? The fantasy-battle market back then must’ve been undersaturated. I guess you could say it’s somewhat deep with a lot of things that seem to have happened in the past still resonating into the present, and there’s the protagonist’s former spirit who seems to have materialized too. But nothing really got me excited. It’s just nothing special (anymore).

It comes down to two things that work against this volume in my case: 1) it’s “old” 2) it lacks unique features. This series didn’t make it to over ten volumes by sucking, that’s crystal clear to me. But there’s another thing that’s crystal clear to me now: it’s hard for an old series to hook you on years later. If I hadn’t read OreDorei I would’ve probably liked it more. But not that much since the character lineup as of yet, quite frankly, gets on my nerves. It kind of feels as if everyone’s on their period really, there’s more fun things to read for me (but I’ve bought volume 2 way back, so I’ll read that too at some point, screw you, Amazon Kindle sales!). It’ll get a 5 (read: meh) and I almost feel like apologizing for that. It could be worse and in fact, I’ve read worse. However, it lacks excitement and appeal in all relevant sectors. I know it’s harsh, but I’ve expected much more due to its reputation.

Rating 5/10

 

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