Review of “Infinite Stratos Volume 1” by Izuru Yumizuru
Buy it here: Amazon
Check here for a Braille version: https://ko-fi.com/braille
I started writing this review immediately after reading the first chapter because I had a few things to say before I forgot them.
The idea for the book is simple: Japan invented “Infinite Stratos”, which are basically advanced technology – exoskeletons with combat capability. However, only women are able to use them. Because of that, women’s and men’s roles in society have changed dramatically. Men are practically slave labor while women form the entirety of each country’s military, basically.
The main character, Orimaru Ichika, accidentally stumbles into the wrong place when he’s going to take a test and, because no one is paying attention, he gets sent into a room with an IS unit. When he touches it, it responds to him. Thus, he becomes the first man who can pilot an IS.
So that’s the setup. I went into this book having skimmed slightly, so I knew it was going to be a bit lower grade than something like Spice & Wolf. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it just seems to be targeted for a slightly younger audience, which makes sense given the age of the characters (with Lawrence being in his 20’s in Spice & Wolf and Ichika being in his teens).
I just had to stop and mention some things I found annoying right off the bat. This is a light novel but it depends on humor that I don’t think even works well in an anime. The major part being girls hitting boys. It’s only the first chapter and Ichika has been smacked repeatedly by his older sister, who is supposed to be the teacher.
Ichika is the only male in the school. Obviously, that will cause some issues. After that he’s put into a shared living space with his childhood friend, Shinonono Houki. This is not his choice (actually, nothing that has happened thus far has happened particularly because of his choices. Things are decided for him or he reacts to stuff). But when Houki comes out of the shower and he’s there, she immediately starts attacking him.
He has to beg to be let back in the room because other girls are gathering to see what the commotion is about. After unintentionally getting in a scandalous looking position with Houki, they end up back in the room alone to talk. During this brief talk, because only girls have gone to the school and they don’t have a bathroom in each room, he wonders if that means he has to use the girls’ bathroom. She attacks him again for this.
This stuff is just annoying and only makes Houki look like she has no brain. If anyone was stuck in a building that only had bathrooms for the opposite sex, it would come up as an embarrassing issue for most people, especially teenagers. Yet she attacks him as if he was the ones who installed the bathroom that way. It’s just ridiculous. It’s the type of situation in anime where the guy does nothing wrong and women beat him for it, and the book is relying so heavily on this type of humor right off the bat.
The plot seems to be that he’s going to get into a duel with another student, Cecilia Alcott, because he insulted her, but it honestly just doesn’t feel like much is going on or like there’s any depth to the characters.
In “My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!” Katarina was also a dense character, but she didn’t go around slapping or insulting everyone and the characters in the story acted more reasonably given their situations. The characters here just seem unbelievably dense in a way that makes no sense and is only done for hysterical “girl hits boy” moments.
It also uses some references, which I think tends to date something. It’s only used a few so far, so hopefully it doesn’t lean too much into making references to other properties.
I’ll finish the book, but as I thought upon first skimming it doesn’t seem to be for me.
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The second chapter has Houki train Ichika in kendo for a week in preparation for his battle with Cecilia. That sentence probably spends more time on it than the book did. Then Ichika gets his own personal IS and he’s immediately put into battle with Cecilia, without it having even adjusted to him yet. Apparently they throw kids into combat and don’t even give them half a second to wear the suit first.
There is no tension because there has been no time to get close to any of the characters. Their motivations are over-the-top and dramatic. They’ve mostly spent the book yelling or hitting each other. There’s not a single character to be connected to at this point. On top of that Ichika doesn’t even want to be class representative, so there’s pretty much no stakes.
And we haven’t even seen Ichika train. There was maybe one line saying he practiced kendo with Houki for a week beforehand. Other than that, he generally doesn’t try very hard, so there’s no reason to believe that he’s suddenly the strongest.
But he still is about to win anyway when suddenly the fight is called on a technicality. If anything it’s irritating, because Cecilia actually worked hard for her position and is placed as one of the top cadets, and Ichika is stronger ‘just because’.
However, this turns Cecilia on because Ichika is a strong man. The majority of the book has been people hitting each other or girls ogling Ichika.
A lot of the humor has fallen flat because it relies so much on pointless physical violence. The best line I’ve liked so far was this: “All the really important things in life can’t be seen– some dead writer said that.”
There was also another brief paragraph I liked:
“At some point I’d told Gotanda that lying in a bathtub is super chill and lets you forget everything, but he told me that was something only old men do. The guy had no goddamn taste for the finer things in life.”
To me, that paragraph showed more character in Ichika than the entirety of the rest of the book thus far and is actually somewhat likeable. It’s something actually distinct about him. Something he likes in particular. It also has more of a feeling of friends jabbing at each other than an angry vibe. It’s easy to see someone telling a friend, “You have no taste” in a joking manner like that.
I am aware that Houki has a crush on Ichika and that’s part of why she’s acting the way she does, but it just comes off poorly. Right now I’d rather see Ichika with Gotanda – and Gotanda hasn’t even been in the book.
At the end of chapter 2, Ichika becomes class rep regardless because Cecilia pulls out of the race.
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Having finished the book now, the same issues are present throughout. Chapter 3 suddenly introduces another childhood friend that Ichika knew, Rin, and she also likes him and clearly had some sort of childhood promise to marry that he didn’t understand the meaning of.
So now there are three girls who are obsessed with him. That’s not mentioning all the background girls who are also obsessed with him, but they have no names or anything.
90% of scenes go thusly: A girl stutters and demands something of Ichika / A girl tries to spend time with him in place of another girl who gets mad, Ichika doesn’t understand because they’re being vague and he has no brain, girl(s) get mad at him, rinse and repeat.
There isn’t a coherent plot throughout the book. Our protagonist has no particular goal besides vaguely wanting to take care of his sister, something he mentions once in a while. His sister is older than him and clearly able to care for herself. She’s his teacher.
The girls are indecipherable from each other. They all seem to have the exact same personality. The book tries to establish identities for them, but they all end up acting the same. There are even times when dialogue has no tag and I have no idea who is supposed to be talking because all of them are there and they all sound alike.
In the fourth chapter, Ichika is having a duel with Rin because he forgot ‘their promise’ when they were younger, which was based off innuendo that he didn’t understand. Then, during their match, an unmanned IS suddenly bursts in and they have to fight it.
There’s really little more to it than that. It’s not properly set up. It’s just a random boss fight that appears out of nowhere.
This was the author’s first book and it reads like it. He’s continued writing since it and hopefully he has improved. Generally, first novels tend to be bad, and I would say this falls in that category, but the author may have grown a lot since this novel. There are brief hints of something good. For example:
"Like... I... said! You're probably thinking it was pretty awful how you made me angry, and how you wanted to make up, right?"
"Well, you know... You were avoiding me.”
"What...? Like, would you leave a girl alone just because she says she wants to be left alone?”
"Yeah."
Sure I would. If she wants to be left alone, that’s what you do, right?
Once in a while there was a good glimpse into how nonsensical something was, in the way that it could have almost been a parody, but it didn’t happen often enough for that. From a glance at pages about the series, it seems that Ichika may grow from being an idiot to being purposefully idiotic as a defense mechanism, which does sound like the author working to put more depth into him.
In the end, this wasn’t a series for me, but if it sounds like something fun for you it’s a short book, it wouldn’t take long to read it and see for yourself. I wish the author the best, not just with his writing but with his illnesses.
Next time I’ll be reading “RAGS” by Brian Ball + Trent Luther @RAGSzombie . I have the Vol 1-7 uncensored version.
Buy it here: https://ragszombie.gumroad.com/
https://www.indyplanet.com/rags-manga
Other reviews:
"The Second Jungle Book" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/the-second-jungle-book-by-rudyard-kipling-1390007675730792452
"We" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/we-by-evgenii-zamiatin-1390784329147224071
"Anthem" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-anthem-by-ayn-rand-1395054370269171723
"Spice & Wolf Vol.2" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-spice-wolf-volume-2-by-isuna-hasekura-1397584117876396040
"Spice & Wolf Vol.3" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-spice-wolf-volume-3-by-isuna-hasekura-1400209025269764103
"The Elements of Style" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-the-elements-of-style-by-william-strunk-jr-1400925092455649291
"The Great Gatsby" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald-1402686087800819722
"Heidi" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-heidi-by-johanna-spyri-1405629505891995656
"Glow Worm" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-glow-worm-by-harlan-ellison-1406700959396007949
"A Modest Proposal" and "The Lady, or the Tiger" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/a-modest-proposal-and-the-lady-or-the-tiger-1409272420245704713
"Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-final-fantasy-vii-on-the-way-to-a-smile-by-kazushi-1411416995030634511
"My Next Life as a Villainess: Volume 1" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-my-next-life-as-a-villainess-all-routes-lead-to-do-1413664301960400904