The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! Volume 4 Review

In Volume 3 of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! our heroine found herself facing off against her arch-enemy: the magical girl. She managed to fend off the magical girl’s advances, but not without losing her precious giant mana crystal. Now as we enter Volume 4, Jahy is as powerless as she was at the start of the series. 

Having lost the mana crystal she’d found, it’s more important than ever that Jahy get her hands on more, but first, she heads to the supermarket to stock up on weapons to use against the magical girl. Unfortunately, she gets taken in by all the clerks advertising nifty gadgets and quickly realises upon returning home that nothing she’s bought will come in handy! 

Then Jahy’s peaceful days at home are interrupted when the landlady turns up, having fallen out with her sister – Jahy’s boss. At first, Jahy sees this as an opportunity to get out of paying rent and have the landlady do chores, but she quickly realises that living with someone else brings its fair share of hardships. To reclaim her apartment, Jahy is going to have to get the siblings to patch things up.

Elsewhere in this volume, Jahy goes to a public bathhouse for the first time (despairing that there was one so close by and yet she’s been bathing in a small metal basin!) and has another meeting with Druji, her subordinate. Druji continues to collect mana crystals at a remarkable rate, but worries it won’t live up to Jahy’s expectations while our heroine is simply too embarrassed to admit that not only has she not found any new mana crystals, she’s even lost one to the magical girl. 

While Volume 4 of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! is still an enjoyable read, it’s hard to deny that the jokes are beginning to get a little stale. Jahy’s everyday life and conflicts always revolve around the same things and there’s only so far you can take that before it gets old. Particularly when the magical girl’s arrival freshened things up with some drama in Volume 3, but now it feels like that has been folded into being a routine gag. 

Thankfully, it seems author Wakame Konbu is prepared to shake things up with the introduction of a new character in Volume 5, so if nothing else the concerns I have right now shouldn’t be prolonged. And as much as the gags in this volume are variations of those we’ve seen before, I appreciate that Konbu is not relying on the ‘Jahy is poor’ humour that we’ve seen a lot of in the previous chapters, instead focusing on problems she creates herself.

It’s not that I’m completely opposed to the jokes surrounding the fact Jahy spends all her money and lives in a ramshackle apartment, but there’s an overreliance on them that could rub some readers the wrong way. The humour is always at its best when it comes from the character interactions, so I’m pleased that’s the case here, even if the gags are getting stale. 

The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! Volume 4 comes to the West thanks to Square Enix Manga and continues to be translated by Amanda Haley. As always, the translation reads well with no issues to speak of. Volume 5 is currently scheduled for release in February 2023, so not too long to wait for more of Jahy’s antics. 

Overall, Volume 4 of this comedy series is an entertaining read that’s beginning to show some cracks on the surface. Author Konbu needs to shake things up to prevent the series from feeling too one-note, but the introduction of a new character in Volume 5 seems set to do that. So, for now, I’m not too concerned.

A free preview can be found on Square Enix’s site here.