The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori Volume 1 Review

I can’t be the only one who misses the whacky world of Monogatari and author NISIOISIN’s flare for truly absurd storylines. Really, I thought the odds of reading anything remotely similar were going to be slim. That is, until I started the new Yen Press series The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori, which reminds me of NISIOISIN’s storytelling despite being from rookie author Kaeru Ryouseirui. Let’s take a closer look at this first volume!

The story follows Tougetsu Umidori, a high school student who steals pencils from her classmate Yoshino Nara and then shaves and eats them over rice. Yes, you read that correctly, our heroine eats pencils and knows this is bad for her health but can’t stop herself. Umidori has been getting away with this for months, but one day Nara, who considers Umidori a friend, approaches her about there being a pencil thief in their class.

Umidori manages to avoid being found out by Nara and heads home for the day, but this isn’t the only trouble she finds herself in. Later that evening she’s visited by a woman called Bullshit-chan (who we’ll abbreviate to BS-chan from here) and she’s a so-called ‘Damsel Defender’, here to murder Umidori for her crimes against Nara.

BS-chan has taken Umidori’s pencil stealing as the act of someone with stalker tendencies. Rather than allow her actions to escalate, BS-chan has decided to take action and kill Umidori here and now. A struggle ensues as Umidori desperately fights for her life. After pinning down BS-chan, she’s shocked to discover that everything about being a ‘Damsel Defender’ was a lie, and there’s something much stranger going on here.

It turns out that BS-chan is actually a lie in physical form and she’s on the hunt for similar lies, those that have manifested in reality and have the power to change the world as we know it. If she doesn’t feed on other lies, she’ll disappear and there’s only a week left before that comes to pass. Luckily for BS-chan, someone very close to Umidori fits her needs, so she’s hoping to enlist the girl’s help.

Umidori is understandably overwhelmed by this and doesn’t particularly want to get involved with BS-chan, but changes her mind when she’s promised a reward for her aid. BS-chan promises to give Umidori the ability to lie, something she’s currently unable to do and which has left her friendless.

Umidori’s inability to lie is due to something like a curse. You may be wondering how she managed to get out of confessing her crimes to Nara at the beginning of the book, but author Kaeru Ryouseirui was very clever here and kept Umidori’s answers fairly non-commital and Nara ultimately didn’t ask the right questions. It’s this attention to detail that kept me on my toes as I read through this volume.

Lies given power reminds me an awful lot of the aberrations in Monogatari, something often given power because people manifest them all on their own. And that’s similar to what’s happening here. The other thing reminiscent of NISIOISIN’s franchise is how much of this book is spent with the cast just talking to one another. Their conversations are layered, with a comedic tone, but often huge developments threaded through them that then turn the whole story on its head. This is a difficult style of writing to pull off, but I think Ryouseirui has been successful.

Perhaps it helps that, unlike a lot of the light novels we see released in the West currently, this one isn’t based on a web novel. Instead, it was published in Japan after winning the 17th MF Bunko J Light Novel Rookie Award. Being the author’s first work it is understandably a little rough around the edges in places, mostly in that it doesn’t always make sense how we got from one thing to another. Luckily a lot of that can be ignored or disguised by the absurdities of the plot, so it doesn’t prove a problem. With a slim 170 page-count, it doesn’t overstay its welcome either.

I wish this first book was a bit more complete when it comes to the story. While it does wrap up a lot of what it sets up, you can’t read just this one book and feel satisfied. There are three further volumes of this before it comes to an end, so at least it’s not a long ongoing series to commit to. And assuming they’re all similarly short, I’m sure they’ll prove an entertaining read if nothing else. Provided you have the patience for this kind of story, anyway.

As mentioned earlier The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Yen Press and has been translated by Andrew Cunningham. With so much happening and how eccentric BS-chan is, I think Cunningham does an excellent job of both capturing the absurdities and keeping it straight for the reader. The release includes colour pages illustrated by Natsuki Amashiro who some of the keen-eyed Vtuber fans among us may recognise as Nachoneko, which is why BS-chan’s design is very reminiscent of the Vtuber design. Generally speaking, the art is limited to basic character profiles, but given there’s not a great deal happening, you can’t really fault Amashiro for that.

While the series is complete in Japan with four volumes, here in English Yen Press has Volume 2 scheduled for release in April with the first instalment of the manga adaptation following in May. Nothing else in the schedule right now, but given that already puts us five months away, it’s not too surprising.

Overall, perhaps it’s the Monogatari-shaped hole in my reading list but I found myself quite charmed by The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori. It’s whacky and unbelievable but in a way that keeps you turning the pages to see what’s going to happen next. Not everyone has the patience for this kind of work, but those who do will certainly enjoy this.

Our review copy was supplied by the publisher Yen Press.