As one might expect I nominated Ascendance of a Bookworm for (almost) everything but I would like to campaign for two of my additional picks in the Best Debut and Best Emotional Moment categories:

For Best Debut, I would like to tell you about “Zilbagias the Demon Prince: How the Seventh Prince Brought Down the Kingdom” which debuted in April. There have been 3 volumes so far and so far it does something special that I haven’t really seen anywhere else.

The basic premise is that in the war between Humans and Demons, the Hero dies in a failed suicide mission to kill the Demon King and gets reincarnated as the Demon King’s 7th son. With his old hero memories intact he vows to destroy the demons now from the inside. Where this series stands out is that with that “inside POV” both the hero and we as readers learn to like those demons. We learn about the demon’s society and their motivations up o a point where I would be genuinely pissed if MC killed the demon king. There are some traditional dislikable villains as well in the form of some of his siblings for example, but so far there hasn’t been much contact between them. We just see the MC’s psyche get torn apart bit by bit by the dichotomy of his past and present life. I find this aspect really interesting. For example, he has to kill human prisoners of war as part of his royal training but internally he justifies this with an eye on the end goal. But as he comes to respect and even like some of the demons those sacrifices are putting a heavy burden on his soul. And it’s starting to show. Frankly, MC is falling apart and the only thing holding him together is a devil residing in his soul that he contracted with as part of his demon upbringing. Those devils represent concepts and MC’s sidekick represents “taboo”. As such she is quite happy with someone whose every breath basically breaks some taboo but it’s unclear so far whether she actually cares for MC or if she is just stringing him along.

As you can see there are quite some compelling ideas in this series and I haven’t even started on the other side characters like a mind-broken high elf and the type of bloodline magic MC inherited. For a debut volume, I would argue that it is more than enough to win this award over the millionth otome villainess title.

For “Best Emotional Moment” I was torn between the end of Bookworm and the last chapter of Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I’m Bored. Bookworm was sweet beyond words, but here I would like to campaign for Slow Life instead.

I try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible but it’s impossible to write about it without giving at least some vague spoilers:

I also nominated my favorite series for (almost) everything where thought it applied: Reincarnated as a Sword, Failure Frame, & Trapped in a Dating Sim. Honestly I felt a little biased focusing on those three but hey, whatever. At the very least, let me try to justify a few of my claims.

For best art, I nominated KWKM (Failure Frame) and Llo (Reincarnated as a Sword). From all the light novels I have read, their art stands above the rest. The level of detail is striking and it often captures the specifics of the book as well. For instance, it’s not uncommon for artists to keep the characters in the same outfits in every depiction. Or to have the art only loosely tie to the prose. Or have the art be more of a sketch than a full render. I don’t feel that’s the case with these two and it comes across like they’re always giving 100%. Here are a couple examples.

KWKM:

I love that it’s not just a character on a plain background for this color insert, but really captures the whole scene. The dress is extravagant and the emotion on Seras’ face is capture perfectly.

Llo:

Llo’s art style is, IMHO, extremely cute. Every depiction of Fran is both adorable and cool. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but I got into Reincarnated as a Sword in part because Llo’s amazing art captured my attention.

For best Duo, I just want to argue for my #1 pick: Fran and Teacher (Reincarnated as a Sword). Their relationship is the driving force of the whole series and in the latest volumes that hasn’t changed. Their personalities are deep, the character development extensive, and despite being very different they mesh perfectly together and it never feels forced.

For best antagonist I’m also just going to argue my #1 pick: Goddess Vicius (Failure Frame). She was always an antagonist in the series but the volumes released this year really exposed the true extent of her depravity and maliciousness. Despite being a Goddess of unparalleled beauty, you end up loathing her entirely. I love that mismatch of traits.