If you’re like me, you watched the anime and thought it was cool and decided to pick up the LN, then you have made the right choice. In my years as an otaku, I have read countless novels. And out of all of them, YouZitsu stands out as my favourite. It could even rank among the top 50 best books I’ve ever read, not just light novels. I do highly recommend reading from the beginning, because the anime mischaracterised Ayanokouji to an insane degree (although I guess at that time his character wasn’t very developed) and the Author really has a flair for narrative prose. This review will be pretty short since I’m not going to discuss the philosophy of this novel, and that’s where most of my opinions are.

Story and Prose : 9/10. Each story is crafted with a clear goal and solution, that isn’t so esoteric as to leave readers lost but still difficult enough to pose a challenge to understand. The reason I cut a point is that sometimes the pacing can be too slow, especially in the later chapters. This makes people want to skip pages. Apart from that, pretty much faultless. (Note: this is obviously in relation to other LNs, a translated work will naturally be inferior to something in its original language)

Art: 7/10. Nothing much to report. I like it, but there wasn’t really anything transcendent or stunning. It’s all just solid. 7/10.

Character: 10/10. You’ll just have to take my word for this. I’d have to go into spoilers to explain, and I don’t want to do that.

Enjoyment: 9.5/10. Apart from the aforementioned slow-paced bits, I don’t think anyone could have a bad time reading this. It’s intense, funny, light, dark, serious and terrifying, and it’s able to flip between them without the slightest bit of narrative whiplash.

Overall: 10/10. Without a doubt the best written LN I’ve read since spice and wolf. That’s no small praise. Read it, please. You’ll understand why the author was disappointed with the anime.