Last time on Her Majesty’s Swarm, an unnamed protagonist got reincarnated as the queen of the evil Arachnea race in another world that’s similar to her favorite RTS game. While gathering intel, she saves an elven village from poachers, and enslaves one of them with a parasite swarm. She also travels to the town of Leen where she buys new clothes. However, criminals kill one of her spider friends, and she responds in kind by slaughtering their whole organization. The king blames the elves for the incident, and they send an army to attack the village. The Queen defends them and declares war on the kingdom. With the help of her growing swarm, and the spider knight, Serignan, she lays waste to the nation and destroys everyone in the capital city of Maluk (well, except for the princess whom she enslaves). The elves gladly put themselves under her custody, afterwhich she names herself Grevillea. Oh, and some elf girl turns herself into a spider as well. That’s pretty cool I guess.
So… Her Majesty’s Swarm is really starting to teeter on the brink of becoming Overlord. The previous volume set the tone for the series; that Grevillea is a cold-hearted killer set on world conquest. And in this volume… she wants to keep her humanity to some extent (Ainz, is that you?). She goes with Serignan, and her new minion Lysa (the elf girl) to join the adventurer’s guild (just like in Overlord volume 2). Fortunately, things do ramp up a lot faster than in Overlord.
Also, Grevillia immediately makes it clear exactly who she is: the Queen of the Arachnea. This means we don’t have the whole sitcom-like double life that Ainz had to live in Overlord. Even then, she does try to politics her way to success. Fortunately, this also goes by much faster than in Overlord, saving on the nonsensical bush-beating.
Minor spoiler here, but once more like in Overlord, politics will not let Grevillia have her way. She tries, but inevitably ends up having to kill and pillage again, making the politics seem like padding. As in the previous volume, the writing in Her Majesty’s Swarm is at its best when it comes to senseless violence, so I’m not complaining here.
But what I am complaining about are the characters. While Grevillia is beautiful and sadistic as usual, her cohorts are about as one-dimensional as Ainz’s. Serignan is basically Albedo except more powerful. Lysa, the new recruit, is also useful, but she’s kind of just there. These guys have a distinct disadvantage to Ainz’s team, because there’s no Demiurge or Shalltear equivalent among them. Grevillia also has the same contrived moral conundrum as Ainz, but developments in this volume seem to imply that there’s actually a bigger force at work here, a development that was never explored once in Overlord, even with how far I got before dropping it.
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Verdict: 8.6/10
Her Majesty’s Swarm looks like it’s gonna be the Overlord Comparisons Drinking Game. It’s so similar, with the only real difference being the pacing. I’m still willing to follow Grevillia’s campaign, so let’s hope it stays good.
Last time on Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Agent Six’s group is sent to negotiate with the kingdom of Toris for some water crystals. They fail miserably. So now, Toris sides with the Demon Army and prepares to attack his kingdom, Grace. Six’s party is then sent to some mysterious ruins to obtain a weapon hidden in them. They follow two Demon generals; Heine from the last volume, and a new face named Russell, so that Six doesn’t have to do any of the dirty work. Russell finds the weapon, which is of course, a giant mech. Six holds it off long enough for Alice to summon Kisaragi’s strongest machine, the Destroyer. She wrecks it (as well as the Destroyer) and they capture Russell, whom- after some persuasion from the creepy Tiger Man- uses his water magic to create water for the kingdom.
There are two major plotlines in this volume. First, the loss of the Destroyer puts Six in super debt. And as a result, he must build a new base with Alice using minimal resources. Also, he has to jack up his Evil Points by doing even more perverse things. So much for him being more heroic this time around… Not that I’m complaining. Scummy Six is Best Six!
Snow is also in debt, and basically a slave to Alice. This relationship is hilarious and I love it. Snow completely loses her shame, and sometimes tries to sell her body just so she can have a roof over her head. Alice is a hoot as always, especially now that she has complete control over a person’s life.
In addition to that… Six and Rose have to help Grimm prepare for the Undead Festival. Grimm is Best Girl as always, even if she still kills herself about as often as Megumin uses Explosion. She gets some great new character development, and I love every minute of it.
Overall, it’s the same antics as usual, and that’s my only issue with Combatants thus far. I still love reading it, but as a writer, I need to talk about enough stuff to constitute as a post. Konosuba’s got this issue too; it’s so consistent, that it’s not getting better nor worse over time. Since I’m a spoiler-free reviewer for the most part, I can’t exactly comment on specific scenes that I enjoy. In fact, I wrote this whole paragraph just because I literally ran out of things to say about the volume in the previous one!
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Verdict: 8.6/10
Combatants Will be Dispatched! is still good, but like I said, it hasn’t really evolved much. I’m either going to have to rethink my blogging format or completely abstain from covering Combatants volume-by-volume, and instead make a megapost once the whole thing is finished. What would you suggest? I’d love some feedback!
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