The first novel took me about three days to finish. For comparison, it took me a few weeks of half-hearted reading to complete Suzumiya Haruhi no Tameiki. Either Zero was that good or Tameiki really really sucked. Anyway, read on for my thoughts and some comparisons to the anime.

In case you have yet to watch the anime, the basic story of Zero goes like this: Saito Hiraga wakes up in an unfamiliar world and finds himself face to face with Louise Françoise le Bran de la Valiel, a student of Tristine’s magic academy. She was trying to summon a familiar but somehow Saito appeared instead. With no way home and no other options, Saito ends up becoming Louise’s familiar and spends his days washing her pantsu.

I only realized that I had previously read a title by Yamaguchi before when I was looking through his short biography. Apparently he wrote Green Green ~ Kanenone Stand By Me based on the original Green Green adventure game from Groover. It was one of my favourite light novels, although I may just be biased since it’s a novelization of Futaba’s story. <3 Anyway, the point is that I was quite excited about the Zero novels because of this.

After finishing the first volume, I have to say that I was not disappointed. It’s easy to be engaged by Yamaguchi’s style of writing and feel yourself immersed in the fantastic kingdom of Tristine. It’s a lot more story-centric as compared to the Suzumiya Haruhi novels and more reader-friendly than Nagaru Tanigawa with his blockbuster-length noun modifiers and random analogies.

The illustrator for the novels, Eiji Usatsuka, has quite a unique style. Some of the character designs are quite different from the anime, such as for Siesta. Speaking of Siesta, she barely gets any lines at all in the first novel. In fact, I get the feeling that she’s not really an important character at all…? Well, maybe in the later volumes. But somehow it seems that the anime is giving her a lot more screentime than necessary when you consider her role (or the lack thereof) in the story so far. I guess they realized the importance of a meido and that it’s not enough to just focus on the tsunderekko.

The first novel basically covers up to the capture of the thief Fouquet. Other than the lack of Siesta, there are a few differences from the anime that I noticed.

• Princess Henrietta is not introduced yet. I’m guessing she’s in Vol.2.
• Saito fantasizes naughty things about Louise during lesson…
• …gets locked out of Louise’s room and subsequently invited (and not taken forcefully by a giant salamander) into Kirche’s room.
• Kirche buys her sword for 1,000 instead of 500 gold.
• Louise and Kirche have a duel (of sorts) in the middle of the night to decide whose sword Saito will use.
• Fouquet steals the Staff of Destruction during this duel.

The second novel is titled 「風のアルビオン」 or “Albion of Wind”, which probably refers to the story arc involving Princess Henrietta and Prince Wales of Albion. The anime is currently at Albion and nearing its end. Considering the fact that the first novel only covers up to Fouquet’s capture, I am guessing that a lot of the episodes in between, such as Siesta’s and Tabitha’s, are actually taken from more recent novels. Judging purely by title, the fourth volume 「誓約の水精霊」 (“Covenant of the Water Spirit”) seems to be where the Tabitha/Charlotte and love potion episodes come from.

This rearrangement is unlike Suzumiya Haruhi anime where although the episodes air order was shuffled, the timeline itself is kept unchanged. In the case of Zero, because the stories have been cut and resequenced to create a new timeline for the anime, this might make a second season less plausible.

Anyway, can’t wait till I get my hands on the next book.