Tags: Fantasy, Slice of Life, Reverse Isekai, Seinen

(This review will contain spoilers for volume 1)

Mikura Wants to Live the Slow Life.

Cross Infinite World’s latest light novel venture is a thoughtful and well-paced slow life series combining cute animals and a love for preserving foods!

Beastly Wilds sees the protagonist Mikura swapping city life for a slow life in the country after the death of his great grand-father. As part of his inheritance, he becomes the sole owner of a house and orchard on the edge of an autonomous region in Japan known as the Beastly Wilds. This series takes place in a fantasy version of Japan where Beastfolk exist alongside humans and have taken to living in an appointed autonomous region on mainland Japan. Relations between both peoples have been rather fraught, therefore only a selected few are allowed to move in and out between both regions.

For Mikura, living in this autonomous region sees a fresh new start for him, a more relaxed environment compared to the crushing weight of his previous job working as a sales representative for a large company in the city. Much like others in its genre, this slice of life novel has a great number of heartwarming and laid-back moments that’ll satiate any slow life lovers appetite. This series takes pride in its relaxing nature, taking pleasure in the day to day life of the protagonist whether its tending to his walnut and chestnut tree orchard, checking out the lay of the land in the wilds, or developing both his and his great grand-father’s hobby of preserving different food stuffs. Of course he’s not alone in his endeavours as the series quickly introduces the orchards workforce, a group of cute chipmunk Beastfolk children as well as their pre-school teacher Techi and her brother and pastry chef Rei. In good slice of life fashion, this leads to a good amount of eating scenes, good conversation and the teaching of children especially Kon the dark arts of the fun in preserving foods from creating fresh jams to Boar Pancetta and smoking meats.

However, it’s not all fun and games in the Beastly Wilds as there are plenty of dangers to be had that help mix it up a bit. One of the main dangers of living within the autonomous region are the countless possibilities of running into dangerous wild animals such as boars and bears. Even in the orchard you can never be too safe from these creatures as Mikura learns the hard way after coming under attack from a boar only to be saved by Techi. Beasts aren’t the only problem with the area as humans can also cause their fair share of issues. The running antagonist throughout the first volume of the series, Seika Satoira, is a legacy from a deal Mikura’s great grand-father made with a childhood friend from the war. Satoria is a terrible person by any stretch of the imagination, not only was he taking advantage of the orchards produce, but he has tried on numerous occasions to exploit the Beastfolk and attempted to kidnap the young ones. His actions during the novel almost end up causing an international incident, only to be stopped by some Bear Beastfolk and the JSDF.

What this series does best is its attempts at character growth and interactions especially between Mikura and the other main characters Techi, Rei and Kon. Techi and Mikura’s relationship shows the most growth over the course of the volume. At first, Techi is cold and distant towards Mikura believing him to be a pretender towards his great grand-father’s legacy. However, after showing the work that he puts in in looking after the orchard and children, and hearing his story on his great grand-father’s final moments they eventually become closer. Their relationship after this is one of good friendship, they enjoy sharing meals together, looking after Kon and taking idly about more intimate issues such as past relationships or lack thereof. It seems to me that by the end of the first volume the three of them almost look like a family unit perhaps hinting at the romance to come between Techi and Mikura. Kon and Mikura’s relationship resembles more of a teacher and student relationship both taking great joy in the art of preserving food, even if for the moment this is more about eating the food for Kon. Rei and Mikura hit it off almost immediately, perhaps to do with Rei’s more outgoing personality, however there is still good development to behold between them such as Mikura inadvertent help with Rei’s pastry business.

Teaching and facts also play a large role within the first volume. The series does a good job of balancing the influx of new information that the reader needs to digest. There are many topics of focus in the series that many readers may be unfamiliar with the particulars of how they work. The author has used a good method of in story teacher student moments in order to deliver these important facts, whether they be focused on the different methods in preserving foods or how to create a successful orchard and to avoid the problem that can occur.

With this being a really nice example of a slice of life story, perhaps the only thing that I’d like to see more of in any subsequent volumes is more exploration and background into the autonomous region. After the first volume, I’ve found it quite difficult to visualise the sheer scale of the region, How many live there? How does the terrain develop beyond the first town? Are there autonomous regions in other countries? It would also be nice if we could get more of a drip feed about the past of the area, given that the series keeps on mentioning a war, it would be good to get a perspective into the mind of someone who lived through the incident.

Beastly Wilds is a heartwarming yet mature slice of life series that i would recommend to anyone looking for a slow life adventure. It does a fine job of balancing the heartwarming and cute alongside some its more thought provoking character development moments that’ll definitely leave you in anticipation of the second volume.