The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

Too Strong to Belong! Banished to Another World!

What's It About? 

Still Too Strong in Another World!

Sakurako longs to fall in love. Unfortunately, her super-strength scares everybody off! If only she were normal… But then she would have died long ago. Her continued survival jeopardizes time and space, so God sends Sakurako and her lovelorn best friend Kazuya to another world.

Um, a place where she can be a delicate damsel and finally get a boyfriend? Yes, please!

Will Sakurako make it as a weakling in a world of magic and monsters? Can Kazuya compete with the handsome hero in their party of adventurers? And what's this about a Demon King who's due to show up to destroy the world any day now?

Too Strong to Belong! Banished to Another World! has a story by Kazuki Karasawa and art by Akane Rica, with English translation by Marissa Skeels. Published by Cross Infinite World (August 31, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

In her afterword, author Kazuki Karasawa mentions that Too Strong to Belong was written a significant amount of time before her previously released book, The Weakest Manga Villainess. Having read both, I can attest to that – although it's a lot of fun, Too Strong to Belong definitely reads like the work of a less polished author, to the point where I didn't need Karasawa to explicitly spell out that she wrote the extra stories when Cross Infinite World licensed the book. But that doesn't detract too much from the overall experience of reading this goofy little delight. It may be more cookie-cutter than The Weakest Manga Villainess, but it still has a lot to offer.

That said, the biggest issue for many readers is likely to be the specialized stupidity of the heroine Sakurako. That's probably too harsh a way to phrase it; Sakurako simply suffers from the same sort of romance blindness that many of her fellow light novel heroines do: she can't believe that her childhood friend Kazuya is in love with her. And she does have a semi-okay reason for this, which helps. Before the start of the book, she, Kazuya, and both sets of parents were in a bus accident. All four adults were killed, and Sakurako nearly died as well. It was only Kazuya weeping at her bedside that brought her back, and she took his words about not wanting to be alone without family a bit too literally. She does eventually get a clue, though, along with two additional suitors in their new swords and sorcery world.

But what's more interesting is the fact that, according to the god the duo is isekai'd by, Sakurako was supposed to die in the bus accident as well. Only Kazuya was selected by fate to survive, and that's really what's behind sending the two of them to a new world – Sakurako's continued survival despite everything Fate throws at her is gumming up the works. It's pat on the surface, but when you look a little deeper, what you realize is that Sakurako is so amazingly strong that she actually punched aside death itself because Kazuya needed her. It's not that Fate failed to kill her. It's that she actively rebelled and said, “Not today.”

The baseline plot of the book is just okay. Sakurako's desire to be “dainty” is intentionally silly, and her romantic oblivion is challenged by her burning desire for a boyfriend. (In fact, she's only oblivious to Kazuya's feelings. Everyone else's get through loud and clear.) She twists logic around to the point where she convinces herself that Kazuya is gay, denies her physical strength even while demonstrating it, and is basically just a goofy disaster of a heroine in the Katarina Claes mold. It can be annoying, but the author leans into every cheesy moment with such glee that it makes up for it. How else can you explain why there's a Luke and Leila? If you just dive in and take this with a grain of salt, Too Strong to Belong is a nice brain break, even if at times you can see why the author is mildly surprised it was licensed.