The trouble with English releases that do catch up with the Japanese is the wait time since remembering certain moments after all this time is tough. That said, since this was alluded in the afterword by the artist Aki, it also must’ve taken a bit of time for volume 4 of The White Cat’s Revenge to come out in Japan. It’s why it’s somewhat welcomed that there was a quick recap of Ruri’s time in another world before going back to current events as the nation of dragons preps for war against Nadasha. I say somewhat since as someone who’s read the source material, it surprisingly didn’t take long to get up to speed on things and to once again be reminded of how Asahi’s brain is not where it needs to be right now — so this volume finally getting her to understand some things has been more than welcomed.
…Note, it does essentally take her most of volume 4 to for this to happen though, and some threats from the losing side.
Yes, the losing side. Needless to say, it was never a question of who would win this war, but of whether the dragons could manage to not actually kill any of the humans in Nadasha and also could Ruri finally knock some sense into Asahi before it’s too late. Well, the answer to that was there were casualties — not by the dragons, but by Nadasha themselves. Specifically, it’s thanks to faecidal magic (called spirit slayer in the novel release) that turns out to be major trouble for the dragons, but also spirits themselves. Except Rin, Rin’s built way different. That’s why most of the humans were saved, but not all of them who had that faecide with them, which means there must be consequences coming for Asahi and her crew.
We do see Asahi’s crew realize they were charmed by Asahi’s ability and they do their best to apologize to Ruri, and how that was handled went pretty well — it was probably proper based on what they ended up putting Ruri through, but acknowledging they had no control over their emotions due to it. It’s just now having to make Asahi recognize her errors throughout this entire ordeal…
…..
…I mean…
Ok, thanks to the people who tricked Asahi into doing her bidding and one moment while being locked in a cell, Asahi did at least seem to realize that everything that went conveniently for her in her own world and somewhat in this world wasn’t going to work here and now. But between somehow managing to annoy Euclase and the Dragon King and once again managing to interpret what Ruri says into something else, there’s still a ways to go with her realizing her culpability in all this, even if she was fooled into it. The good news is, there might be one more moment that involves her, but from reading the novel (up to volume 7), she doesn’t appear in the story again. That admittedly is slightly disappointing because maybe, just maybe, after being sent far away and having to do some labor she would change, and I’d love to see it. But at the same time, someone being this dense is hard to deal with, so it’s for the best, especially for Ruri.
It was brought up in the afterword that they had to make some cuts due to the flow of the story, and also pushed a character into the next planned volume (which I’m not even sure is out in Japan). I’ll admit, I don’t remember the character. I do remember there was more that happened within this war arc, and whenever volume 5 comes out, we might finally or at least get to close to a conclusion with Nadasha. Anyways, this volume of The White Cat’s Revenge brought back some things that I remember enjoying from the novels (especially Ruri still trying to hide her cat/human nature to Jade and continually putting off revealing this), but seeing it in visual form is a big difference. This also means seeing Ruri’s now drawn more into the political side of her new world, whether she wants to do or not. If you’re still looking out for a isekai manga that’s still a bit more fluff but has some bite within its pages, you can do no worse than series. Just remember the fairies are not as cute as you think!