The Fall 2024 Light Novel Guide

Even a Replica Can Fall in Love

What's It About? 

Wouldn't it be great to get a free pass from difficult tasks? Who needs to bother with exams, or mending awkward relationships, or attending school, if your Replica can do it for you? Sunao Aikawa takes it easy while her identical Replica deals with the hard work of living. But what happens when your Replica engages more with your life than you do…?

Even a Replica Can Fall in Love is written by Harunadon, with illustrations by raemz. English translation by Andrew Cunningham. Published by Yen On (September 17, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Kevin Cormack

Rating:

Doppelgangers are an ancient storytelling device, because the idea of things that appear identical to humans, but aren't, prey on a primal human fear. At the age of seven, Sunao Aikawa is disturbed by the sudden appearance of a girl identical to her in every way, whom Sunao can summon and dispel at will. Despite this unsettling development, Sunao warms to having a spare version of herself. She begins sending her Replica – who she doesn't even bother to name, other than titling her “Second” – to school in her place, on days she can't be bothered to attend. Second, who eventually claims the shortened name “Nao”, is keen to please her original, and dutifully live the difficult parts of Sunao's life for her.

It's easy to understand the attractions of having a spare version of yourself you can summon at will to do your bidding, while it's also easy to imagine the potential for disaster. (This story isn't quite as chaotic as Michael Keaton's 1996 comedy Multiplicity, but there are some crossover concepts.) It turns out Nao enjoys Sunao's life, as she takes the opportunity to make friends and pursue her interest in literature, her personality diverging dramatically from the sullen Sunao's, including in her romantic entanglements.

Even a Replica Can Fall in Love explores a simple but fascinating central premise freshly and compellingly, despite its extremely familiar Japanese high school setting. Nao as the main narrator is full of wonder and curiosity about the world in a way that her jaded, seemingly lazy, and cynical progenitor isn't. Often in these kinds of stories, doppelgangers are viewed as sinister interlopers, but here we learn about Sunao, her family, and friends, through the eyes of Nao, a secret observer. Nao is part of the family – yet not. She makes friends, but they think she's Sunao. Even when she falls in love with a boy, are her feelings really hers? Is she even allowed to claim anything as her own, when Sunao can send her away to oblivion-like non-existence with a simple phrase?

There's a profound exploration of adolescent identity crises here, using Nao's precarious existence as a potent metaphor for the uncertainties of emotions, friendships, and familial relationships common to almost every teenager. Nao's nature remains unexplained, but narratively rich with story potential. No wonder this deftly written, evocative, and compelling story won the 29th Dengeki Novel Grand Prize. While this volume tells a satisfyingly complete story, I'm excited to hear that there are a further three volumes in Japan. I can't wait to read the hopefully inevitable English translations.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Of all the light novel authors to get multiple series in English translation, Harunadon is probably my favorite. (Syuu is a close second.) Each of her works is different while still centering on very human characters who have all the plausible reasons in the world for their behaviors and actions…even if they aren't sure they're “human” in the first place. That's the situation for Nao, the protagonist of Even a Replica Can Fall in Love, a surprisingly beautiful musing on the nature of doppelgangers and imaginary friends. Nao is what her creator, Sunao, calls a “replica,” a perfect copy of her she created when she was seven years old. Sunao had the perfectly ordinary wish that she didn't have to go somewhere she didn't want to, and boom! Suddenly, Nao was there. Now at age seventeen, Sunao sends Nao to school when she doesn't want to go, mistakenly believing Nao to be her perfect copy.

Except that Nao isn't just a copy; she's a person in her own right. Nao has thoughts, feelings, and desires just like Sunao does, and they belong to her alone. The girls are convinced that no one can tell them apart, but even before we hit the point of revelation at the end of the novel, it's clear to us that there's no way classmates and friends aren't aware of the switch. But Nao thinks that she has to be Sunao in every way, that she needs to lean into the fiction that she's nothing more than Sunao's shadow, and it isn't until she begins interacting with a boy in class that she begins to fully grasp that she's her own self. Harunadon does an excellent job of slowly having Nao concluded that readers are aware of almost from the start of the novel, treating it like a mystery the detective is fumbling towards solving while the reader already has the answer. It's rewarding because we get to become invested in Nao's happiness and personhood, making her eventual arrival at that point feel deserved. The more we learn about her, the more we want her to reach that place.

If you've ever had an imaginary friend you felt badly about leaving, this is a book for you. Its quiet exploration of the dual ideas of doppelgangers and people we create out of thin air merge in a look at how no one is ever just who we think they are, and that assumptions can badly hurt those we dismiss. Although this doesn't strictly need to be a series, I'm glad that there are more books, because I want to watch Nao continue to discover the person she's always been.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.