Having defeated one of the Seven Fallen Angels and repaired Tama's relationship with her father, volume 4 of No Longer Allowed in Another World finds Sensei and the others having stopped in the village of Toneriko, located in the shadow of the great tree Weltenbaum. But the village isn't doing so well, since a gang of Otherworlders set up a casino across the river, and have begun selling the leaves of the great tree as a narcotic to their fellow Otherworlders. Even one of the locals, a woman named Esche believed to possibly be a witch, has opened up a bar beside the casino and is raking in the money. She's even snared Sensei, not that he was a difficult catch.
Fortunately, an Otherworlder named Yamada, who fancies himself a protector of justice and honor, has arrived to trounce these wicked Otherworlders. And he does, even destroying their casino. Sensei's not impressed by Yamada's binary view of the world. As the villagers refuse to listen to Sensei's explanation of Esche's actions and run her out, then offer to pay Yamada to protect the village while they get down to the business of selling Weltenbaum's leaves as a drug, it would seem Sensei's correct.
Sort of. It's presented to us that all the money Esche made was essentially protection money she gave "Boss" to restrict his business to Otherworlders and leave the villagers alone. But right about the time Yamada destroys the casino, Boss was already planning to have his guys abduct some of the villagers and forcibly get them addicted to the drugs and gambling. So Esche's approach of conciliation was about to fail. Because Boss was never going to honor his word past the point it suited his purposes. That the villagers turned out to also be opportunists, simply lacking the vision to see the chance until someone else did it first, doesn't make Boss less of a scumbag or a threat.
Anyway, it turns out Esche was much more than she appeared, and the villagers are shit out of luck. Sensei, on the other hand, receives a gift to ease his distress. From there, the story ventures to yet another new region, the Samstag Desert. This is a Nir-focused story, since he's from here originally and brings the party to the orphanage where he grew up. Things are rougher than you'd expect, even for an orphanage in the middle of a freaking wasteland. Another gang of Otherworlders terrorize the region, making me believe that damn Isekai Jackpot Truck has been running people over like it's playing Grand Theft Auto, plus there's a terrible beast roaming the sands at night.
On the plus side, someone keeps leaving baskets of food on the door every night. Nir, who's struggling to match the stories he's told the other orphans of his being a great warrior, takes some solace in helping Mr. Saito collect food from an oasis for the kids. The orphanage comes under attack by the gang, and Nir demonstrates his courage, although not in battle exactly.
It's a pretty good arc, as Noda shows Nir's been defining courage too narrowly, thinking of it simply as someone who will charge into battle and crush enemies. When Sensei begins to take apart Mr. Saito's image of himself, it's Nir who leaps to the man's defense, and his own, since the things Sensei says are the same things Nir thinks of himself. We also see that even when Nir's down on himself, Annette and Tama each give his confidence a boost in their own way.
There's also the aspect that Sensei isn't necessarily correct about everything. Up to this point, his instincts have been right on, whether it was sensing the truth that there was something behind Suzuki's actions in volume 2, or that there was more to the story of Tama's estrangement from her father in volume 3, or recognizing Esche was not the collaborator the villagers believed her to be. I don't know if that's because he's from another world, and so he sees this one without preconceived notions of its inhabitants, or some innate sense for conflict or character arc that marks him as a writer. Probably the latter, since he admits that, in being so quick to label Mr. Saito a coward, he misjudged the man.
Takahiro Wakamatsu shows off his design skills more in the desert section of the book. Boss and his gang are sort of a bunch of stereotypical gangster types, with the dark coats and fedoras and thin mustaches. Not much to them. The guy leading the desert gang seems based off the Kuwabara character from YuYu Hakusho, but at least it makes him stand out visually, and his cheat skill to somehow turn animals into vehicles, is at least weird and kind of cool. Also, Wakamatsu draws a damn nice werewolf. Someone should send scans to the folks drawing that Werewolf by Night book and see if they take a hint.
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