The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

Hazure Skill

What's It About? 

Roland is the world's greatest assassin, he's a man who's taken a worthless skill and made it so powerful that he managed to kill the greatest demon lord that's ever lived. He could live out the rest of his days as a wealthy and famous man, but instead chooses...an exceedingly normal life working at an adventurer's guild?! For someone as exceptional as Roland, aiming for a normal life won't come easy, however...

Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin is based on the light novel series by Kennoji. The manga is drawn by KWKM and Yen Press released its first volume both digitally and in print.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Hazure Skill's manga adaptation may not do anything fancy or exciting with its premise, but that doesn't mean it's a story without merit. In fact, part of its fun lies in its very normalcy, because that's precisely what its hero is looking for out of life. Once an accomplished and fearsome assassin, Roland decides after defeating the (latest) demon lord that what he'd really like to do next is just live an incredibly normal life. He turns down the king's offers of women, money, women, power, and women, instead asking to be set up in an ordinary town as a regular guy living a perfectly normal life. Bemused, the king complies.

There's just one problem: Roland has no idea what “normal” actually is.

Well, that and he's got the demon lord with him, kept under control by a magical collar that lets her (at Roland's whim) shift between cat and human forms. Rila, as her complex name is shortened, isn't quite sure what the appeal of normal is for Roland, although as it turns out she can get behind his belief that it consists of eating, sleeping, and having sex (with her). I'm not 100% sure she knows that his idea of “normal” is missing a few things, either, because after all, she was the most powerful demon lord only weeks ago and is having to go through quite a few adjustments herself. Only one thing is perfectly clear: nothing that he decides to do makes much sense to her.

Since it doesn't make much sense to anyone else either, that's part of the draw here. Roland is shocked when he realizes that he's supposed to have some sort of job alongside his list of three activities, and then when he secures one, he has a hard time sticking to just the job description. Fortunately for him, he's working at the local Adventurers' Guild, which means that if he goes overboard from time to time (or all the time), he's at least still helping people and therefore technically doing his job. Stealing the boss' underwear as a demonstration of skill at his job interview was perhaps not a great plan, but for the most part things appear to be working out. At the very least, he's gathering up his own little band of merry men, although he doesn't appear all that aware of it.

Despite the relatively high number of sex scenes for a plain old fantasy manga, the art for this isn't explicit, and there actually isn't a ton of fanservice shoehorned in either. It's pleasant to look at, and Rila's cat form is believably feline, which is always a good thing. This, all in all, feels like a very normal read. Since that's what Roland would no doubt want, I think we can count that as a job well done.