The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

I'm the Hero, But the Demon Lord's Also Me

What's It About? 

Yuuma Tsugari is an ordinary high school student whose family runs a public bath house. He leads a peaceful, uneventful life, but all that changes when a beautiful woman from another world appears before him, certain that he's the hero she's been searching for! Sure, he's no hero, but how can he refuse such a beauty…!?

I'm the Hero, But the Demon Lord's Also Me is scripted by Akiyoshi Ohta and drawn by Tatsuya Endō and Yen Press released its first volume both digitally and in print for $6.99 and $13.99 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I came so close to loving this book. It's got a lot going for it as a self-conscious parody of the isekai genre – our protagonist, Yuuma, narrowly dodges meeting death via Truck-kun (by rescuing a cat, of course), only to come home to the family bathhouse and be hailed by two separate groups of buxom, underdressed women as both the hero and the demon lord. There's ample proof that he's both, but no one can figure out why until his dad Yuuta comes home. Dad, it turns out, is not only the author of the best-selling isekai light novel "Oops! I Went to Another World and Accidentally Saved It" (the cover copy reads “Over a million copies in print somehow”), but he based it on his own experience as a teenager. So if Dad was the hero who defeated the demon lord and Yuuma has the powers of both hero and demon lord…I think you can figure out who the demon lord was in relation to the poor kid.

As it stands, Yuuma has zero interest in becoming yet another cliché character in what he views as an exhaustingly trope-laden genre. And neither the princess nor the temporary demon lord is willing to take no for an answer, so they're not going anywhere until Yuuma picks a side. Childhood friend Kanna is oblivious to pretty much everything except what's for dinner, and Grandpa's pissed that someone made a hole in the bathhouse ceiling. (Dad just wants material for his next book.) If Yuuma ever had a normal, boring life before, that's definitely over.

There are a lot of really fun elements to this book, although tolerance for plenty of fanservice is certainly necessary. But in some ways, the fanservice is what makes the jokes work. Princess Alfin is so determined to introduce herself and make her case that the fact that she's buck naked doesn't matter to her, and even when she's covered with a bath towel she can't help spreading it open like a full skirt to curtsey, much to Yuuma's distress. (Her maid, Bertha? She's filming the whole thing.) Lavinia the demon also doesn't care much about her state of undress, so Yuuma's basically running around trying to cover his eyes the entire time, while Kanna manages to miss pretty much everything that's going on, from the naked, ludicrously buxom women to those same women shoving their hands down Yuuma's pants.

Ah, yes. Now we come to the problem. While both Lavinia and Alfin are perfectly comfortable losing their clothes or even with Yuuma groping their breasts (accidentally, but one time with Lavinia's explicit urging since she, of course, needs orgasm power to use magic), Yuuma's not okay with them grabbing him. Whether it's Lavinia and Alfin sticking their hands into his pants or a later demonic arrival attempting to get him to impregnate her, the lack of consent really takes away any humor value these scenes have to offer. Maybe I'm downgrading too harshly here, but I don't find sexual assault funny no matter who it's happening to.