The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Hero Without a Class

What's It About? 

In a world where everyone receives a Class and Skills at the age of ten, and where such revelations have a huge impact on one's life, Arel, the son of Sword Princess Farah and Archmage Leon, learns that he has… no class at all!

With no class, and no skills, all that's left for Arel is hard work. And so, he takes to training, utilizing wits and cunning to emerge as an all-new type of hero!

Hero Without a Class has a story by Shichio Kuzu and Yumehito Ueda, with art by Akio Nanae and English translation by Hengtee Lim. Published by One Peace Books (September 17, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I am very tempted to make jokes about class. Not social class, or even necessarily RPG-inspired class, but class in the sense of being proper and well-said. Yes, that has a historical connection to social class, but today we can say that something is “classy” or “has no class” without that baggage. And that gives Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills? a sort of open season on terrible puns and jokes. In all earnestness, however, the story is firmly rooted in the old tropes we've become so familiar with in light novels and their manga spinoffs over the years – protagonist Arel was born without an innate class, which is discovered when he turns ten. No class means no naturally occurring skills, which everyone assumes it means he's worthless. Obviously, this is simply a plot device for him to turn out to be better than all of them.

The story seems to want to be about the value of hard work versus reliance on goddess-given gifts, spiced up with boobs and jokes about characters who have small ones. Arel continually proves that his lack of class is by no means his defining trait because he's nothing if not a hard worker. Because he's not tied to any specific class and its attendant skills, he can learn all of the skills, class notwithstanding. Moves that other people believe are the province solely of a specific class turn out to be nothing of the sort in Arel's clever hands as he glibly defies class and gender by using a wide variety of skills, including his mother's sword princess attacks. All he has to do is train hard, something that others only do to raise their inevitable A-E levels.

It's bog-standard power fantasy stuff, and any goodwill it builds with Arel's training is negated by the fact that we never actually see his training apart from the odd panel here or there and unfunny jokes about his younger sister and later flat-chested guildmate hitting on him. The time flows oddly, as well, making an abrupt shift forward of five years about halfway through the book, with little to no explanation for it other than, “he needs to be fifteen for some reason." It also irks me that his sister doesn't get a name, although she's really not an important character. Still, that feels in line with some of the casual sexism that we see sprinkled around. This is one of those books that will likely appeal to its regular genre fanbase, but I don't see it having tons of appeal outside of it.

Maybe it's juvenile, but every time there was a line of dialogue about how Arel has no class, I couldn't help but giggle to myself and imagine him, say, unloosing a huge fart at a crowded party. Perhaps there was a way to translate this that didn't make it sound like the protagonist was a lout they could have gone with?

It's become hard for me to get into series that use video game abstractions as world-building details. I was skeptical at first and grew more as time went on and the ideas settled in my head. If people have skills that pop into being through leveling, what would happen if they tried just good old-fashioned hard work? The Hero Without a Class manages to set itself apart by actually thinking this idea through. Arel's parents are powerful sword-wielders, so everyone assumed he would be the same. But then on his tenth birthday, it turns out he has no class (snerk) whatsoever. In a world where almost everyone has a destined occupation due to their class, he will have a hard time.

But instead of just giving up and living life as a NEET, he practices. He works hard, and while his body doesn't learn sword skills by instinct like how a spider knows how to spin a web, if you swing a sword enough times, your arms will learn the motion, and your muscles will grow stronger. Enough hard work, and you'll surpass the so-called naturals, who take their talent for granted. And what happens if someone becomes unable to perform the tasks of their class, whether due to physical disability or otherwise? The Hero Without a Class confronts these ideas head-on.

It's a four-star concept, but I did find the execution to be thoroughly average. The art is fine, neither distinctively good nor bad. The character writing wasn't off-puttingly tropey, outside of an obsessive imouto-type. Still, I don't feel like I'm going to remember anything about anyone involved once I finish this review. Interesting take on the genre du jour may grab my attention, but I need to see a little more craft in the storytelling to stay.