The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

The Troubles of Miss Nicola the Exorcist

What's It About? 

Nicola von Weber is no ordinary schoolgirl. Endowed with memories of a past life as a Shinto exorcist and natural psychic abilities, she uses her exorcism skills to protect others from malevolent apparitions. Her regular client is Sieghart von Edelstein, a childhood friend and a ravishingly beautiful marquess. Ever since Nicola saved him as a small boy, he's been smitten with her, but she is less enthusiastic about him. In this first installment, Nicola clashes with ghosts, doppelgangers, and more than one ill-fated romance. Most spooky apparitions seem to spawn around the school, where the students' propensity for gossip provides ample sustenance for their existence. Here, the more vividly one imagines something, the more likely it is to come true. However, as first-year student Nicola ventures beyond her schoolgirl life at The Royal Academy, she finds that the tenacity of spirits (and grudges) means that they can turn up in the strangest of places.

The Troubles of Miss Nicola the Exorcist has a story by Ito Iino and art by Rukako, with English translation by Joshua Douglass-Molloy. This volume was lettered by Rebecca Sze. Published by J-Novel Club; PublishDrive edition (September 25, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

There's a theory that mystery and fantasy don't combine well as genres because it's all too easy to solve a mystery with magic. This story attempts to work around that by making all of the mysteries supernatural in nature, or at least giving them the appearance of the supernatural, and then making its detective an isekai'd exorcist whose innate talent for the profession crossed lives. Nicola appears to have died in her first Japanese life due to a spell that went wrong, but that's not stopping her from using her old skills in her new life. And why would she? Those abilities have given her not one, but two handsome young noblemen following behind her like overenthusiastic puppies eager to play whatever games she's willing to indulge in. That exorcisms aren't games means exactly nothing to them.

It maybe should, because Sieghart, Nicola's childhood friend and devoted swain, became her close friend because he's particularly susceptible to spirits attaching to him. Sieghart just has one of those faces that spirits love, and in this volume alone he deals with a doppelganger and a regular old ghost both attaching to him, the latter nearly smothering him. Nicola doesn't mind helping out, but she does wish that he'd be a little more aware, and that goes double for his pal the prince, whose instincts all appear to guide him to run towards the danger. I can't blame Nicola for making him sign a contract stating that he won't retaliate against anything she does to him, because this is a boy who may need serious reinforcement if he's going to listen.

The story is light and fun (an odd thing to say about a book where one of the ghosts is a pregnant teenager who committed suicide), something the art goes out of its way to emphasize with its use of chibis and Nicola's deadpan expression. The major fly in the ointment is that it really feels like a lot of the original novel is being sacrificed on the altar of making this fun and quippy. There's no real sense of the world or who the characters are beneath their surfaces, and that definitely takes away from the overall enjoyment. I enjoyed it, but honestly, it worked best as a reminder that the novel is sitting on my Kindle, waiting to be read.

I appreciate the blend of genres that Miss Nicola the Exorcist offers. It's an isekai with some shoujo twists (our protagonist resurrecting as a viscount's daughter and enrolling in a school for nobles). It's got plenty of exorcism stories—with a lot of romantic comedy vibes tossed in. I'd say they're tossed in for "flavor" but the will-they-or-won't-they dynamic between Nicola and Marquess Sieghart overpowers everything else in the story. While Nicola maintains her knowledge and powers for exorcism from her former life, most of her day-to-day activities involve getting roped into Sieghart's princely shenanigans and tea parties. I appreciate the romance for what it is; Sieghart is a fun romantic foil, equally princely handsome, and genuine while also being a tremendous goofball who only really shows his smiles with Nicola. Meanwhile, Nicola herself is a phenomenal lead: she gets to snark at these upper-crust types while maintaining their favor. (Shout-out to the scene where she gets a prince to sign a contract allowing her to be as blunt with him as he likes with no consequences).

I definitely wish that there were more exorcism antics; what few supernatural mysteries we see are engaging but resolved far too quickly. I'd like to see Nicola display more of her supernatural expertise, like when she pulls out a spirit board to speak to a ghost (while affirming its memories). But also, the romantic tension between Nicola and Sieghart is genuinely gripping; even Nicola admits something is going on between them and worries their differences in station keep them apart. There's also the promise of that shadowy figure watching Nicola through those mirrors... The Troubles of Miss Nicola the Exorcist might be a bit fluffy, but I'm engaged for a second volume. More, please! Recommended.

There's something about The Troubles of Miss Nicola the Exorcist that's just… lacking. Something about this manga made it just slide right off my brain like an egg off a teflon. Part of it was, no doubt, the setting. “Vaguely historical European school for aristocrats” has become a default anime setting second only to RPG-inspired fantasy worlds, and I'm starting to find it boring. Oh, your school has uniforms with long skirts and bows? And architecture that involves vaulted ceilings and arched windows? The heroine must navigate relationships that are affected by class and rank? Yawn.

But that's not a deal-breaker for me if the characters and situations they run into are interesting. And here, they weren't. It's nominally a reincarnation isekai, with Nicola retaining her memories of her previous life as an exorcist in Japan, but it didn't need to be. With the knowledge of spirits from her previous life, she solves supernatural mysteries at her school while dodging the affections of Sieghart, her childhood friend who is smitten with her but ranked higher. Sieghart in particular tends to attract spirits because he's so pretty and nice.

Everything is so slight, already done better in other stories without being remixed in any interesting way. Nicola solves the mysteries quickly, without the slightest bit of friction or tension. It doesn't matter much to me whether or not mysteries are solvable to the audience. Still, everything settles into place so quickly that there's barely even an opportunity to figure out what's happening before everything falls into place. Mystery writing takes a lot of craft, and this is amateurish by any standard.