The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

No Longer Heroine

What's It About? 

Every girl dreams of starring in her own love story. Hatori also firmly believed that one day she would marry her childhood friend, Rita—but things are never that simple! The agony of a heartbroken young maiden is laid bare in this uproarious comedy!

No Longer Heroine has story and art by Momoko Kōda, with English translation by Alexandra McCullough-Garcia and lettering by Rachel J. Pierce, and Yen Press has released its first volume both digitally and physically for $6.99 and $13.00 respectively.

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I may not be able to actively relate to Hatori, the hapless would-be heroine of No Longer Heroine, but I really feel for her. She's been poisoned by shoujo romances, and because of it, she's always sat comfortable and secure in the knowledge that her childhood friend and crush Rita would one day act like the guy in a Taylor Swift video and suddenly realize that she's the only one for him. But life doesn't really work that way, does it? Or at least not very often.

Hatori's in the terrible position of being forced to grow up in a way that she really doesn't want to. As Rita abruptly stops going through girlfriends like tissues and seems to be finding real love with Adachi, the unremarkable girl in class, Hatori is suddenly made starkly aware that she's been pinning all of her hopes and dreams on a fictional trope, never bothering to put in the real work to let Rita know that she likes him because everything she's ever read has led her to believe in the magic of the childhood friend romance. I may never have been in that exact position, but I think all of us know that painful moment when something you've believed with your whole being has turned out to be nothing but a fictional construct. Hatori's even been reminded of it over and over again by her best female friend, but sometimes you can't see it no matter how often it's pointed out to you. And maybe, she's starting to think, it's time to move on.

Whether she will or not is an open question. She does eventually make her feelings known, but Rita's clearly really fond of Adachi, and he's uncomfortable at the realization that Hatori likes him romantically. There's a good chance that he may subconsciously like her back, but I'm not sure that that would be the best direction for the story to go in, if it's even true. Because while I want Hatori to be happy, she's not necessarily helping herself in that department. The way she thinks of others as supporting cast members in her story is kind of off-putting, and she's thiiis close to being a mean girl herself. Does that mean that she doesn't get to be the heroine of her own life? It shouldn't, but she's been so laser-focused that maybe she hasn't figured out what her story really is yet. There's a good tale lurking underneath the occasionally cringey slang in the translation and the standard shoujo art, and I hope that Hatori figures out what it is.

---

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

This one has a really fascinating concept for a manga. Hatori is a very unconventional female lead in how much of a trash-fire she is. If she were a guy, folks would probably consider her kind of a creep—which is why she kinda is. The title says it all: Hatori is convinced she's the star of her own story and everyone else is just there to serve as bit-players in her life. It's a mistake a lot of people commit, and it leads to a lot of heartbreak when you're inevitably confronted with how much people just aren't going to live their lives to your benefit. I imagine anyone who's had their heart broken by a long-standing crush is going to identify loads with Hatori and just how much she keeps reading too deeply into Rita's actions (as well as Rita's long-suffering attempts at maintaining his friendship with her without giving her the impression of “leading her on”). It takes a bit for the penny to drop for Hatori, but the story promises lots of heart-breaking drama in the future.

The art is alright: not particularly stellar, but functional. Hatori's got some good face-game going on, at least. Past that, though, it's the writing that really sells this book. Definitely recommended.

---

Christopher Farris

Rating:

So right up front, the level of entertainment you get from No Longer Heroine is going to heavily depend on your patience for its…heroine. Hatori is an absolute mess, and almost never in a way that's earnestly charming or positive. Over the course of this first volume, basically everybody, up to and including her childhood-friend crush Rita, calls out her very obvious psychological hang-ups that lead to all the flailing she gets up to here. How we feel about Hatori shapes how we take in her story: Are we actually rooting for her, or simply gaping in shock and awe as she continues to make things worse in sillier, stupider ways for herself? Personally, I found myself consistently amused by Hatori's disaster tendencies, turning this one into a net positive for me.

Everything about No Longer Heroine is still all over the place, though. The central concept – what if the childhood friend in a shoujo romance manga was self-aware – manifests oddly given that Hatori's conception of her imagined fictional station is probably the only thing she does have some self-awareness of. There's a point where her unreliable narrator tendencies make you wonder if she's actually even as close of a childhood friend to Rita as she claims, before later scenes clarify that they really do have that kind of connection. It's communicated well when it gets there, with Rita regularly referring to Hatori as 'dude' or the clear articulation of memories they have together, but it just takes a bit to manifest. Once that's solidified though, there's a believable desperation to Hatori's messy efforts that make her enjoyable to watch (for me anyway) through her poorly-considered, occasionally-toxic approaches.

It helps as well that it feels like there's plenty of movement and momentum just in this first volume. Hatori especially, still messily failing as she mostly is, has quite a few moments of emotional evolution on her seemingly-hopeless journey. Neither she nor Rita nor Adachi, the girl he starts dating, feel like they're holding the same stalling shoujo patterns by the end of this volume. Even an ancillary character like Hatori's friend Nakajima makes some headway in her understanding and interaction with the goings-on. It can still feel a bit start-and-stop, thanks to the baked-in emotional constipation of these teenagers figuring things out, and if you find Hatori more exhausting than engaging you're going to be right out of this story.

Some of the art can be a bit sparse, with simple boxes of text standing in for panels a noticeable amount of times. And this English localization can be as all over the place as the plot, leaving in some Japanese pop-culture references while swapping others out for name-dropping Oprah or Velma from Scooby-Doo. But there's an overall scrappy energy that works for me in No Longer Heroine, like a disaster of a character you don't necessarily want to see succeed, but to want to watch keep on trying.

---

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

A self-aware shojo series feels like something that should've already happened numerous times before this point but it is a welcome story direction nonetheless. As someone who has read his fair share of shojo books, I was genuinely entertained by the opening chapters of No Longer Heroine, which appeared to be breaking down the fourth wall with a main character who keeps referring to herself as the heroine of the story while smugly referring to everybody else as tropes. However, it turns out that this isn't actually a wacky fourth wall break as much as it is a character quirk of our lead, who is viewing the world around her through shojo-colored lenses. Once that revelation comes to fruition, what I thought was going to be a quirky comedy quickly turns into a surprisingly interesting drama about recognizing your own selfishness and the consequences of what can happen when you have too much pride in what you believe are guaranteed outcomes.

Everyone has their own established relationship dynamics with other people, and sometimes it can be comforting to put those dynamics into boxes. However, if things change or don't go the way you originally expect them to, then it can be hard to adjust. I like the way that No Longer Heroine handles this, and while there is probably more after this first volume, it told a complete enough story with a mostly satisfying stopping point. The biggest drawback to the series is its art style, which is a little bit too similar to other shojo series that have come out in the past decade. Also, the male lead is definitely on the blander side despite showing signs of depth towards the end. With the type of setup the book presents, there are genuinely a multitude of different directions that the story can go from here, and I'm excited to see what kind of route it will eventually take. Definitely put this on your list if you are a fan of shojo manga and romantic comedies.