Ever since she saw Count Banfield valiantly protect her home planet from space pirates, Emma Rodman has wanted to be a knight. She'd gladly give her life defending the innocent and protecting her lord's domain. Unfortunately, her final test at the knights' academy has earned her a D-ranking, the lowest of the low! What a disaster! Now she's relegated to a remote border planet and her squad are a bunch of useless layabouts. Should she call it quits? Or will this isolation give her room to grow and shine?

I’m the Heroic Knight of an Intergalactic Empire! has art by Ju Ishiguchi and story by Yomu Mishima. English translation is done by David Musto and lettering by Toppy. Published by Seven Seas (October 7, 2025). Rated 13+.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

I wanted to like this one. A lot. I'm totally up for Dirty Dozen in Space With Mecha. I mean…who doesn't love a bunch of malcontents finding their perfect team and their motivation while discovering whatever asshat nonsense the beloved leader is up to? But the art here is so…exhausting…there might not as well be a fun story.

Sincerely, I gave up on this almost immediately. Emma's character says tough, skilled, motivated, honorable, but her uniform and every angle we see her at say thighs, crotch, and boobs. What a brutal waste of what would have been a decent set-up if it were not obviously a set-up. Like every third person has told Emma not to admire Lord Liam, and I don't need to read further to understand in what direction this story is headed.

Emma arrives on a backwater planet with no people, no resources, and no action…and pirates suddenly appear! Of course they do! We learn everyone's backstories in a rush and are ready to fail our way upwards through the story, driven by Emma's gung-ho and sabotaged skills. It feels as if every moment that might have been a good plot driver is kicked into a hole, to hit a beat that is more like a thud.

And even despite this crapitude, I still liked Emma and still am hoping that someone gets to read as she finally becomes the righteous knight she dreamed of being on her island of misfit toys with her gang of reindeer. It won't be me.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

Although I’m the Heroic Knight of an Intergalactic Empire! is apparently a spin-off story, there's nothing within the actual volume that alludes to this. I could have picked this off the bookstore shelf with no idea of its links to novel series I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!, which I have never read, nor have I seen the recent anime adaptation. Does it matter? Not really. The story seems to hold up well enough on its own as a pretty basic underdog story in the Gunbuster mold.

Protagonist Emma Rodman is a big-hearted, principled girl who idolizes “Count Liam Banfield”, the nobleman who both rules and protects her world. As a knight, he pilots an enormous bipedal mecha. Emma dreams of doing the same and undergoes the grueling training and body enhancement regimen to become a member of the elite Knights of House Banfield. Sadly, her principled nature and unwillingness to harm even dangerous criminals cause her to screw up at the worst possible moment, leading to her poor combat rating and assignment to a dead-end, backwater planet, and presumably the end of her dreams of glory.

It wouldn't be a stereotypical underdog story without giving Emma a further chance to prove herself, though, and it seems that her beloved Count Liam, for some reason, has his eye on her. It's hard to say if anything that happens in this story has any bearing on the larger franchise, but I don't feel I missed any important context or information when reading this. Perhaps it's a case of not knowing what I don't know, but the book seems to work reasonably well as a stand-alone story about a down-on-her-luck mecha pilot who retains her drive and morals, despite her poor circumstances.

The art is unremarkable but decent enough, with nicely-drawn mecha battles and simple but effective character designs. One male character looks identical to Kaguya-sama's Yu Ishigami, and even acts a little like him, which is weird. There's a distinct lack of originality or flair to the tale, and while it's an easy read, there isn't a whole lot that distinguishes it from any number of identical stories. Emma's a sweet, if overly earnest and naive protagonist, and that can make her a tad irritating. I expect she'll grow and mature over subsequent volumes, but there's little of interest here that entices me to read any more.