Shinta Shinohara is summoned to another world and deemed the brave hero who will defeat the Demon Lord! Eager to make the most of his hero abilities and his cheat skill, Shinta takes a look at the stats of everyone, including the princess who summoned him. And it's a good thing he does because he discovers that she's planning to assassinate him after he subjugates the Demon Lord! Not one to go down without a fight, Shinta begins to scheme his own plot: he'll pretend to submit while seducing the princess. Once he has her heart and body, he'll be unstoppable!

Rebel Hero: I Will Use My Skills to Control the Scheming Princess's Heart and Body is written by Yū Kawasaki and drawn by soramoti. English translation by Matthew Carolan. Lettered by mono. Published by Seven Seas (September 16, 2025). Rated M.

Lucas DeRuyter
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The best compliment I can give Rebel Hero: I Will Use My Skills to Control the Scheming Princess's Heart and Body is that it feels like a version of Rising of the Shield Hero that's actually meant to titillate its presumed young, cishet male audience rather than placate to their underserved since of victimhood and misogynistic world view.

Just like in Shield Hero, the protagonist of Rebel Hero is summoned into a fantasy world and expected to be their chosen hero while also facing discrimination for being a summoned hero. While Shield Hero explains the discrimination its protagonist faces due to a weird culture quirk that prophesies the Shield Hero as being evil (in which case why would they even summon him?) and the Queen making a false sexual assault allegation against him, the prejudice the protagonist of Rebel Hero faces is the result of the Princess and her lackies just straight up being bigoted towards summoned heroes. While this is a little bit of a cop-out when it comes to establishing conflict, it also makes about as much sense as why people have bigoted beliefs in real life, so I could dig it.

The protagonist of Rebel Hero is also established as a slimeball pretty immediately, rather than being an aggrieved edgelord like Naofumi in Shield Hero, which makes the noncon hijinks he gets up to a lot more palletable as the text doesn't try to convince me that I should be rooting for him. So instead, I get to sit back and appreciate the sexual situations he forces the Princess into using the unique skills he has access to as a hero and not worry about all of the problematic elements in this smutty manga. While these sexy moments are a little fewer and far between than I appreciate in my explicitly adult content, as a nerd and kinkster, I'm a sucker for convoluted sexual situations that are equal parts explanation and rules, as it is sexual imagery. There's definitely a lot of potential to be had in the protagonist being able to summon risque items from the real world and “equip” them onto the princess and his ability to ascribe general attributes to her, and I'm curious to see what other skills he develops and stealthily uses for horny reasons.

As for the negatives, this ecchi isekai dedicates a bit too much time to the latter half of its genre and outlines a “Hero vs Demon Lord” dynamic, relationships with one-note characters, and world-building that are all far too generic to be interesting. This manga is also laid out in a way where information will be conveyed to the reader through an in-universe game menu that the protagonist is reading. Either because of the original formatting or the lettering, this in-universe menu can be difficult to read and sometimes poorly conveys necessary information.

On the whole, though, Rebel Hero: I Will Use My Skills to Control the Scheming Princess's Heart and Body is on the better end of these kinds of longform adult isekai series and should be a pleasant enough time for fans of kinks like cnc, voyerism, bondage, and fantasy genre porn.

Jean-Karlo Lemus
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There's a bit later in Rebel Hero where Princess Alicia explains why she hates otherworldly heroes; it's because they've all been horndogs, down to the last one, and their dalliances and uncontrolled lust towards her people have caused her kingdom nothing but grief. Protagonist Shinta takes offence at that... after having used his powers to peep on Alicia and stick her full of sex toys all night until she wakes herself up with a climax. Way to break the stereotype there, Shinta.

Rebel Hero is another one of those isekai manga where the protagonist being a slimeball is justified because everyone around him is a rotten jerk, down to the core. There would be some interesting possibilities for storytelling here, but even the one chance someone has to show their open-mindedness gets dashed on the rocks. Now, a cast full of jerks isn't inherently a deal-breaker, but Rebel Hero doesn't really make up for the calvacade of cads (read: it's nowhere near funny enough to justify its sociopathy). What makes Shinta feel particularly slimy is that he otherwise seems like a decent-enough guy who decided that trying to manipulate Alice is the way to go. There's validity in a story like that, make no mistake—but Rebel Hero doesn't really sell me on it.

The sad part is that the basic idea is actually kinda hot; I'd hate to tell Yū Kawasaki how to tell their story, but I feel like there's potential in a story about a perv helping a kingdom of jerks loosen up by introducing them to Rosie palms and her five buddies. Think Nana and Kaworu. Alice and Shinta are both huge pieces of crap—they deserve each other. There's good fun to be had in seeing their power dynamic swap around from Alice being domineering towards Shinta during the day while Shinta paws her to exhaustion at night. The balance isn't quite there yet. But damned if I didn't actually want to see how this plays out. That Shinta is reasonably attractive, as far as isekai potatoes go, helps; along with Alice being plenty eyecatching herself.

I'm giving Rebel Hero a 2.5 because this one doesn't quite pass the vibe check for me, but I'd definitely change my tune if the story actually improves some later on. The story actually committing to the horny voyeurism helps. But people with more tolerance to isekai (or who enjoy “dubious” content) can probably bump the rating up another two points or so. Weakly recommended, with major reservations—unless you know what you're about.