After a lonely death from overworking, Selia Welfe finds herself reincarnated into another world... but not into a romance fantasy novel like she had hoped. Instead, she is the chief of a detective agency that specializes in tracking down runaway female leads! Immediately, she gets right to work, hunting for clues and risking her life to reunite couples and solve relationship issues. But when Selia rescues the life of a mysterious male lead, can she keep from getting too entangled in his story?

The Detective Agency for Regretful Male Leads Is Open for Business! has a story and art by STUDIO INUS, based on a work by monjjackjjack . English localization by Kiwivine. Published by Tapas Entertainment (March 25, 2026). Rated YA.

Erica Friedman
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Webnovels are famous for often adhering to “types” instead of fleshing out characters. Even though they are not the only form of literature that has the passionate, yet nonverbal dark-haired male lead, webnovels, and the manga and anime based on them, has made the type even more obligatory.

In The Detective Agency for Regretful Male Leads, Selia finds herself reborn into a game system that wants her to help these powerful, miserably uncommunicative lead men. Selia finds herself the head of a detective agency in a crumbling old house and slowly, with the help of cash she makes by investigating within the game's system parameters, reads the novel and solves the mystery.

I's a cute idea that is executed well here. There's no particular period of time or world to this “webnovel,” so Selia and the people around her are dressed in ways that are entirely up to the author's fancy. This works well to give the story an anywhere/anywhen feel. The art is good, with very detailed portraiture. This isn't an action story, so long-pause person-standing-framed-in-the-door is very much a key component.

When the initial arc ends (with more cash as a reward, and some unlocked skills) Selia's own story picks up the pace rapidly, as her own leading man appears. As befit being the protagonist of her own story, Selia is a tad clueless about her own story, but is smart enough to tackle the mysteries she is given. Those mysteries were not too hard to solve, as long as we pay attention to the clues that Selia uncovers. Thankfully, Selia herself is a quick study, and we can trust her to solve every case that comes her way.

This was a cute and clever use of story tropes, and the reborn in another world gaming system framework.

Rebecca Silverman
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After you read enough webnovels and their light novel and manga/manhwa adaptations, it sort of begins to feel like they all take place in the same world. There's a sameness to them that can be very comforting, but when you stop to think, well…The Detective Agency for Regretful Male Leads Is Open for Business! is fully aware of this issue. It takes its isekai'd protagonist – an orphan who died of overwork in modern Korea, of course – and plunks her down in a decrepit detective's office in a fantasy world. She is, she learns, now Selia Welfe, and her job is to help all of the foolish male leads who let their wives wander to get them back. She's basically the character that every romance novel could use at some point, the person who points out the obvious and facilitates a reconciliation much faster than if the idiotic couple was left to themselves. And it's just Selia's luck that it turns out that she's not in some sort of detective agency between the worlds, but rather that multiple novel plots are going on at the same time in the same place. Original author monjjackjjack knows their stuff.

The story basically runs like a fair play mystery. Even if monjjackjjack didn't assume that their readers are familiar with romantasy webnovel tropes, the game-like pop-up screens that Selia gets make sure to guide her mystery solving skills. They don't give anything away, but they do serve as training wheels on the clues, and the result is that we can solve the cases alongside Selia. Nothing is particularly surprising if you've read enough of the sort of story Selia's working with, but it's still a fun mechanic, and one that gets better by the time Selia all but solves her first mystery and bumps into a second male lead. She immediately recognizes the trope he belongs to – obsessive – and begins attempting to take steps to make sure that he doesn't imprint on her…but what's she going to do, throw an obviously abused boy out? At this point, we'll all just have to hope she can de-obsessify him (that's a word, right?) before she ends up in Bunny Drop hell.

The Detective Agency for Regretful Male Leads Is Open for Business! is a manhwa (and presumably novel, which I think is also available on Tapas) for those of us who have read it all. Mildly tongue-in-cheek and very self-aware, this reads like candy and is a fun escape – because unlike Selia, we don't have to live it.