The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

Let This Grieving Soul Retire

What's It About? 

"What I'm seeking is to be the world's one and only strongest hero."

Krai had made an oath together with his childhood friends to become the strongest hero, but he realized right after that he has no talent.

Nevertheless, for some reason, the expectations of those around him keep rising rapidly every day. And (at least according to Krai), things will always head in an outrageous direction!?

Let This Grieving Soul Retire! is based on the light novel by Tsukikage with art by Chyko. The manga is drawn by Rai Hebino and Yen Press will release its first volume both digitally and physically on December 21

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Krai, the protagonist of Let This Grieving Soul Retire!, isn't really grieving in the way that the title implies. In fact, if he's grief-stricken about anything, it's his inability to get out of the guild-equivalent that he's the head of – a group known as The Grieving Souls, or the Grievers. Krai, as a younger man, is determined to become what's known in most other similar series as an adventurer, clearing treasure vaults with his friends…but it turned out that he didn't really have the aptitude for it. But when he tried to leave the group, his friends instead suggested that he just become their leader, organizing things for the Grieving Souls rather than actually adventuring. And Krai, despite not really wanting to do it, kind of felt stuck.

So now the nervous barfer (he throws up in his mouth whenever he's upset) is stuck as the leader of the most renowned group of treasure vault clearers, saddled with Tino, a girl who's worshipfully in love with him, and a bunch of wannabe adventurers who really, really want to join the gang. And that's the schtick. Well, almost – there's a definite sense that Krai may not be quite as underendowed in the talent department as he thinks he is. Certainly the fact that his friends immediately proposed that he stay on as the leader seems to indicate that, but there's also a scene where Krai is able to use another person's relic (fancy artifact sword) even though he really shouldn't be able to. More than that, he uses it particularly well, which is even more impressive. While the fact that Krai's been collecting magic artifacts might have helped in that particular circumstance, when you start to look at other factors and comments, it starts to seem as though Krai is much more gifted than he's aware.

It does seem entirely possible that Krai is deliberately blind to his own talents, of course. One thing that comes across quite clearly here is that if there's an easy way out, Krai would very much like to take it. That the manga is an adaptation of the novels by Tsukikage, who also wrote Defeating the Demon Lord's a Cinch (If You Have a Ringer) is a point in that theory's favor, since that book also revolves around misconceptions and bizarre power struggles. This is actually Tsukikage's third title in English translation, and since all three of them (the other is The King of the Dead in the Dark Palace) are relatively different with a few common authorial themes, that's a good sign for this series. It is one of those series where women are better protected the less armor they wear, which always annoys me, but the art is otherwise quite nice and Tino is just the right mix of unhinged and adorable. It may take a couple of volumes to really get going, but for a non-isekai fantasy (albeit with game trappings), this definitely has some potential.

Grant Jones

Rating:

Let This Grieving Soul Retire! is just above mediocre, knocking on the door of okay, but it keeps dragging its feet. The premise is standard RPG fantasy fare: there are adventurers, they go into vaults to fight monsters and get treasure, and there is an adventurer's league/guild. In another age I might have called this bland, but at least it is a true fantasy tale, which I prefer over an isekai (though of course your mileage may vary).

The first sin, however, is not so much the familiar RPG tropes as it is the blase openness with which they are implemented. Adventurers walk around saying “I'm level 3” and “oh he's level 8” and other immersion-breaking stuff. There's no in-world explanation for it; readers are expected to assume that a numeric levelling system is just a natural part of fantasy gaming/fiction, no more no less. This, to me, detracts from the experience, as I like at least a fictional pretense for levels. A magic scouter that reads mana energy or a bounty rank assigned by an organization – that sort of thing. This only compounds with dialogue like “I see you use daggers so you must prefer skills” and “every time you come here your deception rank goes up” and the like. I suppose this is meant to be cute or funny, but it mostly just serves to drag me out of the narrative.

The other sin is just how little happens in this volume. Let This Grieving Soul Retire! might seem like a fantasy adventure at first glance, but a large portion of the book is dedicated to...meetings. Meetings to hear about adventure. Meetings between adventuring groups. Meetings after the meetings with the adventuring company bosses. Meetings after the meetings with the bosses to discuss the people at the first meeting.

I hope you like characters sitting in chairs and talking about how meetings went is what I'm saying.

There is some minor world-building to speak of, but not much. We get some details about adventuring groups, vaults and their magic, levels for ranking, and some sense of the hierarchy surrounding all this stuff. But 90% of the volume is just characters sitting around and talking about adventuring – there's zero tension or excitement. Most of the aforementioned meetings involve our protagonist (Krai) being told how awesome he is by other characters and trying to play it off like he's humble. For nearly two hundred pages.

Most egregious has got to be the dialogue between Krai and Tino. You see, dear reader, Tino really wants to be with Krai, so much so that most of her dialogue is basically her throwing herself at him. If she isn't begging and pleading with him for his attention, she is cooing and bubbly at every sideways glance, or literally doing gymnastics on a tavern table to show off her flexibility. It's… exhausting.

At the very least the art is superb. Character designs are engaging and the cast is really expressive, both in the normal scenes and in the cutaways/asides that fill the gaps. I think the character designs are what make this stand out (even if they are, uh, cheesecake at times). I only wish there were more backgrounds to give a better sense of the setting to go with the cast, because it all ends up feeling hollow by the end of the volume.

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

So I will admit that for the first handful of pages, it was difficult to figure out what kind of story this is supposed to be, and while I got a better picture of the world this is taking place in by the end of the volume, I'm still not 100% sure what direction things are supposed to be going in. A lot of this stems from the fact that I don't necessarily have a solid handle on our main character, who always seems to be privy to more information than he lets on to the cast and the reader. It also doesn't help that our lead seems just straight up done with this story before it even has any proper footing. I do like how the manga seems to sort of subvert classic fantasy tropes a little bit by giving us a main character that is defined by his weakness and lack of a role amongst his friends. So if he doesn't have a role, then why not just make him the leader? That is admittedly kind of interesting and I like the little hints the story gives regarding how our main character ended up in this position of power and reverence that seems to be the established status quo for this volume. In fact, I'm so curious about this backstory that it's honestly a little bit distracting and kind of makes most of the volume feel like it's meandering a little bit with doing anything interesting. This feels like a series that requires a little bit more patience compared to others so I'm not sure if I would recommend the first volume on its own. Rather it might be best to wait a bit until more is available and then spend a nice evening catching up on a bunch of it at once. (Assuming that additional context is revealed sooner rather than later.)