Helen: Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter is an isekai manga series based on a light novel series of the same name, both of which would be called “reincarnation isekai” by most fans. I would disagree with these fans slightly, although no, I’m not arguing that this should technically be a “stuck in a video game” isekai, even if this new world is 100% identical to the otome game our heroine had just completed before her death.
Our lead character didn’t so much “reincarnate” in this other world after dying in ours so much as she “forcefully astral-projected into another person’s consciousness and body.” That is a trope I generally dislike since it feels just so lazy (and really, most “reincarnation” isekai stories do this instead of having the character actually be reborn and grow up). We never hear our protagonists’ original name, we just know her as “Iris,” the game character/girl she now is, and we don’t get a good sense of who she is in this first volume either. We know that she formerly worked at a company that dealt with taxes, but beyond that and the fact that she liked otome games, we don’t know anything about her. Many reincarnation isekai novels are similar in the fact that they don’t focus on a character’s past but I always find it unnerving when the main character doesn’t reminisce on their previous life at all. Surely Earth left some impression on her!
It’s not even clear which personality traits are hers to begin with and which ones were/are Iris’s. She muses to herself that her memories are becoming blurred, as if the two personalities have merged into just one, and again, it just feels so lazy to introduce and “flesh out” your main character in this fashion. Her initial driving force is to avoid getting Iris’ “bad end” (where she ends up sent off to a nunnery for life) but “Iris'” conversation with her father early on in the volume resolve that issue and now, for some reason, this has become yet another isekai story about fixing the world through non-violent means. That trope, “character from another world revolutionizes the one they find themselves stuck in” isn’t one I dislike on principle, unlike the “astral-projection body-stealing” one, but I have just seen so many other series execute this concept better or even non-isekai stories where it’s clear that the creator has a better grasp on both sociology and how to write characters!
We are told that our protagonist has a background in taxes but knowing how tax law works in your home country is not nearly the same as understanding macroeconomics (plus our protagonist seemed pretty lethargic and uninterested in her job back on Earth). With only these few bits of background to go on, I just could not buy into Iris’s sudden motivation to pass large-scale socio-economic reforms in her fiefdom. Yes we do get the impression that the original Iris may have had a social reformer streak, given how she took in many street kids and made them a part of her household, but again it’s a large jump to go from that to “I want to improve my fiefdom both economically and socially.”
I also have a complaint about the side characters surrounding Iris. Giving Iris a sizable and completely loyal retinue to start the story off with (none of whom question why she is acting a bit differently) also feels like dull writing to me. To put it simply, I just feel like Iris isn’t facing interesting enough challenges! I’m willing to give the second manga volume a try, since I suspect that this first volume doesn’t cover the entire first light novel volume and it’s possible that I just need a bit more time for the story to click with me, but overall I was disappointed with this first volume. I was hoping for a fun, female-led isekai adventure but instead I just got what felt like a bland rehashing of a half-dozen other series.
Helen’s Rating: 2 out of 5
Krystallina: Bullying is not okay. But right as Iris is confronted by her soon-to-be-ex-fiance (the second prince, Edward) in regards to her harassing his new paramour (Yuri), she remembers that she used to be a woman on Earth. And that this situation is one of the ending scenes in an otome game, with herself as the villain. After that, in the span of a single conversation, the newly awakened Iris somehow convinces her father not to ostracize her and instead is given control of the family’s territory.
I probably would have gone with charity work as punishment, but okay…
Luckily, Iris worked in a tax firm in her past life, so now she plans on taking this medieval fiefdom and modernizing it thanks to hospitals, banks, and chocolate. Yes, chocolate.
There are three main sections here: leaving school and being appointed the fief lord, the servant’s devotions to Iris, and the tour of the domain. Iris announces the turnaround plan at the very end, so perhaps the story will steady a bit as we get to her accomplishments. But as I was reading, I was kind of annoyed how the story just seemed to wander and jump around. I’m guessing the manga is trying to speed through the beginning of the light novel, but it’s obvious things are being glossed over. Random characters are introduced as if we’ve known them as long as Iris has, and creating a recipe for chocolate happens instantly behind the scenes.
Also, despite Iris being reborn in an otome game, that aspect seems to have already fallen by the wayside. By avoiding being sent off to the church to become a nun, she’s already progressed outside the original game’s story. Unless there’s a major twist in the future, the story could have been written as a usual born-in-another-world story instead of forcing the otome game connection. And why isn’t she at least a little shaken that she somehow is living in a video game…?
I can see the otome game influences in Futaba’s designs, which sometimes don’t translate well to manga, but Umemiya does a good job overall. But the most notable aspect about the art is that Umemiya doesn’t put a heavy focus on manga-style expressions. Both blushes and fits of doom and gloom are rather subtle, but it suits a light novel adaptation. Meanwhile, I also thought the lettering was awkward at times, with higher than normal amounts of dialogue only having one short word per line. It was like extra effort was made to fill the bubbles vertically, but at the cost of having some oddly skinny, choppy dialogue.
The way Iris instantly came to grips with being reborn in a video game and turn things around left me a little cold. While the title may be Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, I want to learn more about how Iris ended up as a duke’s daughter — and a jilted fiancée — in the first place.
Krystallina’s rating: 2 out of 5