The B-Rank Adventurer with a Scary Face Becomes a Father for the Hero and His Friends Volume 1 Review
The latest debut from One Peace Books, The B-Rank Adventurer with a Scary Face Becomes a Father for the Hero and His Friends, comes in the form of a new isekai series about an overpowered and misunderstood protagonist, but does it do enough to stand out from the crowd? With Volume 1 in hand, let’s take a look.
Our story follows Gray, a B-rank adventurer who is formerly from Japan. Having reawakened to memories of a past life, Gray realises that the world he’s now living in is Bright Fantasy, an RPG he bought after seeing friends play it. However, rather than being reborn as the protagonist or a villain, Gray is an NPC who is nothing more than a background character with a terrifying appearance.
One day, he’s approached by some orphans who want him to use his healing magic to save one of their family members. After introductions, Gray realises that one of the children (called Iska) is the world’s future hero. Although Gray hadn’t wanted to get involved with the story of the game (particularly if he’d been reborn as a villain), once he sees the awful situation the kids are in, he vows to protect them.
He starts by ensuring the kids have healthy meals to eat every day, but slowly, he improves their standard of living in other areas. As a B-rank adventurer, there are plenty of quests he can choose from that’ll allow him to quickly make money, and that can be done in a single day. Once he has enough money behind him, he can even look at buying a house for them all to live in together.
Based on a light novel by author Enji, this first manga volume doesn’t feel like we’re getting to the real meat of the story. What we’ve been presented with so far is some fairly cute slice-of-life stuff mixed with the odd piece of action when Gray is on a quest. But brewing in the background are subtle indications that, although Gray was never an important character in Bright Fantasy, his interactions with Iska and the other children will change the original narrative of the game. Will that be for better or worse? It’s too early to tell, but I’d assume for the better.
I have reasonably mixed feelings on this first book. The original light novel only has a single volume since it began in 2023, but it was clearly planned to be a series due to the ‘1’ numbering on the front. The original web novel is still being updated, so perhaps the manga will pull from that, but otherwise, I worry the manga will end up with an incomplete story. And if there’s a risk of it being incomplete, I’m not entirely sure there’s enough here to keep me invested in the long run.
After all, Gray is your stereotypical overpowered (and misunderstood adventurer), and if Iska really is the hero, it won’t be long until there’s no real threat to any of them. The childcare aspect is fun, and it’s refreshing that the girls (even the older of the group) aren’t falling all over Gray in a romantic sense like we often see in other series, but it’s the kind of thing that other titles have done better.
And I think my issues with it are compounded by the artwork. The character designs are, by and large, fine, but the issues come with mangaka Cogeme’s tendency to draw within small panels and with a lot of dialogue bubbles (typical of light novel adaptations) that completely overwhelm a lot of the pages. This appears to be Cogeme’s first published work, and I understand there’s bound to be difficulties when adapting a work from one format to another, but given my other concerns here, it just doesn’t help. However, it’s not all bad. I think Cogeme draws the children well in that they all look age-appropriate (and cute!), while there’s good contrast with Gray where he looks fierce in some scenes but fairly ordinary at others. This befits his character, but also lends believability as to why everyone is scared of him.
As mentioned, The B-Rank Adventurer with a Scary Face Becomes a Father for the Hero and His Friends comes to the West thanks to One Peace Books. The translation has been handled by Nate Derr, and it reads well. Although the lettering is uncredited, there’s a decent amount of variation in it, which is certainly important given the sheer amount of text on any given page. No extras to speak of, which is a shame as the opening spread for Chapter 1 was presented in colour for the Japanese eBook release (I can’t confirm if it was in their print version).
The manga is ongoing in Japan with three volumes currently available. Unfortunately, here in English, there aren’t any more volumes currently in the schedule, and given that takes us through to May next year, it’s looking like a long wait for more. We’re really not in a shortage of titles like this, which may work against it in the long run.
Overall, The B-Rank Adventurer with a Scary Face Becomes a Father for the Hero and His Friends Volume 1 is quite generic in all the ways that won’t fend off the better titles out there. If you’re really into these settings, then there’s fun to be had, but for a lot of readers, this won’t be compelling enough. And with no English release for #2 forthcoming, this may prove entirely forgettable.
Our review copy from One Peace Books was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).
©Cogeme / Enji / Kazuhiro Hara / KADOKAWA CORPORATION
