As a big fan of comedy series that highlight the bizarre thought patterns of a character, Yuusha wa Shimei wo Wasureteru was exactly the kind of manga I was looking for. It takes the common structure of a Hero being destined to defeat a Demon Lord and portrays a comedic dynamic that ensues when the role of the Hero becomes obsolete. In this case, the Demon Lord has no malicious intent and simply aims to govern the Demon Lord well, which breaks the world's recurring pattern of a clash between a Hero and the Demon Lord. What follows is a manzai routine between the two where Nue—the Demon Lord—objects to the absurd, unreasonable, and partly contradictory thought-trains of Hizumi—the Heroine. The familarity of the Hero and Demon Lord structure provides the manga room to use the Heroine's expectations of how the situation should play out to make extreme claims that Nue can challenge. The disfunctional aspects of Hizumi's character also lend well as an expression of her backdrop, where she's shortsighted in nearly every regard by virtue of predicating her existence on her assigned role as the one to conquer the Demon Lord.
The joy in reading this manga comes from how fitting the dynamic between the two feels. Nue's retorts are a seamless means of highlighting Hizumi's peculiar way of thinking, and Hizumi's unreasonable thought-train remains consistent throughout the manga. There's a playfulness that arises from many of Hizumi's remarks that help ease the romantic elements of the work. Furthermore, although the series is fact-paced in its transition between jokes in Manzai fashion, it is rewarding to see even some seemingly throwaway interactions be incorporated into the future comedic conversations. One example that comes to mind is how Hizumi latches onto a moment of her being flustered by one of Nue's actions as a poor excuse to justify her desire to learn Nue's weaknesses. Her logic in tying these two elements doesn't follow at all rationally, but after witnessing her eccentricities over the course of the manga, her following this logic becomes a convicing application of her character. It's this seamless compounding of Hizumi's peculiar ways of reacting to situations and Nue's ability to ground her eccentricies that makes the dynamic satisfying to play out.
It certainly helps that the manga is only a volume long, as it never gets to the point where its central dynamic get stale without subverting it. The length offers enough room to get immersed in Hizumi's absurdies without them being tiresome. The conciseness of the work also helps contain the jokes and draw rewarding throughlines between them. For a short comedy manga putting a spin on a conventional fantasy structure, Yuusha wa Shimei wo Wasureteru is a pleasant experience.
