Of course, there was plenty of lady-led light novel adaptations to go around. This is probably one of the few that didn't involve reincarnations or villainesses, although that doesn't make any better than the rest.
DUCHESS IN THE ATTIC (Yane Urabeya no Koshaku Fujin), based on the light novels by Mori and character designs by Huyuko Aoi, with art by Maki Hayashi. First published in 2019 and first published in North America in 2024.
PLOT:
Opal dreamed of having a beautiful wedding as a child, but her chances were ruined forever thanks to one man getting fresh with her during her debut. Now all of the other nobles presume she's a harlot, and she's forced to marry a duke who covets her fortune and only cares for his sickly mistress. Opal knows where she's not wanted, so she moves herself to the attic to bide her time, review her husband's ledgers, and find a way to get herself out of this mess..
STORY:
Ok, these Cinderella-style stories are getting out of hand. It's hard to take anything in Duchess In the Attic seriously because everything but the heroine is ridiculously melodramatic. Opal spends this entire volume overcoming nothing but a bunch of pantomime villains, and the end result is more boring than satisfying.
At least Opal herself is sensible, but that's about as much as you can say for her. Her backstory and marriage are meant to be tragic, but this manga rushes through them so fast that it barely makes an impact. The title would suggest that she's being physically trapped in her marital home, but she willingly exiles herself to the titular attic. While her movements in the house are somewhat limited and she's constantly surveilled, she's free to leave to visit her husband's other properties or her own family so she's hardly a put-upon prisoner. Without any consequential stakes to overcome, her character doesn't really have any way to grow or change. What vicarious fun can be had with a character who is already practically perfect in every way?
These low stakes are complemented by the hilariously shallow villains. Opal's new husband Hubert is nothing but an egotistical man-child with a short temper. His mistress/Childhood Best Friend (tm) Stella projects saintly fragility, but just underneath of that is a jealous yandere streak. The two of them are enabled by an army of servants, who serve mostly to further antagonize Opal. They possess zero nuance, which only serves to undercut any menace they might pose to our heroine. After all, if they were actually complicated characters then we might have to feel bad as Opal outwits them instead of them serving as hollow hurdles on the path towards her freedom and her own blandly nice Childhood Best Friend (tm).
She's not exactly a master detective either. She mostly relies on reading books and letting her servants do the legwork while she poses as a frivolous ninny as a distraction. She's lucky that she's up against some very stupid opponents, such as a steward who just leaves the records of his embezzled funds out on library shelves for anyone to find. There are certainly ways to make such a mystery exciting but no one ever told this writer about them. There's no excitement, suspense, or satisfaction to be found here, just an endless stream of long-winded conversations as Opal explains every step of her actions to herself and others.
ART:
Unlike most mangaka who work on light novel adaptations, Maki Hayashi had a couple of manga to their name before working on this. This means that their art is a little more polished than what is typically seen in these kind of books, although there's nothing particularly exemplary about the characters or the pages. In fairness, Huyuko Aoi's illustrations didn't give them much to work with other than the usual generic anime folk dressed in the same frou-frou fashions that mash together elements from 18th and 19th century Europe at random, as most of these stories about nobility are wont to do. They also had to cram all that dialogue into their panels, giving them that much less space to use. Mere competence was probably the best anyone could have hoped for with this material.
RATING:
This manga is published digitally by J-Novel Club under their J-Novel Heart imprint. This series is ongoing in Japan with 5 volumes available. 4 volumes have been released and are available through most major digital vendors.
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