Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin Vol. 2 Manga Review – A Dash of Growth

The first volume of the manga adaptation of Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin made it seem like we would follow a protagonist who would airhead his way through life, seeking normality. However, this entire volume really changes the character dynamics for Roland and the Demon Lord. Still, the story fails to capitalize on the premise of the narrative and instead opts to make Roland’s life more complicated.

Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin Vol. 2 finds Roland completing a quest with a group of adventurers and saving a village. It’s here that Roland shows some emotional growth as a character, and that is expanded on for the following three chapters. Then, one day, Roland comes across and slave girl who he decides to help out and train to become an adventurer.

This arc is mainly about the relationship between Roland and Rila. They show how their lives have become connected since their first encounter and how that band goes unbroken. It’s a significant contrast compared to what we were led to believe of Roland in the first volume. He came off as someone who naively said and did things knowing his skills could probably get him through any obstacle. However, this entire premise is hurt when he barely spends any time working as a guild member in the entire volume.

For someone who wants to get away from the life of an assassin, he sure is quick to use his past connections to get him through situations. It’s true that this only goes so far with him, but he gets what he wants all the same. I wouldn’t say I liked this aspect of the volume since we saw a lot of growth in his character, but the entire reasoning for him living in this town is to try to be normal, and yet, he continues to do things he knows are not normal.

Regardless, there are many aspects of this volume that are nice. I think these relationships needed the extra time to evolve for the reader to grow to understand how these characters feel about each other. Also, there are significantly fewer jokes in this volume, and we get some lore dumps that are important for world-building.

The illustrations are excellent throughout the entire story. Every panel is well detailed in terms of their backgrounds and character profiles. There’s quite a bit of action here and not as much fanservice as the first volume had. I’m wondering about the pacing of Roland’s normal life because there was minimal movement in his career in this volume. Instead, we simply figured out that he knows how to get information.

Hazure Skill: The Guild Member with a Worthless Skill Is Actually a Legendary Assassin Vol. 2 is great for character growth and world-building but doesn’t have the pacing the first volume had. We get to understand Roland a little more, and I don’t see him as an airheaded womanizer anymore, but at this point, I wouldn’t mind getting a volume that puts us back on track with his career as a guild member.