I had to stop r eading a manga today.
Not because it was badly drawn.
Not because the premise was boring.
Actually, the premise was one I usually enjoy. Two people are reincarnated into the world of a game they once worked on. One ends up as the heroine, the other as the villainess. It sounds like the perfect setup for an interesting story about fate, responsibility, and changing a world that was once just fiction.
Instead, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated.
Not with the villain.
The villain was doing exactly what the story established she would do.
I was frustrated with the heroine.
Before they were reincarnated, this same person had already been betrayed by her coworker. Her game ideas were stolen. Her work was claimed by someone else. She was manipulated into continuing to improve a project that no longer even belonged to her.
That alone should have taught her something.
Then they are reincarnated.
The very same person who betrayed her in one life begins manipulating, hurting, and exploiting people all over again in the next.
At first, I assumed the heroine would eventually recognize the pattern.
Instead…
She kept making excuses.
She kept protecting her (the abuser or villain in this case).
She kept giving away information.
She kept covering for someone whose actions were becoming more dangerous with every chapter.
Even after innocent people suffered.
Even after lives were lost.
Even after it became obvious that the world was no longer following the original story she had written.
That was the moment I stopped thinking about the manga and started thinking about storytelling.
There is a difference between kindness and enabling.
Kindness gives people opportunities to become better.
Enabling removes the consequences that might have pushed them to change.
The heroine wasn’t helping the villainess become a better person.
She was making it easier for her to keep hurting everyone else.
What made it even more frustrating was that the heroine constantly justified her decisions by saying things had to follow the original game’s story.
But… why?
This isn’t a game anymore.
This is your reality.
People are no longer computer-controlled characters waiting for the next event flag.
They’re living people.
They’re getting hurt.
They’re dying.
The moment the story began changing from its original route, the old script stopped being reliable.
At that point, clinging to it didn’t feel hopeful.
It felt irresponsible.
One thought kept running through my head while I was reading.
If you were capable of designing an entire game once, why are you acting as though that single version of the story is sacred?
Creators rewrite things all the time.
They revise.
They improve.
They adapt when something isn’t working.
So why wouldn’t someone do the same when the world they’re living in has clearly become something different?
I think that’s why this story frustrated me so much.
It wasn’t because the heroine was gentle.
I like gentle characters.
It wasn’t because she wanted to believe in people.
I like optimistic characters.
It was because she stopped making choices.
She reacted instead of acting.
She protected someone who had repeatedly shown exactly who they were.
There’s a quote people often repeat:
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
Stories sometimes forget that this advice applies to protagonists too.
At some point, choosing not to acknowledge reality becomes a decision in itself.
And decisions have consequences.
Ironically, I think the story would have been far more compelling if the heroine had reached a breaking point—not because she became cruel, but because she finally understood that compassion without boundaries isn’t compassion at all.
It’s surrender.
As writers, we often want our protagonists to be good people.
But being good shouldn’t mean refusing to confront difficult truths.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do isn’t protecting someone from the consequences of their actions.
Sometimes it’s protecting everyone else from them.
That’s the line I wish this story had explored.
Because once kindness loses its ability to recognize harm, it stops feeling like a virtue.
It starts feeling like avoidance.
And for me, that’s where I had to close the chapter.
Not because I hated the story.
But because I could no longer understand the person I was supposed to be rooting for.
