Manga about Miyakawa’s recluse older brother debuted in August 2024

This year’s 12th issue of Shogakukan‘s Big Comic Superior magazine revealed on Friday that Satoshi Miyakawa Namae no Nai Byōki (A Disease Without a Name) manga will end in three chapters. The manga’s next chapter will be in the magazine’s next issue on June 12.

The manga debuted in August 2024. Shogakukan published the manga’s third compiled book volume on February 27.

The manga tells the story of Miyakawa’s older brother who has been a recluse for 30 years. The story won the grand prize in the magazine’s Superior Document Comic Grand Prize this year. Miyakawa won 1 million yen (about US$6,784) and a guaranteed serialization.

The manga ranked in the top 20 manga for male readers in the 2026 edition of Takarajimasha‘s Kono Manga ga Sugoi! (This Manga Is Amazing!) guidebook.

Kawa and Miyakawa launched a manga titled Ochiai Hiromitsu no Oreryū Tensei (Hiromitsu Ochiai’s Self-Reincarnation), based on the “legend” of the famous former professional baseball manager and player Hiromitsu Ochiai, in Kodansha‘s Morning magazine in March 2024.

Miyakawa and Keisuke Gotō ended the Wanope Joker manga in 2023. Miyakawa and Gotō launched the manga in Morning in January 2021 as part of a collaboration between the magazine and DC Comics. Kodansha published the manga’s third and final compiled book volume in April 2023. DC Comics released the manga in English.

Miyakawa and Kei Itō launched the Uchū Senkan Tiramisu (Space Battleship Tiramisu) manga on Shinchosha‘s Kurage Bunch website on October 2015, and ended in 2020.

The manga inspired a 13-episode anime series that premiered in April 2018. Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired in Japan, and Funimation streamed an English dub. A second season titled Space Battleship Tiramisu Zwei premiered in October 2018. Crunchyroll again streamed the series with subtitles, and Funimation streamed a dubbed version as it aired in Japan.

Source: Big Comic Superior issue 12

This is a beautifully written and well-translated book about an absolute horror show of a man. Betrayal of Dignity, whose webtoon adaptation is also available to read on Manta‘s site and app, is an impressive combination of light novel and old school romance novel, which makes it almost aggressively readable even as you hope that heroine Chloe manages to push “hero” Damien out a window or something.

In genre terms, an “old school romance” is a book that was either written during the 1970s-80s or reads like it was. The genre has undergone a lot of changes between the publication of Kathleen Woodiwiss’ Shanna became a bestseller in the late 70s, and quite frankly, most of those have been for the better. Woodiwiss’ book has become shorthand for a “romance” where the hero sexually assaults the heroine because he “can’t help himself” and delights in showing his affection by basically bullying her. The style has largely fallen out of favor, but we do see occasional throwbacks in the genre internationally. Kimpa’s Betrayal of Dignity, in its first volume at least, is one of them. Heroine Chloe is a good woman who is much put-upon by life (dead mother, poor family, physical disability in a 19th-century setting) but always does her best to fulfill her duty as the daughter of a viscount. Damien von Thisse is a war hero, third in line for the crown, and an unrepentant asshole who becomes fascinated by Chloe when his troops retreat to her family’s holdings during a war. He delights in teasing and tormenting her, culminating in her having little choice but to marry him.

The way Damien sets about putting Chloe in this untenable position is nothing short of crafty and mildly evil. The two have a couple of encounters where they see or hear each other before they actually meet in the forest on the Verdier estate, and there is a bit of mutual fascination. Chloe, however, quickly figures out that he’s the last man she would want to marry, and not in a Lizzie Bennet refusing Mr. Darcy sort of way. He immediately begins poking at her infirmity (a crippled leg from a childhood disease) and impugning her honor for being out for a walk in her family’s woods by herself. He invites her and her younger sister Alice to a ball, knowing full well that Chloe can’t dance and that Alice has a history of misbehaving at formal functions. He proposes to Alice, 100% aware that she’s got a commoner lover and will in no way marry him – and that Chloe, due to the disparity in their statuses, will have to take her sister’s place. He’s manipulative and cruel.

For her part, Chloe does her best to stand up to him. She’s afraid of him because he’s in the position of power due to his rank, his bloodline, and the mere fact that he’s a man, and this story is set in a fictional European country in the mid-19th century (based on the technology), but she nonetheless does her level best. Mostly, this involves not allowing him to bully her over her gait and need to use an assistive device to walk, but it also means that she talks back to him and doesn’t back down unless she feels she’s in real danger. It’s frankly painful to read about, because he’s so clearly enjoying watching her flail, like the sort of horrible person who enjoys burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Most of the book is from Chloe’s perspective, which only exacerbates the issues of Damien’s bullying. When we do get a couple of scant chapters from his point of view, it becomes clear that he’s attracted to her intellectually as well as physically, but is largely unaware of the fact. It doesn’t excuse his behavior at all, but it does look like his blind ambition for power has stunted his emotional growth to the point where he literally doesn’t know how to be a nicer person. (His mother, Princess Priscilla, absolutely deserves a share of the blame for this. Raise sons better, lady.) At this stage, I would hazard a guess that the more time he spends with Chloe, the more self-aware Damien will become; we can already see that to a degree when he gifts her a specially made leg brace. But for many readers, this will be too little, too late, because he is absolutely reprehensible for nearly all 189 pages of this book.

It’s wonderful that we’re getting more Korean web/light novels in English translation, and even better that Manta and Tappytoon are releasing ebook editions of some of them so that you don’t have to read on their apps on your phone. (And that Inklore, Seven Seas, and Ize Press are putting out a few in print!) But with more releases come more that aren’t going to suit all readers, and Betrayal of Dignity is definitely one of them. If you enjoy old school romance – and many people do, there’s nothing wrong with that – this is a series you ought to pick up. But if you aren’t a fan of jerk romantic interests, I’d recommend looking for a different book.