Koushaku Reijou no Tashinami
Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter

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Finally, a beautifully drawn manga featuring a strong but feminine MC who makes the story exciting without the elements of the doki-doki romance, magic potions or dragons. This is a story of a young woman thrown away by her fiancé, expelled from high society, learns from her mistakes, and makes the determination to stand on her own two feet, without yearning for a Mr Right to come along.

This is a story of Iris, who uses her knowledge from her past life to make her life succesful, as she no longer has the prospect of getting married.
The manga though, confuses the reader a bit by ... going quickly over the reincarnation part. The novel makes this a bit more clear.
Now what I'm going to say now isn't a spoiler, rather a way to clear up the confusion of those who've read it and make the description of the story more understandable: Iris isn't transported to a life in an otome game - rather, the moment the manga introduces her in her current life is the moment she remembers everything from her past life. A past life in which she had played the otome game that had revealed her downfall in her current life. That's the beginning of the story. Once you understand this, you'll also understand why it's not important to linger on the reincarnation part.
True, the writer could've dwelled on the "why am I reincarnated into this life and why do I suddenly remember everything at this critical moment?" But then I suppose the author would've to come up with a magic-circle-like explanation. Again, this isn't a magical story - this is about a girl making her own life work by using her brains, by working hard and by being focused on her goal, not on love.
The only lucky elements the writer has thrown in is her memory of her past life and her beautiful personality, which altogether makes the story great.

The story in the manga is slow-paced compared to the novel, however, this is necessary in mangas with political and business elements. The excitement that arise from facing obstacles in these areas are, personally better that in Saiunkoku Monogatari. It makes the reader look forward to how Iris will accomplish things.
As it is slow-paced it is still at a part where Iris is reaping success without too much ado. This creates an opportunity to get to know the main cast of the story. Also, this "beginning"-part of the story highlights the message the writer wants to bring over: Success is the result of using your brains, having the right priorities and hard work. Especially hard work.

The characters gets more well-rounded as the story progresses. I love the variety of characters, the good, the evil,... Also, the cast expands as the story progresses. I'm particularly thankful that the author does not limit the cast to only a handful to whom the readers could get attached to. But then again, I'm probably speaking as a novel-reader.

By the way, I love, love, looooove the strong element of loyalty in this story. Not in a romantic way, but in a friendship way. Albeit it's mostly master-servant relationships. Still, it's beautifully portrayed.

Iris Lana Armelia is a refreshing change from the stereotypes of female MCs in manga. She smart and emotionally strong, but not obnoxious. Compassionate and caring, but not dense. Feminine, but not whiny and in constant need for someone to hold her. Wealthy, but willing to work hard. All of this may make it seem she does things a bit too good, but hey, for a change, I don't mind following the story of such an emotionally superwoman. This is a capable female MC, and I love it! Yes, she is adored by many characters and rightly so! I find this way better than the typical moe MCs who are adored for being cute, looking cute and acting cute.

In short, I love this manga. The strong elements of being independent and loyalty and a beautiful well-rounded cast is making this a great read, both in manga and in the novel.
I hope they'll make an anime of this, too.

The other world or rather the otome game world has no magic, no mana, not even made up plants. The premise of the manga was interesting, then it became more like a petty or redemption story.

Iris is definitely op, she's backed with amazing lineage, supported by powerful persons, followed by equally skillful staff and she herself is very skillful, too skillful in fact, and she's not even a "mean" girl, she's basically a M**y S*e don't even try to deny it. She was but a mere office lady who works in taxes in Japan and plays otome games in her spare time which isnt her ... spare time because she's staying up late for it, it was unbearable to read how she was able to make beauty products, design clothes etc. The only 'flaw' so far is her trauma from the first 3 chapters, which I don't feel as convincing because I dont know who Iris is as a person.

I don't know why the author decided for this work to be an isekai, as it is practically an untouched topic. Might as well completely taken it out, because it disrupts the story for me, I don't know how I should feel or think about her, the MC, in some situations. Which really ruins it for me to be honest.
It's confusing to appreciate Iris's reactions to things and events because I know that she's from another world.
Though I barely know what she's like before, but the same goes for "past Iris".
Iris said that she from the real world and she "Iris" from the game has combined. But other than her modern world knowledge, nothing of her 'past self' has been shown through Iris, besides the occasional mentioning of it in her monologues.

The manga is very thorough with their dialogues about the economy, taxes and whatnot, maybe this is where the isekai comes in because with the age/era that its set in, I find it hard to believe how much progress the company had accomplished in less than 3 years. And how no consequences in relation to the accomplishments seem to arise.

The pacing is unsatisfying...its fast in the economy side, but slow in the politics side, which is where the main relationships that will move the whole manga are.

My overall is a 6.

Edit: I realize that my overall probably doesn't make sense because of not really having any compliment (edit: I changed it, it was a 7). Simply. The art is good. Despite all the characters being one dimensional, I still like them because they look pretty.

The supporting characters are pretty much thrown away after a few, all of that back story about how Iris picked them up, really serves no other purpose than to make their loyalty to Iris seem logical. Its also a one sided politics story, the antagonists is rarely given their own time in the panels, and even if they do its always to make the protagonists look really good. The only good supporting characters for me so far are Iris' mother and brother (surprisingly yeah).

What if we gave a modern tax collector central control of a feudal economy

Sounds like a disaster in the making? It's also a far more accurate title for this manga.

The goal of this review is to give an overview of the story and especially the economics of the story up until chapter 23 which is where I dropped this.

We follow the footsteps of a reincarnated tax collector lady from 21st century that worked for the Japanese government who is now in the body of a petty villainess duke's daughter from an Otome game. Since she got on board when the original owner did her last ... act of villainy, she's set to be punished for harassing the main love interest at their academy. Since it's a fairly minor thing she did her dad just sends her off to manage a fiefdom he owns as a light punishment. So that's where the story takes place, from this point forward I'll refrain from talking about the characters, which are just generic but decent, the art is also ok, I'll also do my best to also keep politics out of this.

The setting of the world is quite unrealistic, I understand an Otome game wouldn't be very much fleshed out but the mangaka is playing it extremely straight so there's no excuse, for example in the fiefdom they're casually growing cacao in the farms but they don't know what's or how to make chocolate, they also haven't made the revolutionary discovery of banking, which has been with us in the real world for millennia now. So in this very advanced civilization with fully fledged nobility and academies for said nobility they still haven't invented chocolate and banking. That's hard to swallow. I usually let it slide in Isekai types but this is just too much, although only for the banking innovation because this revolves so much about economy.

Anyway MC sees her chance and not only introduces banking to her unsuspecting fiefdom, she goes from 0-100 by introducing commodity backed credit backed by the lord of the land(her dad), so yea, how do you think it would go if you go to the Roman empire who's giving salt to it's legionnaires and suddenly you start talking about commodity backed paper money, I believe you would be lucky to get laughed out of the room. But MC pulls it off of course. I don't remember if she establishes any lending practices though.

Moving on, we get to a point where MC is keeping tabs on the local economy and she sees some medieval times price fluctuations which she immediately confuses with inflation, and the little diagram they show in page 4 of chapter 19 is wrong on so many levels, however I'm not a heartless person I'm willing to cut some slack to a Japanese author, perhaps mal-informed, following mainstream japanese economic dogma, at least to the time of writing this review, so I'll explain, she says bluntly that inflation are price increases which means that the people are getting richer and proceeds to dismiss the phenomenon as a virtuous cycle, not only is she wrong on what's going on but she's wrong on what she said as well, inflation is not a virtuous cycle, in medieval societies is usually a straight line that keeps going up very slowly and steady as you mine the commodity your economy is based on(usually gold and silver) it can also go up if her bank starts expanding credit(printing more cash than gold it has on it's vaults) but we have no indication this is what's going on. So this is not inflation, it's just medieval price fluctuations, a very common occurrence, as season and situations change some commodities become more valuable and scarce than other so their supply/demand graph look radically different from commodities that are abundant at the moment because the demand plummeted and are therefore less valuable. Imagine is like buying winter clothes in the middle of a hot summer compared to buying the same clothes in the middle of a cold winter, you'd expect the price to reflect the clothes are more or less wanted, it is basically the same but more pronounced, but it ultimately balances out.

The straw that really broke the camel's back is chapter 22, a chapter all about taxation... Thrilling I know, in this chapter MC discloses her intention to get rid of the capitation and replace it with a sales tax. Which is a pretty good idea, the main drawback is that is harder to enforce. What's really bad is on top of the sales tax she also wants to impose an income tax on net income for all working adults... Now imposing this on a feudal society is a terrible idea for many reasons, the main one is that you're levying too much abuse on your poor peasants so they would probably just leave, income tax are typically imposed on war time, the enforcement would be a huge nightmare, these peasants are already paying the levy tax(they must respond to a call for war as soldiers) and lease of the land in all likelyhood so it's just cruel, they will cheat, you're milking something that's not there, It'll destroy productivity, increase spending and lowers savings. I believe she mentions is a progressive income tax instead of flat but it's still a terrible idea, and of course since it's net income you're free to do deductions, luckily a support character beats some sense into her by saying that the peasants aren't ready since they're not educated but still has the gall to agree it's a good idea and it'll be great if the peasants would do this voluntarily and without assistance someday lol.

Imagine you're a peasant in this fiefdom, by now you not only have a conscription obligation, you're also paying a lease to plow the land and paying a tax for every item you buy, and now you have to manually keep a ledger all the taxable year to record your income and expenses just so you can "voluntarily" give a portion of it to the rich lady that lives in the big mansion, if that was me I would be packing my bags.

It's obvious to me that the author likes the Japanese economy and wanted to model this new world after it, but some things just don't work if you don't do them properly. For full disclosure I don't have much issues with the Japanese economy either I can just see the flaws of trying to introduce modern tax and economic policies to the world of the past.

A positive of this is that she actually created an academy to drive innovation, that's a good move, even if it's just the author mimicking their own society yet again.

If I had to predict what would happen in this manga it'll be that she will eventually add a VAT for alcohol and whatnot, there's also no point in having a estate and gift tax so we can forget about that, she will introduce welfare and safety nets, perhaps state funded orphanages and she will eventually try to stimulate economic growth and prosperity by increasing overall spending.

Like I said I'm not upset at the author or anything like that but I find this manga extremely hard to read. I might come back in the future once this is finished to see how the non-economic plotlines pan out but in the meantime this is a hard pass for me.