Cover page of Volume 1
The Dragon, The Hero and The Courier (aka Ryuu to Yuusha to Haitatsunin or 竜と勇者と配達人 in Japanese) is a manga by Gregorius Yamada, which began serialization in Tonari no Young Jump in 2016. The story follows a half-elf named Yoshida The Short Tempered as she works in postal service of city of Idazig.
Along the way, she has to deal with many idiosyncrasies of the human society, such as their insistence of various rules and regulations. Series pokes fun at various RPG tropes, such as making XP counting a job that someone has to do. In between these antics the series also talks about various real life issues and related topics, offering a form of edutainment.
This show provides examples of:
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Members of the various city offices regularly engage in "Diplomacy" to determine which group will be in charge or win out in a power struggle.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter, much like the work itself, will be titled in a "The X, the Y and the Z" format.
- Individualism vs. Collectivism: The conspiracy by the Six Eyes, who represent chaos and individuality, are opposing the governor of Idazig who believes in removing individuals importance and turning everyone into a cog in larger machine.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Yoshida's Sempai, who often offloads his work on her and lazies about all day. However, whenever Yoshida is in real danger he is more than willing to defend her and he is shown to protect her secretly.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Yoshida's sempai, who is legimate knight with power to back it, but also has no land to his name and is very lazy.
- Lost Technology: Interestingly enough, 'mail'. Collapse of the old empire has lead to postal service effectively disappearing, before being revitalized by the new administration of Idazig.
- The Magnificent: Yoshida "The Short Tempered", due to her... well, short temper.
- In more general terms, there is an entire field of work for people whose job is to determine epiteths for everyone, no matter how famous or significant.
- Magic Knight: Yoshida's sempai, who still holds a title of knight. His ability to use magic has severely dimished due to events in his past and he has been slowly recovering while working at the postal office.
- Power Levels: How city of Idazig is attempting to categorize people and threats, by assinging them strict power levels.
- The Squire: Yoshida's sempai manages to trick Yoshida into officially becoming his squire. She has mixed feelings about this, especially after discovering her sempai is raubritter, AKA 'a bandit knight'.
- Stat-O-Vision: How head of postal office sees world. Everything either buffs postal delivery, or decreases it. Everything else is irrelevant.
