no. these ships were never supposed to fight by firing forward. you can watch this to see more, but roughly cruisers like this one were supposed to form a battle line, and all (at this case - 3) the main batteries were supposed to fire at the same target. if you are following the enemy ship from behind it's angular size will be so small that the odds of hitting him with your battery are minimal. the main cannons were supposed to be equally used for land bombardment aswell.

but most importantly you have to understand that the cannons you can put on a light cruiser are fairly limited in diameter and weight. so the main anti-ship weapon was the torpedos. they were launched usually from the torpedo launchers which were located at the back.

so in order to engage the other warships and to use it main anti-ship weapon this ship had to be parallel to it, making location of the main cannons unimportant.

you can also read the: "War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II" if you want to know more.

p.s. sorry for bad language