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An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride, Vol. 21

By Fuminori Teshima and COMTA. Released in Japan as “Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii?” by HJ Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki. How much you like this volume probably depends on how much you like escalating shonen magic battles. About half of this book consists of a magic battle between Asmodeus and Phenex on one side, and Marchosias… erm (checks names), Glasya–Labolas, and Eligor on the other. This is entirely variations on “I will simply use the magic that always kills everything!” “Well, I’ve countered with the magic that ensures I never get killed!” over and over, with attempts to be ironic given that the battle has one combatant who can foresee their own death and…

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Manga the Week of 7/8/26

SEAN: July is here, in full force, with all the manga you can handle. ASH: Here we go! And light novels, of course. Airship debuts Distorted I Love You (Waikyokuzumi I Love You), another one-shot from the creator of I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. A livestream channel announces the end of the world… and people start to believe it when weird things begin to happen. ASH: Apocalypse stories are in right now. SEAN: Also in print: Magic Maker: How to Create Magic in Another World 2, The Misdeeds of an Extremely Arrogant Villain Aristocrat 3, My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero’s 5, The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside By My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom 6, and Witch and Mercenary 6 Part 2. And for early…

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Love & Magic Academy: Who Cares about the Heroine and Villainess? I Want to Be the Strongest in this Otome Game World, Vol. 3

By Toyozo Okamura and Parum. Released in Japan as “Renai Mahou Gakuin: Heroine mo Akuyaku Reijou mo Kankeinai. Ore wa Otome Game Sekai de Saikyou wo Mezasu” by GC Novels. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jordan Taylor. I appreciate how the dungeon diving is so irrelevant to this series that by now we just never see it. Arius, in his spare time, goes into the dungeon constantly, but to the reader it’s simply “I went to the dungeon and leveled up 50 more times, then I came back.” This series does not actually care about the fighting all that much. You can definitely see this is the case in how it resolves the battle between Arius and the hero, which I won’t spoil, but wow,…

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The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods, Vol. 4

By Yanagi and Yoh Hihara. Released in Japan as “Mori no Hashikko no Chibi Majo-san” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Nathan Macklem. There’s definitely a shift between the first three books and this one. It’s almost as if the writer was told by their editor that the series is reasonably successful, so go ahead and plot something that will pay off further down the road. Which they definitely do, as this book enjoys setting up things that don’t really pay off in this particular volume. Misha accidentally gets involved in a throne war. Misha meets her uncle’s researcher friend and his very hot not-quite-wife. Misha goes mountain climbing, is drawn off a cliff, and becomes an agent of the spirits. The usual things….

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Long Story Short, I’m Living in the Mountains, Vol. 6

By Asagi and Shino. Released in Japan as “Zenryaku, Yama Kurashi wo Hajimemashita” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by N. Marquetti. Never let it be said that the author’s firm commitment to no romantic pairings in this series doesn’t apply to BL as well. In an earlier volume, the author’s afterword got annoyed at the people trying to ship Sano with Katsuragi… and then added Katsuragi’s younger teen sister to the cast. Here we see Sano and Aikawa continuing to spend almost the entire winter hanging out, complete with a Valentine’s Day where he gets chocolates from Aikawa. The clerk at the local candy store clearly thinks they’re a couple. And yet only Aikawa notices this, and he gets Katsuragi and her sister to…

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Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk, Episodes 1-12

Written by Yoko Yonaiyama, directed by Takashi Sakuma for Studio Soigne. Based on the manga written by Hey, published in Japan by Akita Shoten in the magazine Champion Cross. Released in North America on the Crunchyroll Streaming Service. I started to write a long, involved review of Kamiina Botan giving the basic plot and breaking down the relationships and then scrapped the whole thing. Yes, I loved the relationships, but that’s not why I got so obsessed with Kamiina Botan per se. Honestly, I think if the manga had been licensed and I’d gotten the first volume, I may not have continued on. This is a series that runs almost entirely on VIBE. The anime studio was handed a series that, let’s face it, is a cute college girls drinking…

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Manga the Week of 7/1/26

SEAN: It’s that awkward, not-quite June, not-quite July week. ASH: July is so close and yet so far away. SEAN: Tokyopop has the 7th and final volume of Our Not-So-Lonely Planet Travel Guide. Titan Manga debuts Geniearth, a Weekly Shonen Champion title. A new genetic mutation leads those with it to declare themselves the homo superior and demand everyone else make way. Can one of the “old humans” save the day? MICHELLE: I saw what you did there. ASH: Oh, ho! SEAN: Seven Seas has some danmei. The third volume of Mistakenly Saving the Villain and the second and final volume of Twin Jades of Jiangdong. Seven Seas has some debuts. Al the Adventurer: That Magic Shouldn’t Work! (Boukensha Al: Aitsu no Mahou wa Okashii) is a manga based on…

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The Trials and Tribulations of My Next Life As a Noblewoman: A Ray of Hope, Part 2

By Kamihara and Shiro46. Released in Japan as “Tensei Reijo to Sūki na Jinsei o” by Hayakawa Shobo. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Hengtee Lim. I like Karen, I really do, but there are times when she does things that annoy me. Or rather, that she doesn’t do things. This book doubles down on its Lubeck, and makes it very clear that a) he is a terrible person and obsessive to a disturbing degree, and b) it will be very, very hard to escape having to marry him unless she does something drastic. I had assumed, once Lubeck made this clear, that she would finally bite the bullet and see if Reinald can help out by, say, getting engaged to her again. But no, she still…

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A Tale of the Secret Saint ZERO, Vol. 5

By Touya and chibi. Released in Japan as “Tensei Sita Daiseijyo ha, Seijyo Dearuko Towohitakakusu ZERO” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by Airship. Translated by Sarah Burch. Adapted by Melanie Kardas. Well, here we are back in the past again, with six-year-old Serafina. We’re still quite a few years away from her death, but the series has been teasing that it’s going to get dark, and this book continues that trend… though in an odd way. We open with an ominous scene of a demon waking and finding someone who smells “quite delicious”. No prizes for guessing who that is… and then we have the entire rest of the book, with the demon’s actual meeting with Serafina coming right at the end, in order to provide the…

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