i want to love you till your dying day - MANGA REVIEW
🍰 ARC provided by #netgalley 🍰
rating: ⭐️2

the plot here was intriguing. this school takes orphaned or children from troubled homes & trains them with magic for war. it’s a tad dark of a manga as there is actual deaths. the fmc sees this darkness & seems to be the only one who sees something wrong with what’s going on. her love interest is this adorable girl who actually holds probably the most darkness of the school because she’s the schools “secret weapon” (from my understanding she’s immortal? she gets injured badly but gets stitched back up with magic & she’s like new?). Mimi, the love interest, really likes Sheena, the fmc, but Sheena isn’t too sure about Mimi. they’re stuck together as roommates & Mimi keeps seeking Sheena out.

overall the plot is kinda cute despite the dark themes in the background. my main issue with this manga is that the characters seem pretty young & i felt they were a tad sexualized. nothing extreme & no actual nudity but i just felt it was a little icky the way certain characters were displayed. on top of that, this manga is advertised as LGBTQ+ and the two lead characters are obviously going to fall in love BUT there’s this side character (the nurse) who is basically teased & called awful things because she’s trans. to me, you cannot call a book LGBTQ+ if it isn’t inclusive to all parts of that label.

i think since this is only the first volume, the series may just need more work. i think the art style was nice but i don’t think i would continue with this series.

going into this novel i had no idea what the plot was and thought from the cover it might be like "i want to eat your pancreas" but like girls love, but no. it's about this dystopian world where there is an orphanage that trains these children to fight in the war. we follow sheena who's roommate just died and her new roommate is mimi who is the hidden weapon and very powerful.

i quite liked this volume and i feel like it set up the world very well. i was slightly concerned when something happened between them and i did not know how young mimi was, but they are both 10. i am interested to see what happens next and to figure out mimi more.

My thoughts mirror many of those contained in one-and-two stars reviews for this title, so I am submitting a one star review.

I wanted to love this book so bad. Magical girls, kind of a magic school, and girls loving each other, I was hyped. BUT, even if it's really soft and cute, it is still pretty slow and flat. Nothing much really happens to be honest. If I had to sum up this book, it would be something like "two young girls waiting to go to war and eating rice". Also, a few points really disturbed me. First, Mimi is reaaaaaaaally young I don't really understand how this is a yuri since it mostly looks like a big sister taking care of her little one. Also, how am I supposed to urge them to kiss and love each other when everyone in the school kiss everyone else to give them mana ? Even the nurse, who is depicted as trans / crossdressing and kissing children to give them mana ? How is that supposed to be a good representation and not a big "look at this trans-pedo kissing young girls" red-flag ? Like why does it always have to be depicted so badly... What was the point ? The message behind it ? I'm pretty disappointed to be honest...

I did not finish this. I got as far as the introduction of the trans nurse who was met with slurs and disdain and stopped. Other reviews mentioned that this nurse is a pedophile also? Which I cannot deal with in this political climate right now. I spend too much time at my job hearing people call politicians, who are trying to protect trans kids, “groomers” to be okay with something like this.
It’s too bad because the premise of child soldiers in a magical school seemed interesting.

There was a lot to like here until the kissing magic happened. That was so off-putting, and perhaps it's meant to be? It's always hard with the first volume of a new series, but I do not like to see 10-year-olds sexualized. It's pretty gross to me.

This manga is a more gruesome take on the magical girl genre and offers some original ideas, set in a dystopian future.

This is a girl's love title featuring an orphanage that trains young girls to fight in the on-going war by teaching them magic. The story has some gruesome panels showcasing battles and injuries, so trigger warnings should be applied. At the start of the story the main character, Sheena, is informed that her roommate has perished in battle and a new girl will soon be assigned to the room. While she is taking the news hard, the rest of her class seem to take it as the usual order of things. She runs into a young girl, Mimi, who joins their class shortly after and she is revealed to be a student with incredibly strong magical powers. As we learn more about Mimi it is revealed that despite her cheerful demeanor her magic comes with a steep cost. Sheena is injured during a training day activity and out of concern for her, Mimi wastes no time to perform "healing magic" on her - which turns out to be a more intimate act than just a simple lay of hands.

The story was interesting and I'd like to learn more about the world. The only thing that was concerning to me is that story has such a strong focus on being marketed as yuri but the main character is implied to be 14 and the love interest is only 10 years old. I feel like making the main characters a bit older would be more appropriate. And while I love the fact that we have a nurse who is either wearing drag or is genderqueer, one of the characters spoke about this in an insulting way.

An interesting world in which young people are trained and made to go to war with magic. A lot of relationship building between characters and not a lot of world building.

Judging by the tone of the story and some tropes and choices made, I’m bewildered this gets picked up for translation in this day and age. Eroticising ten year old girls and bringing in nonconsensual kissing? Bleh, Maybe things make more sense for a different demographic, but for queer women this sure isn’t.

i was really looking forward to reading this manga but the story didn’t live up to the premise. the world and magic system were underdeveloped (why/who are they fighting? how does the magic work?). but my main problem the book is that people can be healed through kissing. it’s non-consensual and is done by the school nurse (adult) to the characters (children/teens). i think the plot might get better since this is only the first volume, but i won’t be reading the next book due to this issue.

I hated this so much and that's hard for me to say. I love anime and manga but this was, just something unnecessary. To call out that the children are 10 years old and have to make out with the fully grown nurse, in drag by the way, in order to be healed? No. Not okay. I have an open mind and this was over the line. The only thing I liked about it was the artwork. The artwork was very well done and beautiful. I also think this might have been translated and so the story was a little choppy and confusing in some areas.

*Thank you Netgalley for early access in exchange for a review

I loved the art style and how it contrasted with the darker themes in this book. I'm curious about the magic system and history of the world, I wish we learnt more. I always struggle to rate volume one's because they are introductory, and it feels unfair to judge them based on that.

The fact that they are 10 year olds made me uncomfortable This book has a lot of the problematic "tropes" that are typical in manga. Since it's a quick read I might pick up future volumes.

It’s been a while since I last read a manga, and I have to admit, it was fun—short, sweet, and entertaining. However, the healing magic system left me really confused. Some aspects of the story felt a bit too much... but other than that it was a fun read. But will most definitely continue the series.

Thank you Netgalley for the early read!

I wasn't sure what to expect about this first volume, but by the end I was desperately curious and wishing for more. It's a bit more gruesome than I first expected, but it fits the storyline quite well.

The cast of characters seem very similar at first glance, but they all have their own personalities despite some similar qualities. I really enjoyed this first volume and can't wait for the second one.

In this volume you’ll find a mix of adorable magical girls and hints of gore in an academic setting. I love reading stories about witchy girls in dark worlds and am always eager to read anything in the same vein; however, I have a lot of mixed feeling about this story. There are strange beats of pedophilic teachers, children “innocently” exploring relationships, and casual transphobia. If you’re familiar with manga you’ll recognize these are so prevalent they can be considered tropes, but I can’t help but warn prospective readers to read at their own comfort level.

A yuri manga (where the focus is on relationships between girls, not necessarily romantic/sapphic) taking place at a magical school, where young magic-users train to fight in wars. The art style is really soft and cute, which is an interesting contrast with the content, which initially doesn’t seem so brutal until students turn up covered in blood and we learn that students die on a regular basis. The main character is Sheena, a quiet girl who isn’t very skilled at combat and unlike the other students, is disturbed by the violence that’s become commonplace. After her roommate dies, she’s paired with a new girl, Mimi, who’s rumored to be the strongest student at school, even though she presents as a bright, naive little girl.

I like the contrast between the art and the content, and there’s some mystery woven in regarding who Mimi really is. It’s a little hard to tell where the story’s going or what the purpose behind the war that these students are training for and why it requires these students in particular to fight it, so the worldbuilding felt sparse. It is just the first volume, so there’ll probably be more explanation and grounding as the series continues. It seems like the focus is on the characters, though, who are quite interesting to follow so far.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC!

I picked this manga up on a whim because of the art and I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed it! The art is obviously gorgeous and really helps sell how dark this series is. There is surprisingly little worldbuilding for the first few issues of a serialized manga which would be more of a problem if I were to read it issue by issue but I think makes it a more enjoyable experience reading it as a collected volume; I don't tend to like a lot of front-loaded exposition. There's enough world, plot, and character revealed in the first volume to encourage me to continue reading the series.

I saw some reviews before reading with concerns about the oversexualization of young girls and the depiction of the nurse (a trans woman). Re: the former, it does not read to me as too much, given the subject matter (it's a story that treats young girls' bodies as disposable!) and isn't really anything that's worse than you would find in your average, more mature magical girl manga, for better or for worse. Re: the latter.... yeah, a trans woman nurse acting vaguely predatory towards young girls doesn't sit well with me. It's tolerable for now but I only hope that it doesn't get worse.

Overall, I'm intrigued by the potential that this series is promising and look forward to reading more!

Thank you to both Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC copy. This has not affected my review at all, which are my own thoughts.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I normally like to start with the good things/what I liked, but there's not much of that in this manga, unfortunately. Sooo.... I think I'll start with why I decided to read it and then how it disappointed me.

I found out about this manga through Kodansha's IG page, and it caught my eye, both with the cover and the story description. And I thought that I'd probably read it once it was out. This led me to finding it on Netgalley and being able to get an ARC of it. Which ultimately led to this review.
I thought I would like the manga, I like war stories that also make some type of social commentary, in the case of this manga: the exploitation of kids and teens at the hands of institutions with the power to do so, treating them (children) as weapon and the effect all this has on both the people, but also in the society it takes place. And yet, I couldn't have been farther from the truth.

I know that, when is a series, the first volume tends to be introductory, and it was also the case here, so if some things have been done differently, I would have liked it more and would probably feel incline to wanting to read the second one. But i can't bother after it all. And it comes down to the magic system, how it is presented to us.
Context: some people can do magic and, for that, they use mana. So, in this world, they go around kissing each other to exchange mana and get healed. I would have seen it with better eyes if it had happened between consenting adults, not ten year olds being trained to be living weapons that are sexualized all through the pages (in my opinion).

There's two situations here:
Mimi kissing Sheena to heal her, which wouldn't be bad if Mimi, who is supposed to be a 0 year old child just like Sheena, knew what a kiss was or wasn't portrait in an infantilized way, making her appear even younger than she is (a fact that even Sheena comments about on the page).
And then, the situation with the school nurse, a full grown adult, that is said to go around kissing the students (children and teens, all underage) to heal them when needed. If that doesn't spell predator... What is even worse, is that, from comments from the students and, more specifically, Mimi, is implied that she's either a transwoman or a crossdresser, two groups that have been accused of exactly that for ages. Harmful stereotypes will always be harmful, even if they're done with "humor", even thought is not humor, is straight up disrespect for real life people. If I have read some reviews mentioning this, I would have most probably avoided this manga.

If I had to point out some good points, it'd be the art and the potential of the story, which I would have enjoyed if executed other wise. I won't be reading the second volume, that for sure. And I hope we can leave these deplorable depictions behind us.

Disappointed, but at least it was a short read and I didn't have to suffer much

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha for an advanced reader copy of I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day in exchange for an honest review. I found this book to be very intriguing because who doesn’t love magical girls fighting a war? However although the premise was fantastic and the storyline was catchy - everything was VERY overly sexualized. I found it to be distracting and pulled me away from wanting to continue reading the series.

The cover of this instantly drew me in and the illustrations on the cover are stunning! From the title I assumed this would be a sweet lighthearted read but it didnt take long to realise I was very wrong lol. Still a very entertaining and immersive read I might carry on this series