I'm very new to manga, and based on the beautifully illustrated cover and the interesting premise of this story, I thought it might be a fun choice for further exploring the genre. It was not.

There is very little depth to this story, which is a shame given how much room for world-building there is when writing about an orphanage where children are trained for war. Even the characters were flat and one-dimensional; I never learned anything about them beyond the absolute bare minimum, leaving me uninterested. None of that, however, even begins to compare to the issues I took with the LGBTQ+ "representation" and sexualization of children in this book. I'm not sure I need to explain why an adult character heavily implied as trans (or at least GNC) being shown kissing children, even as a method of "healing," is disgusting harmful to the trans community.

I received this manga as an ARC in exchange of my honest review

The concept is very original and I was very excited to discover this yuri fantasy world in wich magic helps to fight in a war, and it was good until I read the pages where two 10 years old kiss and it’s a very awkward couple of scene. Yep you got it, this manga is sexualizing 10 years old girls. Also about the kiss, it’s supposed to be healing and the school nurse,an adult, is healing the children of the school by kissing them. That is not ok. I love a good LGBTQ+ representation and this is not it.

The only “good” things about this manga is the cute couple that is secretly dating and the stunning visuals. Not enough to give it more than 2 stars.

Unfortunately this manga was a miss for me. It felt a little like we were getting thrown in the middle of the story with no context; I was really missing any world building that would have helped clean up the confusion. Beyond what was told in the summary for the manga, I do not think anything was expanded on. There's no detail about this war that these children soldiers are being set out on, I was left with a lot of questions about who they are fighting.

Something else I had issues with was the way the very young characters were sexualized. It made me uncomfortable, especially the way kissing was explained as a way use healing magic , which felt out of place for characters this young. The nurse character also felt very problamatic.

Unfortunately I will not be continuing with this series.

At first, I was excited to read this manga when I saw 1) the cover (which is beautiful), 2) that it was about orphaned children trained to fight a war (with magic). The orphaned bit made me think about the promised Neverland. And magical girls fighting a war? Yes. However, my excitement quickly faded when I saw a 10-year-old girl kissing. Making it a magical way to heal people is not a sufficient argument to make children kiss. Sexualising children is a big no for me. For that, I dnf it at 50%. Adding to that, The writing felt flat too.
Still, I like the art style of this manga.

Reading the review after deciding to dnf it, I feel like I would not have read this if I had read the reviews earlier as it speaks about the same issues.

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-ARC of this manga in exchange for a review.

This story follows a girl enrolled in a magic academy where students are trained to fight in a devastating war. Fearful of the front lines, where many never return, she dreads her fate—until one day, she encounters a mysterious girl drenched in blood. The next thing she knows, this enigmatic stranger is sitting in her classroom and assigned as her new roommate. From there, the story takes a dramatic and intriguing turn.

The art in this book is stunning, beautifully capturing the intensity and emotion of the narrative with incredible detail. The blend of magic, mystery, and suspense keeps you hooked, and I can’t wait to see where the story goes next!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha for sending me an eARC of I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day by Nachi Aono!

I really liked a lot of this! I thought the colored pages at the beginning were really good at making the audience engaged in the material.

I love how Sheena is very quiet and keeps mostly to herself and then she gets paired with rambunctious Mimi. I do find Mimi very interesting, from the very first meeting she has seemed odd. I mean she just walked up to Sheena covered in blood and conversed with her as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

I do think that the kissing magic is a bit weird, mostly because of Sheena and Mimi’s age, 10 years old. Towards the end, the way the nurse was going about the kissing healing magic made me uneasy.

The scene with Mimi and the nurse towards the very end had my jaw on the floor. This was really good and I really enjoyed this volume and cannot wait to read more of Mimi and Sheena’s story!

Okay, this manga was all over the place. There was no world building, so things made next to no sense, even if you read the blurb. In addition, there is minimal character development and a lot of things are told and not shown. Also everything, and I mean everything was weirdly sexual. This book follows approximately 10 year old girls but everything is sexualized and one of the teachers is called a “pervert” in the text. Honestly, this book is just a mess.

Thank you Netgalley and Kodansha for providing me with this eARC.

This is the first manga book I have ever read and, oh boy was it a disappointment. I will definitely not be continuing with this series.

All I could think about while reading this is how disgusting the fact that the nurse (She's an adult and way over 18+) KISSES her underage students in order to heal them. There is also more questionable content that does not sit right with me at all.

To be honest this book gets 1⭐️ SOLELY because I like the art style.

I thought the premise of this book was interesting, and I liked the pace and illustrations. However, the potential of a strong romance between the two main characters makes me a bit uncomfortable since Mimi looks like a ten year old girl, even if she isn't actually. I'm not sure if I will continue with this series, mainly for that reason.

I Want To Love You Until Your Dying Day is a fantastic title, and the artwork in it is truly stunning - especially the first few pages that were done in colour. It's clear a lot of love and care was put into perfecting it. The concept/basis is really intriguing and unique - an orphanage that trains children in magical warfare, with a wlw love story. The world and idea has so much potential, but I Want To Love You Until Your Dying Day does not currently fulfil that potential.

The world building is very minimal. I'm not sure I learnt anything from the manga that wasn't in the blurb. With such an interesting basis, it would've been nice to learn about the orphanage, the ongoing war, and the world they're living in. It would've also been nice to learn more about the characters. All we really know of anyone is that Sheena doesn't want to kill anyone, and mimi is a super powerful weapon. It would be great to see how mimi's past has influenced her, as she is so bubbly and childish while no doubt having to be deeply traumatised from her experiences. We also don't get to see Sheena processing her grief over her roommate dying. Furthermore, we never get any clues as to why any of the kids are orphans, so I've got to assume it's due to the war. The plot isn't really developed either. All that happens is mimi turns up, and then her and Sheena end up roommates and kissing.

Moving onto the problematic elements. Both Sheena and Mimi are very young - far too young for the style of romance portrayed. It felt heavily sexualised and I was deeply uncomfortable reading it and seeing the artwork. There was even drawings of mimi naked, albeit her hair covers up anything explicit. This is honestly disturbing considering her age and I would advise against publication until that's removed. As well as this, the school nurse is troubling. She is extremely sexualised and referred to as a pervert - not appropriate for a book with children imo. She also has healing magic that works through kissing people on the mouth, which is borderline paedophilic in the context of the orphanage, and feels more like a badly written erotica trope than a sci-fi/fantasy story about children. Furthermore, as other reviewers have pointed out, the nurse is somewhat transcoded, which adds an entirely different layer of problematic issues to her character. I would urge Nachi Aono to reflect on this and the ease with which unconscious bias and problematic tropes/cliches can slip into our work.

I really hope this manga gets revised, the problematic elements tackled, and the world-building + plot strengthened, as I think there's a good story to be told. However, as it currently is, I am rating it 1.5/5.

Thank you to Nachi Aono for making this available to me through NetGalley,
and good luck for your future writing.

Name of Book: I Want To Love You Till My Dying Day
Author: Nachi Aono
Would I Recommend The Book?: Tentatively, Yes

Objective Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Subjective Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spice Rating: 🌶️ ½

Violence Rating: 🗡️🗡️

SFW/NSFW: SFW

Potential Content Warnings:
Questionable maturity levels of one of the characters, mistreatment of a presumed transgender character, child soldiers, mentions of war, someone’s arm gets cut off.

Genre Tags: Fantasy, Dystopian, Features Action/Fight Scenes, Queer Story, Romance, Features some Horror Elements,

Additional Comments:
[I would like to disclaim that I am American and some things might be lost in translation, or could be considered normal in Japan. The things are reviewing are being reviewed under a Western Lens and how other Western individuals might perceive the content.]

Wow! I really enjoyed this volume one and I really want to read more. I thought that the concept of a magic school of child soldiers was a very interesting premise. I’m always really glad to find more queer media in any capacity. I fully intend to read on, just because I’m curious.

My two biggest gripes with the work are probably just because I’m American.

(1). The nurse is heavily implied to be transgender and is referred to as “Ms,” throughout the work and uses she/her pronouns, but is referred to as a man in drag and also called the pervert teacher. The character is absolutely gorgeous and I don’t think she deserves any of this disrespect.

(2). The love interest looks young (like a ten year old) and acts young (very naive) and she’s immortal. The main protagonist comments “how are we the same age?” Another character comments that she’s ten (so maybe they’re both ten?)

Whatever, overall this was an enjoyable first volume.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha Comics for an early release copy of I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day by Nachi Aono.

I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day has an interesting premise, I liked the art style, the characters, and the story. These magical children and the war aspects were interesting elements to read about however there was some stuff questionable stuff in this manga. The “Healing” aspect of the book could have been worked a little differently, it was a little uncomfortable to read those scenes when knowing how young these characters are not to mention the adults are partaking in these “healing” magics too.

Mimi and Sheena are both decent characters, I liked Mimi and her story elements. The war, battle, and her abilities are interesting to read. I feel that I needed a bit more from Sheena to really enjoy her as a character. I don’t know if I would continue this series or not, I hope the romance doesn’t blossom until the characters are older more 15-17, I feel the healing element would be more acceptable between the students if they were aged a little more appropriately. (This is around the age that young adult romances are)

The art and the mood was really powerful in this book. It really is correct to recommend it for Utena fans. It's very dark, though--I'm not sure where it's headed, but considering Mimi's state in the last chapter...somewhere dark.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha for the e-arc!

I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day follows an orphanage for girls that is actually a boot camp for magical child soldiers to fight in a gruesome war. Our main characters are Sheena and Mimi who have a chance encounter that turns into them becoming roommates at the orphanage. Sheena longs to stop fighting and wants peace while Mimi welcomes the fighting and death. I thought this had some moments that made me curious but overall did not attach me to the story. The artwork was beautiful and I think this could reveal more as time goes on but I will not be continuing this series. I recommend this series if you like yuri manga with sci-fi elements.

This was a really interesting beginning to the series. Really curious what else will happen, and I like the art style.

I find myself agreeing with a lot of the other reviews. I don't think this is a story I will continue. I was really hooked by the premise in the first chapter, magical kids set up to fight a war by a bunch of adults gives me fun Harry Potter flashbacks. But then the story itself is quite flat - chapter, after chapter, of superfluous injuries that just happen, with no real story motivation, simply for the characters have an excuse to kiss and heal each other. I understand this is a Yuri manga, but I was hoping that with this premise we would get a bit more plot!

This is definitely going to be a yuri I want to continue even though I fear I will be devastated by the end of it!

An orphanage for girls is actually a boot camp meant to prepare those young witches for a brutal war. Despite the bloodshed, love brews among these young girls.

I don't think I'm going to stick around and read the rest of this series. I can't get over how potentially weird how "healing" works in this world, especially with how young the characters are. I am more interested in the war and the magic system and that was barely shown and explained. It's a shame because I really liked the art style.

I was super excited to check this manga out when I saw it (magical girls fighting a war? That's always an interesting genre in its juxtaposition), but after having read this first volume I now wish I had read the reviews first. This manga includes (as is unfortunately much too common, but I've managed to avoid it through reading reviews in most cases so far) depictions of nude ten year old girls, heavily sexualised content surrounding the magic system (where magic can be shared through kisses to heal people) and worst of all, the fac that the school nurse (who maybe is trans and misgendered a lot, or a crossdresser, either way a "pervert teacher") also kisses her students to heal them. I don't think I have to explain why such a depiction, especially in manga, which is already so often bad in its sexualisation of underage character and negative stereoptical portrayals of trans characters, is bad and harmful. Not only does it sexualise children, it also portrays a gendernonconforming, possibly transgender adult as a perpetrator of said child abuse. Besides that there are quite a lot of nonconsensual kisses between the children themselves, which are never examined and instead portrayed as normal.
While I do think an exploration of institutionalized child abuse as would probably be much too common in a school set in such a militaristic war-like setting could be interesting, this is not what seems to be happening in this manga at all and I will not be reading other Volumes.
The art style is nice, but not enough to save any of the bad magic system, that's dependent on the massive sexualisation and exploitation of children.
TW: csa, an adult kissing a child, magic as excuse to forget consent exists, gore, children sent to war, child death, grief, injury

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this advanced copy!

I was completely intrigued by the cover and by the synopsis and then I fell instantly in love. While the circumstances surrounding the evil attacks and the school system are still a bit vague, I am eager to read more in this series.

Sheena is shy and reserved and seems hesitant to use her magic powers to fend off the evil that is attacking her world. Her roommate has just died and Sheena is assigned a new roommate, Mimi. Mimi is cute and sweet and bubbly and insanely powerful. How they are going to help each other grow will be an intense ride, I am sure. The art was lovely and delicate but also brutal. I am also a bit concerned with the age gap for Mimi. It appears she is 10 years old, but has already seen violence and nudity. It feels like if this is handled incorrectly, it could become a massive cringe/ick with the romantic tension between her and Sheena.