I did quite enjoy this first installment of the series and can’t wait for more. There was a lot learned about the world and characters in such a short piece. I do wish that it were longer because I want more information on this world and characters. Mimi has to be my favorite, she is a very bubbly, outgoing character but I feel there is more to her than just this and I crave to know what it is.

Probably closer to a 1.5 stars.

I really, really wanted to love this. I think the art style is absolutely stunning, and those coloured pages at the beginning truly blew me away. The premise sounds fantastic, and I'm always interested in reading more sapphic content, but I really, really wish there was a mention about their ages in the description. Mimi and Sheena being 10 years old really didn't sit right with me, especially because of the overt sexual overtones, between them, but also between the teachers.

This idea that kids can be "healed" by a kiss from the nurse -- and I mean a real kiss, not just a peck or something similar to Recovery Girl from My Hero Academia, if you're familiar with that -- as well as the way the kisses between Mimi and Sheena are portrayed (with panting and spit), plus the panels of Mimi naked, with only her hair keeping her somewhat modest...I don't know. Maybe I'm being too puritanical about it, but something about it really just rubbed me the wrong way.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha Comics for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Surprisingly dark world-building, especially for a Yuri series. Wish there was more in this volume that leaned towards the darker action and wider world narrative. As it stands, felt kind of passive stuck in Sheena's perspective. The nurse and Mimi seem fascinating but we mostly get telling not showing of how bonkers this world is, I imagine to keep it grounded in the Yuri factor. It's a shame, could've been something actually dynamic like the "Lullaby of the Dawn" series.

I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day focuses on the story of young orphan magical girls who will be trained and sent to war.

The comparison to Witch from Mercury really hyped this up for me, but sadly I didn't enjoy much in this manga. While I think the art style is great and there are some interesting ideas here, the story overall just doesn't come to fruition. It feels more like a collection of scenes than a coherent narrative. The worldbuilding is also very bare bones at this point, though this could be elaborated upon in future volumes.

However my biggest gripe with this manga is the questionable content. While this can be standard fare for manga, there were some things in I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day that really didn't jive with me. From the multitude of semi-explicit nude panels of a 10 year old to the suggestion of a grown-up needing to kiss children to heal them, these things just didn't sit right with me.

I loved the concept and the art style, but this made me really uncomfortable. Orphaned warrior mages fighting in a magical war? Yes, please. The romantic tension and 'healing magic' between children? Not so much. :(

What sold me in the beginning was the beautiful art style. I think it's very pretty and made me reminisce ablut the mangas i read as a child. the story is also interesting.
however, i am not interested in reading about children of 10 years old falling in love and seeing them, so i won't continue this series.

This is a really cool story and I can't wait to read more as it continues. I'm really excited to learn more about mimi.

Sapphic orphan mages being trained for war? The promise caught my attention immediately but the set up in this first volume was a bit weak. We have a mix of a girl school feel, exchanging mana via kissing (convenient), but what was really interesting was Sheena our MC trying to unpack her trauma of losing her roommate to the battlefield while the world around her goes on as if her roommate’s lift had not truly mattered. Then all of a sudden we are introduced to Mimi, who promises much darker storylines to come, even with the budding attraction between her and Sheena. However I was honestly much more interested in the already established romantic relationship between Ari and Seiran. I wanted to see more of that but based on the amount we saw in volume one, I think we can reasonably hope to see more of them in upcoming volumes.

I’m intrigued, but not enough to continue right away. I might return to this series once more volumes are out.

Of note, there is one potentially trans character and there is some transphobic language used against her, but she is a solid character on her own though unfortunately is given the title “pervert teacher” so this could have been removed. Pervert teacher is tired and done, we don’t need it anymore.

*I received an eARC from Kodansha Comics & NetGalley. All opinions are my own*

A huge thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Nachi Aono for providing me with an ARC of I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day 1 in exchange for my honest review.

Whilst I appreciated the art style, I found it challenging to engage with the story due to its central focus on a romantic narrative involving children. This subject matter felt inappropriate to me and detracted significantly from my overall enjoyment of the work. Although I can acknowledge the skill and effort put into the artwork, the themes explored in the story were not to my taste and ultimately made this book a difficult read for me.

I love the art style of this manga. it is so beautiful.

I also really enjoyed the concept of this type of magical girl. I think it's an interesting twist on the genre.

That being said, I think I'm too old to really enjoy this. the characters are far too young. I know a high schoolers who enjoy manga would absolutely enjoy this.

I thought the art of I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day vol. 1 was beautiful, though I wished we were taught a little bit more about the world Sheena and Mimi inhabit. For know, all we know is that they use magic to fight in a war, with this volume mostly focusing on their school lessons and conflict between the main characters. The little bit we saw of them going into war seemed really interested and I'd like to see more!

I was a little confused on their ages. I think they said Mimi was ten but I thought Sheena was older? But then, I also remember her saying they were around the same age. I feel like it would have made more sense to make them both older, like the secondary couple. Also, the nurse character was a little off; while I loved her design, I think it's weird that she seems to enjoy kissing underage girls (that's how they utilize healing magic, through kisses). I know a flirtatious, older school nurse is a popular trope in manga but it didn't really fit the dark setting.

The art style of this manga was really cute and the concept was very interesting to me. I think this was a really compelling start to a series and made me excited to read the next volume. I thought some of the concepts were a bit generic, but overall I liked it.

[Thanks to Netgalley and Kodansha for an ARC of this manga in exchange for an unbiased review.]

It’s been a bit since we’ve had a darker magical girl manga come out, or at least since I’ve read one. And now this one has yuri baked into it. You’d think it would be a match made in heaven, but a couple of poor decisions make this a hard recommend.

I’m put to mind of the equally awkward <i>Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka</i>, which conflated ‘grim and gritty’ with ‘torture porn and unlikable’. This is less on the action, and more interesting, but still makes significant missteps.

Before we get there, the good bits. I like the contrast between our leads. Sheena is moody and has no love for the vague war that she and her classmates are being trained for (yes, it’s magical girls as combat weapons time again).

Mimi, on the other hand, is a cheerful and chipper, yet also happens to be a murder machine hiding secrets behind her smile. The two of them have an interesting dynamic - Sheena doesn’t like Mimi a whole lot at first, but she won’t be rude about it, which is a nice touch.

Sheena is either hopeless at magic or a pacifist, or both, as well, but she takes care of Mimi when she joins their class and she treats her normally. That’s something that Mimi doesn’t typically experience given her celebrity status and it’s not hard to see why she gets attached.

The quiet school life versus the ongoing horrors of war is also a strong contrast too. When we open, Sheena’s roommate has just been killed and she seems to be the only one who cares. Everybody else takes this sort of tragedy in stride, including Mimi, who is introduced dripping in blood that isn’t actually hers.

There’s a lot to like in the way this presents itself and, even with minimal action, the character drama is more than enough to hold the reader’s attention. Sheena’s friends, Seiran and Ari, who are polar opposites, yet hiding their deep love for one another from everybody, are especially excellent and I may read more of this just for them (even if I wouldn’t give long odds to both of them surviving).

When we get into trouble comes from two places. Firstly, Mimi is ten. Although the story does manage to account for this and she’s almost certainly older than that, it does seem real weird that she’s kissing Sheena this volume. The yuri here is better when it’s less overt.

And that kissing thing conveniently turns out to be a way for people to ‘share mana’, which is a narrative turn that I don’t think serves any good purpose except one instance towards the end involving a missing arm.

Otherwise it seems to be an excuse for the girls to kiss, although we see that some of them are really into sharing mana. It also makes the whole thing with the school nurse, who happens to be a trans character (or at least a cross-dresser) very unfortunate.

It’s bad enough to have said person kissing underage girls, big massive yikes to every aspect of that, but mixing in transphobic behaviour on top of it is really awful. Nothing about that character is well done and it’s a super bummer.

It’s very readable, I really devoured this, but recommending it has serious caveats. Not for everybody. I’m going to give it a middling rating of 2.5 stars while noting that I’ll probably read more, but it’s got some serious issues.

Thank you to Kodansha and NetGalley for this arc!

It’s magical girl school yuri with a twist of horror. Lots of WLW representation here…with a sinister kick. None of the characters or storyline really grabbed me so I most likely won’t check out volume 2.

Beautiful artwork, and I like the main character. Absolutely hated that the trans woman (or drag queen? Not clear) is depicted as a pedophile who is an adult kissing children to heal them.

The world was intriguing! I'm not hooked for the next installment due to the slow pace, but I am curious.

I forgot how grim the introduction to this world is and how genuinely terrified Sheena is. From the cover art and Mimi’s personality, you really can’t guess just how dark things are but Sheena’s fear really drives it home. This is a strong introductory volume, setting the scene as well as introducing our two main characters as well as the two side characters they’ll be close with in the future (yes okay I’ve been keeping up with the serialized chapters so I know where this is going BUT it has been a while since I read the beginning).

I will say the healing magic does do a lot to kind of cut off some of the looming threat of death, but our resident pessimist Sheena doesn’t let that stop her

I was so excited to see a dark GL magical girl manga on netgalley!

It’s been years since I’ve read anything from the magical girl genre but I love it so much, especially the subversion of the cuteness with overlaid horror (see: Madoka Magica), so the blurb of this made me jump at the chance to read it because magical girls being used as child soldiers fully encompasses this!

The cover art was also intrinsic in my choice to read because it’s so pretty so I was really hoping that the internal art was also beautiful and IT WAS!

It was tagged as GL so I’m really hoping that it’s not just queer baiting an stuff actually becomes canon eventually but it’s only volume 1 so the romance not really happening yet is okay with me.

That said, I was NOT happy with the portrayal of drag queens/ trans feminine people as “perverts”/“paedophiles” because the transmisogyny is real and I hate it.

Aside from this, I enjoyed this volume and will definitely be continuing the series as it is released in the hope that this problematic element improves.

This war time sapphic story was cute but also a little confusing at times. The main characters go through a lot at the young age that they are.

Thanks to Netgalley & the Publisher for providing me with an E-Arc in exchange for an honest review


CW: Blood, Death, War, Heavy Injury, Implied Adult + Child Kissing


2.5 / 5 Stars

Im not sure if I'll be checking out other issues of this Manga. On the one hand, I find the world interesting and the buildup did hook me in. As did the side characters and MC. But...there's a few things that bothered me.

There is no romance between the main couple in this one yet. They just got to meet and hang out for about 4 days or so. And yet they already kissed because we establish that mana can be shared between kissing parties. And that... is kinda a big uff. Especially when other authors and Manga have shown that you dont have to. And twice especially when we loki make a big deal out of the kiss both in spoken text as well as in multible panels of art. We also learn that the adult - way over 18+ - nurse usually kisses her underage students and Im sorry that's just....no. Yes, we deal with a world that has no problem sending 10-17 year old kids into battle to die and yet THIS is were I draw the line. Especially when you had the choice to not make mana transfer happen through kissing and decided to do it nontheless. Why else would the main leads kiss each other twice in this issue after all?

There are few interesting things that one can explore here and the manga seemed like it was interested in doing so but still. Might check out a second volume or might not.

Let me talk about the MC real quick cause I actually like her a lot. The rest of her school seems almost numb to the death, blood and murder and I love how she is not. Loss still affects her, she still mourns, still doesnt want to take a life and I like that. It's clear the rest of the cast sees all that as a weakness but for 1. The other students are full of shit who were never on the battlefield either but who got taught to ne numb killers although they are just kids.
And 2. I wont listen to an adult who has no issue watching children get ducking killed.
I hope her character arc is not learning to be ruthless. #Ruthlessness Is Mercy Upon Ourselves.
Because that would be sad.


Final Thoughts:
Like I said. Has potential. If only it didnt feautre that icky stuff.