˗ˋˏ ♡Thank you Nachi Aono and NetGalley♡ ˎˊ˗

the main plot for this book does not make sense to me, it seems like their are different points however they are not brought together well, as well as I found the whole book just weird. Our main characters look nothing above the age of 14 and yet you are having them kiss......as a healing method. That just seems random and very much not needed for this, especially for such young kids, which they literally are, young teens basically. There is such an opportunity to have the main plot be about the war and how they send basically kids to fight for the war, but no you have most of the story be about kissing.... and if the main or even only way for them to be able to heal each other is kissing, the nurse being and adult must mean you have a grown adult kissing a minimum age of 10 as that is the youngest in the academy thing and the maximum/oldest being 17, so you would have a grown adult kissing underage children, yeah no.

Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I read the description of the story, I got super excited for the manga. Girls getting educated to become weapons in a war? Oh, count me in, especially if they fall in love. Love a good lesbian story. The artstyle is beautiful, the world-building started out great, and then... it's revealed, that the main characters are over-sexualized-10-year-olds. I immediately lost my liking for the story, and the nurse, who is supposedly transgender, gets shamed all the time and is the "sexiest character" in the whole manga somehow made things worse. The students call them a perv, also they might be not trans, just crossdressing? Also shows predatory behavior towards the students, being very happy that she gets to kiss the MC to heal her. THE MC WHO IS 10 YEARS OLD. Consent basically doesn't exist in this universe. I wish they were older! I really do! Sadly not what I expected. The art is still pretty tho.

I love the concept but I will not be reading any farther. I’ve seen other mangas/animes where mana can be transferred via physical touch, kissing being an optimal way to do so. I can be fine with it but in this story, it’s done between children. They’re 10 years old. I liked everything else that was going on so far but it just made me too uncomfortable. Unfortunately this will be the only volume I read.

First off, the art is absolutly lovely!!!!! I loved the main character so much, and the contrast with Mimi (secondary char) was so nice! The designs are lovely and the story is full of potential, it is darker than i thougth it would.

2.5 stars
First, the art is gorgeous. I love the character designs and how cutesy everything looks. I also like the main relationship so far.
There isn't a ton of world building or info about how the magic system works in this volume, which is fine as long as future volumes include those things.

With that being said, I agree with other reviewers on goodreads about this manga's issues. There are several scenes of 10 year olds making out which just feels weird (also that's how the healing system works and while it isn't shown, the adult nurse also has to kiss these 10 year olds, sometimes while they're unconscious). Also, the nurse is a trans woman who is constantly referred to as a pervert, which is a harmful trope that is particularly frustrating to find in a queer story.

It's been a bit since I found a GL I was this intrigued by. A lot of that comes down to the plot structure. Orphans with magic are raised for warfare, and the story starts with the death of an unseen roommate, so the tone is set early, but the girls are aware of their reality and try to make the best with the time they have. Then we are introduced to Mimi. who is a whole other can of worms as to just what she actually is. This series has a lot of interesting worldbuilding that makes up for the more mundane setting. If it was a more typical schoolgirl romance, it wouldn't have grabbed me as hard. I like what I'm seeing here, I hope the momentum keeps going.

Yeah, I don't appreciate the tranphobia in this manga at all. Penning the only non-gender conforming person in the whole story as a sexual predator is a wildly harmful and inappropriate thing to do, and needs to stop now. Also didn't love the focus of children kissing being a bigger topic of the plot.

Such a cute story and amazing graphics. Read this in one sitting and can’t wait to read further.
The story was so original and the main characters Sheena and Mimi were so lovable. Can’t wait to see where this story goes and it will be an insta buy for anything further by Nachi Aono

~ARC Reader~

Thanks to NetGalley for access to this ARC!

Starting with the one thing that left a bad taste in my mouth: the nurse character and the language used around them. They are apparently a cross-dresser or trans and they are belittled and berated repeatedly by the students and insults are hurled at them constantly if they are in a scene. That was my only major detractor.

It was a delightful start to a story. I like the plentiful yuri pairings aside from just the main couple. Also the backdrop of a magical school in a war-torn world is pretty unique for a romance manga in my experience, so I found that refreshing! The artistic choices for the more gory scenes were very well done too. Hoping to see more volumes in transaltion!

I want to thank Netgalley for an advanced ARC of this manga to read

180 pages

This is a story about orphaned children being in an orphanage/Magical Military training school to send them into battle, to use magic and fighting skills to defeat their enemies and monsters but there are these special girls who are chosen to be elite warriors and are called MiMi.

We follow a child who lost her roommate in battle and has a new roommate given to her who is a MiMi.

I liked the story & how it progressed leaving me wanting to read the next volume, the main character is having trouble dealing with things and also starting to realize her future and I have a feeling we will be seeing more about the connection they are making between main charact3r and MIMi..

This is a fact read and not everyone will enjoy it but I did and I haven't liked allot of manga's recently

First review on netgalley!

Overall, I liked it. It’s a cute manga, which is interesting cause it's a story about the horrors of war, how casual the world (which is either a fantasy world or an alt history world) is when it comes to violence, which makes it more horrifying, and how growing up entrenched in that violence steals your childhood (as far as I can tell from the 1st volume.) The war is off screen and abstract but impactful all the same. And the scenes of the war making it back home (mock battles, injuries, deaths, etc…) are gruesome, which makes how calm and cutesy the rest of it is more jarring. What can I say? I'm a Madoka Magica fan, so I like cute stories that are actually super dark.

3.5 stars on that alone but…

I do take away points for the casual transphobia, which sadly is pretty rampant in manga. I can't tell if the character who experiences transphobia is meant to be trans or in drag, but it doesn't really matter; it's not cool. At least the main character treats her with respect. I'm not super surprised about the transphobia, but for a book that was labeled LGBT, it's disappointing that the T is ignored.

3 stars and I will be continuing the series as it comes out. It IS only the 1st volume of a manga, so I'm interested to see if it evolves as the series progresses. Also, I love the Author's avatar at the back of the book

*Thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest reivew*

Yikes! I saw this on Netagalley and thought it looked very cute, in addition to having an interesting premise. I've been really getting into manga that put spins on the magical girl genre. But this one was very much not it.

Right off the bat, the way that the school heals the girls who manage to make it back from the war front is to kiss them? Very strange and disturbing given that kids range from 10-17 and the main characters are 10 years old.

Despite its cute art style, I will not be coming back for this manga. It gave me a weird vibe all the way around and honestly I considered not even adding this to my goodreads and leaving it on NetGalley. 1/5 Stars, probably less.

there was nothing wrong with the story or the art. I was excited to read it, but I had to drop to 2 stars just because of the nurse character. not only is the trans pervert teacher trope harmful to the trans community, it also gives nothing to the story and is just gross. the book would be good without that trope and if the main characters were older than 10.

If I had to summarize I Want To Love You til Your Dying Day in one word, I would say it's wildly uncomfortable. Following orphans who are conscripted into a military school with little regard for their livelihoods, I wasn't expecting anything feel good. But underneath the dehumanization they are subjected to, these characters find connection and meaning in each other despite their unbearable circumstances.

This is all well and good, if you can look past some questionable elements it really has something emotional at the core of its story. However. I don't think most people could or should look past the pandering present here.

There is:
Naked, bloody body horror of a 10 year old
Excessive amounts of focus on kids kissing each other
A gender nonconforming character depicted as a sexual predator

Frankly, this feels like a painful throwback in many ways. Plot convenient excuses for intimacy, throwing out random pieces of world-building and just seeing what sticks, and edgy bleakness all feel like something that was Frankenstein'ed together out of a early 00s otaku fever dream.

Overall, I don't think this is a great series for most readers unless you have a high tolerance for grimdark, edgy fantasy and depictions of children in profoundly upsetting situations. If you can stomach Made in Abyss, you might like this manga. It definitely was not for me.

Thank you to Kodansha Comics for my ARC provided through Netgalley.

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!