Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! Volume 10 Review

“Luxury isn’t what we’re going for.” Adachi. “We want to formally show… our family and close friends that we’ve chosen to live our lives together.” Kurosawa.

Adachi and Kurosawa have decided to get married. They’ve formally met each other’s families and shared the news with them. Now there’s just one more problem: how to tell their co-workers at the office! (Because they’ve both been wearing rings, everyone’s assumed – except possibly Fujisaki-san – that they’re engaged to marry female partners outside the office.)

However, another problem they soon encounter is not just the cost of organizing a wedding but doors closing in their faces when they start researching venues and look into sharing a flat together. Luckily, novelist Tsuge’s dancer boyfriend Minato (yes, they do seem to be a pair!) has a useful contact in the estate agency business. Adachi’s younger brother Kazuya is happy to act as photographer. And Fujisaki-san is delighted to help by designing the invitations (she’s been shipping the two for a long while).

So, is all set fair…?

If you’ve already watched one of the live TV drama versions (there’s a Japanese and now a Thai one) what happens in this volume won’t come as a surprise. The currently airing (and very charming) anime TV series (Crunchyroll) hasn’t quite reached this moment at the time of writing but it’s not far off.

Impossible to avoid spoilers here, then, as the fresh, springlike colours of the cover art with the title in silver – and Adachi and Kurosawa in matching white suits with matching bouquets – celebrates the volume in which the couple get married. And Yuu Toyota deserves all the praise for the positive message that these chapters radiate about the importance and validity of same-sex marriage. In planning for their Big Day, the two men encounter more than a few hurdles but with the help of their friends and family, manage to overcome them all.

The wedding chapter in which Adachi thinks back over all the events which led up to this day (the unforeseen outcome of gaining the ability to read others’ thoughts at thirty) delivers a moving read. The colour image at the front of the book, the formal wedding photograph, has been widely shared on the internet and it’s an apt affirmation of the way Yuu Toyota’s characters have gained so much affection among readers and viewers alike. We were all rooting for this day to come in the story and it’s a fitting climax. However, the preview for Volume 11 is prefaced with a page reminding us that ‘Marriage isn’t the finish line. Life goes on.’ Of course, as Volume 10 is all about getting married, it earns its M Mature rating with a bedroom scene which, while not very explicit, shows enough to merit the rating; as it’s two characters we’ve come to care about, it feels right and in no way voyeuristic.

If I had to choose a favourite chapter, it’d be the one in which Kurosawa’s elder sister Mari comes to cheer them up and give them a pep talk when it seems as if their wedding plans have stalled. She’s fierce and feisty but her positive attitude cheers them up and motivates them to keep going (when she and Kurosawa aren’t arguing, that is). “Why can’t two people who love each other be free to get married?” she says, getting into her stride. “We were born to find happiness!”

The translation for Square Enix Manga is again by Taylor Engel and reads well as before; there’s a few helpful translation notes at the end. The lettering is again by Bianca Pistillo who captures, as usual, the varying shades of emotion in the exchanges throughout the volume. Fans of Tsuge and Minato won’t be disappointed either as we get to learn a little more about the way their relationship is progressing (‘it’s magically complicated’ as it says in the blurb). Volume 11 is due out in June 2024 – and it will be really interesting to see how Yuu Toyota shows the central relationship progressing as the excitement of the wedding dies away and everyday life goes on.

Our review copy from Square Enix Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).