Wistoria: Wand and Sword Volume 9 Review

Wistoria: Wand and Sword’s anime is set to return in Spring 2026, but in the meantime, the English releases of the manga continue at a slow but stable pace. Volume 8 of the series saw Will and some other key members of the cast advance to the Tower, but our protagonist failed to prove himself worthy of joining a faction and is stuck on the first floor. Will this new volume offer him another chance at success? Let’s find out!

While Will feared he would be stuck forever on the first floor of the Tower, it was announced that a second Bloom would soon be held. Should Will manage to impress the second time around, he’ll be able to advance and continue toward his goal of becoming a Magia Vander. Luckily for him, Will isn’t the only one counting on the second Bloom to get recruited.

Although a mighty mage in his own right, Julius ultimately wasn’t selected by a faction either. Now, just like Will, he’s been left to stew on the first floor of the Tower with the second Bloom dangled in front of him as a second chance of advancing. And unlike Will (who’s simply studying), he actually has a plan!

Julius decides that it’s in his best interests to help Will, therefore (hopefully) earning him Elfaria’s blessing. This is, of course, no easy task for Julius, who’s always looked down upon our lead, and no amount of training is going to help Will work out how to activate his magic on demand. And to make matters worse, other students have been promised a chance to advance should they wipe out Will and Julius! Now, the two are trying to train, while being chased by enemies and bickering with each other (as they often do).

Thankfully, while this could have led into a much larger training arc, author Fujino Omori has the good sense to contain it to a single volume’s worth of material. However, there’s a catch. As Will continues to train, a friendly face tells him that the answer to controlling his power may lie in his past, particularly with an incident that led to the nasty scars on his back from protecting Elfaria as a child.

We’re shown some of that incident within this volume, but the entirety of it is told through a prequel light novel that was released five months after this volume in Japan. That same light novel has so far not been licensed for an English release, so those looking for a fuller picture of the story are out of luck. Omori is originally a novelist primarily (known for DanMachi), so I wasn’t particularly surprised when he wrote a novel for Wistoria, but it has put us in an awkward position here in English. Right now, I don’t think missing out will affect the manga’s story in a great deal, but should we loop back to it later, I’m not entirely convinced it won’t matter more.

Still, the issue of novel-only content aside, this is another stellar outing for Wistoria’s manga as it manages to offer both solid story progression and some exciting action scenes. Not dragging out the second Bloom helps immensely, given how many other shonen series would happily put us in training arc hell for a while. And it means that come Volume 10, Will’s world will have changed substantially, which offers us readers something new to get invested in.

Wistoria: Wand and Sword Volume 9 comes to the West thanks to Kodansha and continues to be translated by Alethea and Athena Nibley, with lettering credited to AndWorld Design. As with previous releases, this one reads well with no problems. No extras to speak of, in particular, outside of the usual character profiles and some world-building pages between chapters. Still no colour pages, which is the main thing I wish we were getting since the cover art is always quite striking!

In Japan, the series is currently up to 13 volumes (14 next month). Here in English, since we’ve had a break recently (#8 came out August last year!), next in the schedule is #10 in November, with #11 and #12 following on a bimonthly schedule thereafter.

Overall, Wistoria: Wand and Sword continues to be an engaging read with its ninth instalment. Although there are some issues with relying on a tie-in novel to fully cover some of the content, at least for now, I’m just grateful this arc isn’t being drawn out.

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Books Distributors UK.