Mahoutsukai no Yome
The Ancient Magus' Bride

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Series review up to chapter 91/early volume 19: 4/5
READERS BEWARE: there's old versions of the 1st volume's chapters that mention witches or magicians instead of magi as they should.

The Ancient Magus' Bride hits so many niche interests just right and I'm sure my 15yo self would have gone gaga over the series. A wild but gorgeous fantasy world that is realistically integrated with the modern age and isn't overwhelming to keep track of. A (female) MC who experiences a lot of growth and ends up being very fun to follow. The monster, both in body and in nature, who offers her a new chance at ... life, a cage of thorns in which she can have the peace to heal until she must claw her way out. Their really odd and unique relationship, platonic, familiar, with some romance bait thrown into the mix. How their worst traits make them clash and how this pushes them to better themselves. The good selection of supporting cast (I fucking love Alice and Zoe ;_;) made up of nuanced people, many of them carrying interesting flaws or struggles.

I could go on, but rather I want to move on to the 3 main issues I've had with this series. These seem less prevalent in the latest volumes but given the approaching climax I wouldn't be surprised if they were on hold until the next arc introduction. They are:
* Lack of clarity with speech bubbles. You'll have a mere 3 people in a scene and you can't make out to whom the balloon is pointing, and often times it's impossible to tell from context (maybe it's the translation?);
* Too much love for in media res. It's cheap shock value because it just causes momentary confusion or upset at thinking something got skipped over. Way too often we finish an arc then skip ahead to the midst of the next, and then we go back to explain how did they get there. The earliest example I can give is the dragon episode intro. It wasn't a glaring situation but it was certainly pointless;
* Too many characters with interesting stories to tell but not enough time spent with them. It's like too many cuts in an action film, we spend a page checking in with a character, another on another group... Speaking of, remember Ruth? Remember when Ruth was a brother character and not some tool that only shows up near the climactic end of the arc? Yea.

About the art, it started out a bit on the shakey side? Chise could've stood to look a bit more her age and Elias's face went through plenty of changes. At some point these issues ceased to be and now it just looks gorgeous and cute.

The art is beautiful, the initial characters are interesting and complex. Some panels are very stirring! the series holds up with creative problems and interesting magic lore outside of a school setting and held my interest up until about midwayish.
There is an arc that occurs that has derailed any progressive storytelling on the relationship between Elias and Chise as well as Elias' backstory and Chise's magical progress.
Also, there is a crazy amount of exposition on mechanics of magic and magic lore from multiple cultures; very interesting albeit a little excessive.

That being said i reccomend it. This manga definitely has its problems yet it's pretty ... good.

This series would be better named "Stockholm Syndrome and the Wendigo" , I cant quite figure out what others see in this series. Chise and Elias have a strained Owner-Pet relationship throughout the 10+ volumes i suffered through. It comes off as extremely toxic, and every time Chise forgives Elias for being a literal monster, it just seems so forced... Some of the side characters are more interesting, Ruth, Silky, and Alice Swayne have genuinely captivating backstories, and i would happily read a spinoff series about them.

The Ancient Magus Bride ticks a lot of boxes. I wanted to like this series, but honestly I ... found it to be extremely predictable, not to mention boring. There seems to be some missing context to everything shown, like i should be reading this as a sequel to something else. Maybe this series gets by on it's impressive an beautiful art, however that is in vain due to how little narrative is actually displayed. The story moves like molasses, and seemingly important plot points are immediately glossed over or resolved by means of unexplained "magic".

I cant recommend this Manga, it was a chore to read.