The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Trinity Seven -Revision-

What's It About? 

When Rinka Shinonome, a new transfer student, arrives in high schooler Mitsunari Miyazawa's class, he immediately falls for her and asks her out…only to be impaled by a grotesque monster! The next day, he awakens to find it was all a dream…or was it? As it turns out, he's been reborn with the power of the Magus of Envy, and he'll be fighting alongside Rinka from now on! Will he be able to master his new abilities and protect his little sister from the fiends that once claimed his life?

Trinity Seven -Revision- is a manga with a story by Kenji Saitō and art by Yōichi Nishio. English translation by Christine Dashiell, and lettered by Anthony Quintessenza. Published by Yen Press (April 16, 2024).

CW: Contains NSFW, but not pornographic, imagery.

Is It Worth Reading?

To pick up this one, you don't need to be familiar with the original Trinity Seven series. It would probably make this a little smoother in places to have the basic knowledge of the franchise's world, but one of the marks of a decent spinoff is whether or not anyone can pick it up and understand it, and this one passes handily. There are grimoires, a school for magi called Biblia, and evil ghost-monsters the magi have to fight, and that's really all you need to get right into the story.

And is that story worthwhile? More or less. It follows a fairly faithful path worn in by countless series before it: The tale of an ordinary high school boy who gets a hot magic girlfriend and incredible powers. In this case, the boy is Mitsunari, and the girl is Rinka, the gorgeous new transfer student. He's also got his adorable and inappropriately attached younger sister Tsukuyo at home, and by the second half of the book, we've added a bunch more busty young ladies plus a teacher to the cast. But Mitsunari isn't interested in any of them, because he's got Rinka, and his feelings for his sister seem like they could remain brotherly, so this is one of those books with the trappings of a harem story without actually going there.

It's also worth noting that this is pretty light on the fanservice, despite the warning on the cover. There are female nipples and a few tentacles that don't go anywhere near naked Tsukuyo's crotch, and Rinka gets stripped during a fight, but mostly things are confined to a couple of underwear shots and girls in tight clothes. The gore, on the other hand, needs the warning much more; monsters can rip people's faces off and are genuinely disgusting in many panels, and the human-shaped monster who thinks about molesting Tsukuyo is just as gruesome in his thoughts. The action is decent and blends well with the gross and fanservice elements of the story, and I found myself quite enjoying my time reading it for that.

Trinity Seven -Revision- is a decent piece of action escapism. It doesn't go too far while still giving readers' imaginations all the fuel they need to dream up other scenarios. The art is good at grim monsters and action, even if it sticks to one basic face for all of the girls. It's easy reading if you're looking for a supernatural action read.

Yeah, this is definitely going to be one of those "I've seen it all before" stories, isn't it? We have a listless high school boy who has larger-than-life fantasies interacting with the mysterious transfer student who happens to practice magic. Then something tragic happens, and he is gifted with magical powers that he is more or less an expert at, and now he must band together with a large cast of characters of the opposite sex to defeat a great evil. Raise your hand if you've heard the story before.

To Trinity Seven's defense, there are some enjoyable elements here. While the character designs are the textbook definition of generic, the monster designs are surprisingly detailed and grotesque. They almost feel like they belong in a completely different manga, but I would argue that's a good thing because the dichotomy between their designs and the designs of the main cast helped make things feel more dramatic when the violence ramped up. The story also displays a surprising amount of self-awareness cleverly with our lead wanting to be a storyteller. He takes advantage of the fact that he knows a lot of storytelling tropes to move the plot along, such as how he comes to his sister's rescue because the villain attacking her would be the most tragic thing for the story to do next. I've always been a fan of that tongue-in-cheek kind of narrative even though I feel like this one doesn't go nearly as far enough with it.

I kind of wish the story went further with some of its tropes because then it probably would've left a bigger impact. Instead, Trinity Seven is weirdly selective about what it wants to go all out with. One minute, the violence feels incredibly visceral, while another minute, things feel incredibly tame and safe. One minute, it's trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but then follow-up scenes play the tropes completely straight. There's not nearly as much fanservice here as I thought there would be, but when there is, it focuses on the weird relationship between the main character and his middle school sister. It's a shame but I feel like there are better fantasies out there that you could waste your time on. Or at the very least, there are ones that make better use of the standard tropes that old grouches like myself are just desensitized to.