The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

Mysteria Romantica

What's It About? 

Akari Shimotsuki lives an average life as an average high school girl. She gossips with her friends and harbors a small crush on a certain boy. But today, all that will change. She is going to confess to him and make the deep contents of her heart known. There's just one small hitch in her plans. Just as she is about to say the words, she loses consciousness. When she awakens, she is in another body, in another time. All she knows is that she shares the same soul with the Lady Sayoko Shinonome, a princess who has been put under a curse that forces her away from her body. It is now up to Akari to uncover the mystery of the spell, stop the demons that are ravaging the land and save the world and save herself so she might get back to her time. That is, if the dark forces that cast the spell don't intervene. Or if the ways and wiles of the heart don't make it so she wants to stay there, in her large house with her new servants, forever.

Mysteria Romantica is an original manga series by Saki Aikawa. It is available from MEDIA DO for $5.99 digitally.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Faye Hopper

Rating:

Mysteria Romantica is a manga that could work. The premise is classic shoujo isekai; a young and wide-eyed heroine is swept away to a fantasy riff on historical Japan and is embroiled in a web of love triangles and magical intrigue. A solid setup, and one that feels 90s in a fun way; we don't get a lot female centric isekai these days, either. And yet, it lacks substantial event. This is strange given that the manga features time travel, body swapping, demons and conspiratorial, hidden magic forces that put the world's future in jeopardy, but, somehow, it manages to have a plot that features very little actual advancement and a central mystery that is lacking a real, enticing hook. Even the romance—a core appeal referenced in the title—is so minor and underplayed it barely feels like anyone is developing feelings and falling in love. It's strange, puzzling that this is the case, but that doesn't make the book any less boring or slight.

It's even stranger, too, considering all the plot points are tried-and-true. The main character has a deep, beating heart and desire to help others that stands as a sharp contrast to the cloistered conservatism of the nobility, demons roam the streets at night and terrorize the innocent, and a love triangle seems to forming between the lead, a servant and a villager. There's even an arranged marriage, in the highest romantic melodrama fashion. I've seen many manga take these same narrative beats and imbue them with verve and melodramatic energy, such that a standard shoujo romance becomes fun and captivating, but Mysteria Romantica is content to downplay and lightly, sweetly frame even its most severe elements. The burgeoning affection between the servant and the lead is, in abstract, the typical animosity-and-chagrin-turned-to-mutual- admiration, but when all that is there to indicate the arc are the servant correcting her posture and the lead only cozying up to him in a few, spare instances, it scans as barely-there. It's all so negligible. There's a bit where a demon child is assaulted by villagers, and even that lacks punch and intensity.

Mysteria Romantica feels like it is tailor-made to make the reading experience as insubstantial as possible. From its stakes-free mystery where the nature of why the lead has been brought to this world is only barely hinted at, to its underdeveloped romance, it fails to grip the reader and invest them at almost every turn. And it's a shame, too. I like the classically femme art, and I'm always a sucker for a good shoujo romance. But if the reader is without a reason to care, than there is almost no point in reading the book. And, that being the case for Mysteria Romantica, I probably won't remember much about it by the time this review is done.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Mysteria Romantica is Saki Aikawa's third series to be released in English, and in some ways it's also the best. It doesn't feel like a rehash of a concept someone else did better (The Fox's Kiss is sort of like Kamisama Kiss lite) and it doesn't cross lines, which Moonlight Moratorium does. That it still isn't quite as good as the works of hers that I've read in French is a little odd, but probably that says that she's better at no-frills romance than at the more supernatural sort, which is what all three of her English-language releases are. This one, however, is the least supernatural, dealing mostly with a modern girl being sent back in time, which for some readers, will be enough to merit picking this up.

I'm definitely included in that number, as a total sucker for time travel romance. That said, this still isn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. Akari, in her new life as Sayoko, does fulfill the basic requirements of the genre – she's not good at behaving in a manner that to her seems outdated and repressive, which to the majority of people around her looks highly suspicious…and to one young man she meets is incredibly alluring. Unfortunately for him (and possibly us), he's not the main love interest for Akari/Sayoko – that would be Sayoko's loyal manservant with the period-inappropriate mullet. He's not bad, but he is a lot more cookie cutter as a character, which largely serves to make him less interesting than he ought to be as the romantic lead. But he's also burdened by the societal standards of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, meaning that even if he does fall for Akari in Sayoko's body, he won't feel worthy of pursuing her due to the fact that he's a servant and she's a noble. That's not quite enough intrigue on the romance plot front, but its biggest fault is being too normal, and that's small potatoes, generally speaking.

The supernatural plotline – that demons have been murdering people and Sayoko's expected to put an end to it due to her heritage – is only just picking up at the end of this volume, but it does have potential. There's a clear feeling that Sayoko isn't telling Akari everything she needs to know about what's going on and the implication that her fiancé is up to his eyeballs in everything could mean that things start moving a lot faster in volume two. As it stands right now, Mysteria Romantica's first volume is good enough to merit reading volume two, but not so good as to expect it to suddenly become a great read.