The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Unnamed Memory

What's It About? 

Witches—the centuries-old mages that command power immense enough to bring catastrophe. Oscar, the crown prince of the powerful kingdom of Farsas, was cursed as a young boy to never sire an heir. Hoping to break the magic, he seeks out Tinasha, the strongest witch on the continent. To meet her, he climbs her tower, as she is said to grant the wish of any who successfully do so. Yet, when he arrives at the top…he requests that Tinasha become his bride!

Unnamed Memory is based on the light novel series by Kuji Furumiya. The manga is drawn by Naoki Koshimizu, with English translation by Jeremiah Bourque, and Yen Press will release its first volume both digitally and physically on October 4.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

I'm a sucker for these fantasy “odd couple” stories. The “will they or won't they?” angle somehow works so much better when geasses and witches are involved. While Prince Oscar doesn't have much in the way of personality besides being very competent and hard-working, Tinasha is at least charming in her wide-eyed wonder at how much the world has changed since she last stepped down from her literal tower. My only wish was that there was more interaction between them; there are a handful of cute moments of banter between Tinasha and Oscar, but these get lost between all of the politicking they get involved with. I wanna be really sold on these two as an item, and we're not quite there. The general makeup of the world is intriguing; we don't know anything about the other four witches, but it's nice that we didn't get bludgeoned over the head with so much worldbuilding. For now, I can give this manga a light recommendation. I definitely hope more comes of this concept, but it's off to a decent start.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

If you haven't read the source light novel for this manga adaptation, you'll probably get more enjoyment out of it, because if you have read the novel, you'll know that this is really impressively condensed. That's necessary, really, because the original books are heavy on the description, but this version feels like it does more than just glide over it. Things move far too quickly for the setting and characters to be fully developed, and that's too bad, because Tinasha and Oscar's interactions are both a key piece of the overall story and enjoyable to read.

That said, there really isn't anything explicitly wrong with the way the story is being presented here. The major events are all present, and we get a good sense of Tinasha's caution and Oscar's sneaky, bratty side. Als and Meredina suffer more, mostly because there just isn't space to cover Oscar's ascent up Tinasha's tower and the murder at the festival and the development of two supporting characters. The murder mystery is the biggest loss here because it all happens so quickly that we don't get any real sense of tension, which is a shame. Yes, it's largely set up to the reveal of the two characters we meet in the final half-chapter of the volume, but the whole thing would still have benefited from at least letting us pretend that the murder was important.

Happily, the art is very nice and some of the smaller moments, like when Tinasha refutes the old saw about spirit mages needing to be virgins, are still present. The book also reads easily, which is equal parts a smooth translation and the way the panels are set up, and it's worth noting that the use of full-page images is effective. This isn't bad, it's just not the best version of the story, so if you're interested and not averse to novel reading, I'd suggest picking up the source material, either instead or as well.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Unnamed Memory feels like a story that sometimes struggles to establish an identity. Sometimes the book wants to be a detailed fantasy, sometimes it wants to be a well paced romance and other times it wants to be somewhat of a political drama. When the book takes the time to focus on each of these individual elements, then you can really see some of the thought and imagination that goes into this writing. The problem is that I don't always feel like these elements blend together naturally to make something greater so at times, things can almost feel a bit disjointed. This isn't to the point where I feel like the overall quality plummets into the earth's crust, but rather it feels like every part of the story is holding another part back from reaching its full potential. Personally, I think if the series focused a little bit more on fewer ideas, then we would probably be left with a much tighter story. But as it is right now, I don't think there's enough of Unnamed Memory that allows it to really stand out amongst other books that do a better job of recognizing the elements that they're working with.