Sleeps In Sunbeams's manga / #magic(35)

A fun, short one-shot where a powerful, forbidden spell has some unexpected consequences.

I enjoyed the story of the two otaku, there was no power imbalance or huge age gap to make things disturbing. The last story is another matter, from the public rape to later being ok with the rapist. Life isn't that naively simple for victims of sexual assault, especially when you're young. These kind of stories are ones I hate, even more so when the reconciliation is so darned easy.

Cute little one shot, fast paced. Would be nice to see the concept extended to a few chapters at least. Has a sequel, Ichido Dake no Uta.

Akon Tenkawa has been searching for the reincarnated soul of the man he loved for hundreds of years. As an Izuna Master (able to use his fox spirit Eika Byakko, to make premonitions and cast spells) he sent Eika out to guide Ryuuichirou Hinano to him once his soul was found. In this lifetime, Ryuuichirou is a University student who is shocked and in denial that he has any past life, let alone one where he loves a man. I liked this story for the power of Akon’s love. He lived many lonely lifetimes so his happiness at finding Ryuuichirou and his eagerness to love him was really quite sweet. Trigger Warning: Rape, control, abuse, pain, blood play, violence (seriously..you are warned). The second story followed Akons’ fox ayakashi Eika and his long time arch nemesis Mamoru the dog ayakashi (and mountain God). While Eika was used to fighting other ayakashi, he had never faced one as crazed and powerful as Mamoru. The mountain god has no human compassion or gentleness, but he wanted to claim for himself a version of human love and he wanted Eika. The way he claimed the fox spirit was with extreme force and dominance, blood and pain. If you are into blood play you may like this story just be warned that consent between these creatures was non existent. I think the only way you could have such a yandere and obsessed relationship with this amount of violence is with non human demon spirits. Keeping their natures in mind I went with the story, but I am not a big fan of power imbalance in relationships and would like to see more power or control from Eika to make their dynamic more interesting.

A sweet story. Philomena is reincarnated into the body of a child on a magic filled fantasy world. Her childhood best friend is the black haired magic user Eddie, a wary boy who had been abused by his family for bearing the dark colouring of a magic user. Whilst pouring over magical tomes and grimoires together they form the beginning of a lifelong bond that grows from friendship to love. However, loving the most powerful magic user in their nation has its drawbacks, especially when your stubborn love is determined to protect you. I appreciated the strong ties between Philly and Eddie. Their love for each other was always an obvious priority between the two opposites.

A lovely story with quite a few moments that tugged at my heartstrings. The Heroes love for Louisa was deep and true, and he never gave up on the girl he loved. The end of the story was the bittersweet style of a life well lived surrounded by love. It’s enough to make you shed a few tears and yet feel happy at the same time.

Cecil and Ashley were the cutest pair from childhood to school couple. In this reincarnation the game had quite a few differences than expected and that added lots of fun to the story. Not too much yandere considering the game, but their was still a lovely possessive love story here.

This was a nice foray into an isekai story without getting entrenched in hundreds of chapters that often feel are filled with needless plot tropes. Erika is cast into an otome game as the villainess facing death in every plot line. Even worse, the game is infected with a bug that is causing some serious interference. The things I enjoyed were the friendships made by Erika, her cheats and her romance option. There were some unexplored things like the impact of the white king and the heroes journey that made this feel like book 1 in a longer series though. Both would seem to be too important to leave unresolved and their lack does distract from the feeling of story completion.

An epic romantic adventure graphic novel that was totally addictive. Japanese high school student Noriko transmigrated to a fantasy world where the first person she meets is Izark, a serious and powerful young man who seemed ready to let her follow his lead. In a world of monsters and a mysterious prophecy, Noriko and Izark travel together and fall in love while the legend of The Awakening and The Sky Demon looms. No more spoilers, just read this wonderful story where the FMC is an ordinary girl who is neither a clinging damsel in distress nor an overpowered Mary Sue. She musters her courage to help where she can and is incredibly loyal and supportive of Izark. That warrior in turn treasures her and it’s so sweet how close the two are. This is an older story written around 1990’s - 2000’s, so the art style is (naturally) older, but it is still cute (especially the MCs) and it’s balanced by the plot which was rich and colourful.

This fairy tale of a story was adorable. It had a rather evil winter magician with a frozen heart named Larmanilla, a human named Romeade fulfilling his dying mother’s wish to travel to the winter magicians castle, tiny fox butlers and servants, a savagely giant guard dog, and a magical golden apple tree. When Romeade came to the castle he became the chef and spent the next 5 years working for the temperamental Larmanilla. His trustworthy heart and warm meals gradually endeared him to the magician, and the story followed their budding romance through some unexpected twists and turns. The story was slow paced yet actually packed a lot in at the same time. There were morals along the way (like any good fairy tale) such as the high cost of greed and spots of dark humour and ruthless actions that added some texture to the fluffiness of the story. It was definitely a story I enjoyed.