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In July 1999, the month predicted by Nostradamus to be the end of the world, middle school student Hajime consistently ranks second against his elementary school rival, the beautiful Sawatari. Though she never named him as her rival, he declared himself one when she first outperformed him in elementary school.
Hajime is also an avid enthusiast.
It's not the first manga I've read that is based on a card game, and it's not the first time I've found out about the existence of the Magic the Gathering franchise, but it's the first time I've gotten bored with this concept of "card game", and it's not the MtG's fault itself, but it's rather of how generic both the story and the characters are written here.
When series with similar concepts have the appeal of intensity (like the popular Yu-Gi-Oh! and its contemporary, although less popular, but still striking Duel Masters), or a story that has a romantic subplot as happens with Wizard's Soul, or another story that uses comedy as happens in Elf Deck To Senjou Gurashi, you get the idea of what that manga is about, but this does not happen here. I don't see that "appeal" that makes me enjoy the story.
I don't know if it's because the author wants to make a more "realistic" manga about MtG with a slice of life concept, but it's the characters, who are poorly written, that prevent this from being a good story. Some situations that happens between the characters are fine, but this doesn't mean that you should tolerate those cliche tropes, i'm getting sick of it.
if you don't mind the cliches, a forced love triangle and the constant generic tropes, this is for you, the card duels are good, but not that good, rather, they're "normal" duels, the romantic subplot is not so appealing, and school life practically doesn't exist, it's only an excuse for a rivalry that doesn't matter anymore after volume 4.
The story is good but the artstyle is great
Im really liking this manga even though ive always stayed away from the game, it has actually made me interested in it.
I played MtG briefly in different periods of time, so I'm not the most well-versed (though I have generally won the local tourneys I participated in). So I had a decent grasp of the rules while having weaker recognition of the cards themselves.
That hasn't stopped me from understanding the story at all. The story doesn't rely on in depth knowledge of the rules and the translators explain things fairly well. Some translators even paste links or images to the cards being used.
The story itself is cute and easy to follow. The author makes seamless use of the cards for some adorably cheesy setups. Strongly recommended for anyone who is into nerdy card games like mtg.
This was a fun one to read. Didn't expect to ever see an official MtG manga, especially on a day when I'd just played five drafts in MtG Arena 🙂.
That said, while there are lots of good moments, the flow of the magic battles is rather awkward: the characters name-drop actually existing cards, but since you don't see the card texts, you either have to take those as kids spouting random words, or look up the card names (they're trivial to google) but lose your reading flow.