Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! Volume 3

Cherry Magic! 3

Although the premise of Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! is ludicrous — if you’re a virgin when you turn thirty, you get telepathy by touch to make up for it — there’s a sweetness to the BL series by Yuu Toyota that I appreciate.

There are plenty of familiar tropes; the second volume had the group vacation trip, while in this third volume, Adachi is sick and Kurosawa, who likes him, comes over to take care of him. But that’s part of the fun of a rom-com, that you see familiar ideas played out with all the emotion. Here, that’s enhanced by Adachi seeing Kurosawa’s internal monologue. Or battle, in this case, as he’s internally talking himself out of finding Adachi cute while he’s sick.

Cherry Magic! Volume 3

There are plenty of complications to add — in the last book, Adachi thought Kurosawa’s sister was his girlfriend, while here, just when the two are going home together, a co-worker invites himself along for a takoyaki party. That leads, in the bonus chapter, to a debate over who’s sharing the bed with whom.

There’s jealousy and uncertainty and interruptions, and it’s all silly and yet comfortably heart-warming. My favorite bit of misunderstanding here was with co-worker Fujisaki. She’s a fujoshi, a fangirl of boy-boy love stories (we’d call her a shipper), so she’s rooting for the two of them. Adachi’s telepathy keeps getting interrupted in such a way that he thinks she’s also in love with him, when really, she loves the idea of him with Kurosawa.

Importantly, Adachi has to determine whether he cares for Kurosawa or whether he merely likes the idea of someone liking him. That’s a great question to explore, and it adds a mature level of analysis to the enjoyable hijinks.



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