Haridama Magic Cram School manga review

I must say Haridama Magic Cram School is a slight improvement over some of the stuff I’ve read lately. Instead of being actively bad it’s just meh through and through. After stuff like Ayako, Remember and A Single Match, this is actually a breath of fresh air. That doesn’t mean the manga is particularly good, though.

Summary: Kokuyo and Harika are a little unusual – and not just because they’re sorcery students. They’re Obsidians, wizards who must use enchanted swords to help them cast spells. Their fellow students think Obsidians are inferior to “normal” wizards. But Kokuyo and Harika have something that their cohorts don’t: the power of friendship!

The manga itself is slightly less cheesy than the summary makes it sound, but only slightly. The cover also says “Atsushi Suzumi, Creator of Venus and Virus,” a series I’ve never heard of, but I guess it was famous enough, or successful enough for Del Rey Manga that they thought it worthy of localization. In fact I’ve going to venture out on a fairly sturdy limb and say Venus and Virus must be a very popular series, because there’s no other way a sensible localization company would consider wasting good money on something as mediocre as Haridama Magic Cram School.

I can summarize the manga as follows: Harika and Kokuyo bicker while pretending not to like each other. When a monster shows up, they work together to defeat it. They bicker some more. Another monster appears. They work together to defeat it and discover they actually work quite well together. They bicker a little less but still pretend not to really like each other. And they all live happily ever after, the end.

So it’s really juvenile, predictable stuff, but there’s nothing annoying, confusing or offensive in it. On the other hand it’s not particularly funny or interesting or heart-warming either. It’s only 1 volume long and it does cover what the author wants it to cover in that length (i.e. everything works out when we work together) but I can’t help feeling a simple message like that could have been conveyed just as well in one chapter instead of four.

I think Haridama Magic Cram School might be okay for fans of Atsushi Suzuki, whoever s/he is, or maybe manga readers who like easy-to-collect one-volume manga regardless of the content (of which I am actually one, though I’m learning to be pickier). And I guess it does make a good “baby’s first shounen” kind of manga for younger readers (around 9-13 maybe) since it features characters of roughly that age. Apart from that it’s not especially remarkable or worth reading. I wager I’ll have completely forgotten it before the month is out.