The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms

A manga about anthropomorphized animals who attend a school to learn magic.

Man, this one was such a disappointment. I love Nagabe‘s The Girl from the Other Side so I was looking forward to reading this.

Nagabe‘s art work shines in the designs of the various anthropomorphized characters. They have a similar but contrasting style to Paru Itagaki‘s BEASTARS characters. I loved the framing of panels and subtle touches like adding an animal index at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately I kinda hated all the stories.

There is a chapter about a romance between a teacher and student. As a teacher myself, I will tell you that nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than seeing this cliche in manga. It’s incredibly stupid. Another chapter had a creepy crow who manipulated others so he could claim the attention of his beautiful peacock friend. Then there was also a chapter about young vampire bats kissing and it felt like I was watching children exploring sexuality and that really grossed me out(though to be fair there isn’t any indication about their actually age).

Basically, lots of the story content seemed to line up with bad troupes of older BL and I really hated those parts. I did like the story between a red deer and his cold blooded lizard roommate because it felt devoid of those troupes. But I had high expectation for this book and I feel let down.

2/5 stars on the Morgana scale for me. It’s available in English from Seven Seas Entertainment.

~dakazu