Maddies Manga

I first saw this manga maybe about a year ago on Tiktok, and was infatuated with it right away. The art..the concept…everything was just so eye-catching! I wasn’t able to find a physical, and eventually forgot about it, until I discovered it on a used book store! So of course I scooped up the first 3 volumes~

Info about the manga

If the title was in English…

This manga’s title can be directly translated as “the bride of the death god”. While the two main characters in this manga aren’t married (yet..?) it does do a something of a good job explaining the story.

I borrowed a description from Seishun:

The reaper loves seeing the cries of humans before swinging down his scythe to reap their souls. He lives for the hunt of humans souls before their passing. Yet one night, he encounters a dying girl with flowers blooming in her room looking back at him with a smile.

How many volumes, and other manga

As of right now, there are 3 volumes released!

If you want to try it out before buying, you can download a free sample from Amazon here.

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Why I like this manga

This manga has a really dark, but somewhat hopeful, atmosphere, which I found very intriguing! Both main characters have very interesting personalities, and backstories. While it is a fantasy story, there is a good amount of human drama mixed in, which really pulled me in!

The characters

Our grim reaper main character believes that he was once human, but can’t remember his past name, nor his past life. He also has a unique quirk for someone with his job: he can’t bring himself to reap a person until he has seen them crying, terrified to die. The next person on his list is our female main character, Aibi.

Aibi is a girl suffering from an incredibly rare, incurable disease (curse?). This disease turns her life force into flowers, dooming her to a fate of eternal slumber, while surrounded by flowers. Though she is set to die at a very young age, Aibi is never shown as anything but happy, even when facing her grim reaper.

So, we have a reaper who can only reap after seeing a crying face, and a dying girl who is content with her fate. Who wouldn’t find this premise interesting?

How the story plays out

Volume 1 went in a very different direction from what I was expecting, in a good way! This volume can be split off into two sections, before Aibi was abandonded, and after. The after really gave me Noragami vibes (one of my favourite manga!), and it kept me hooked right up until the end.

Other themes found in this volume that I generally enjoy:

• found family
• escaping your fate
• personality gap (Aibi)

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Is there drama? (we’re generally not a fan of drama)

While I do think this will be a manga with romance in it, I wouldn’t call it a “romance manga”. So, obviously, there isn’t any relationship drama between our reaper and Aibi. There is a whole lot of angst in Aibi’s backstory, and we do learn something incredibly dramatic about our reaper on the very last page, but I think this drama really added to the dark tones of the manga.

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Maddies Ratings

There really wasn’t any romance in volume 1. We see a lot of Aibi teasing the reaper, and the reaper getting clearly flustered, but there really wasn’t anything I look for when I’m reading a romance manga.

As this is a supernatural manga, I feel like world-building is very difficult. I do still have a lot of questions about what happened in this volume, but I prefer a bit of mystery rather than having everything spelled out! I do with that Aibi’s new mysterious classmate, as well as our reapers powers, were explained a little bit more.

There really wasn’t any development in this volume, but i’m not complaining. We see Aibi’s true colours after a little while, but I wouldn’t call it “development” as she’s just showing her actual personality.

This was very fun for me!! I didn’t realize how much I missed reading this type of manga until I picked it up. There is action, interesting characters, and a lot of mystery. So much to keep you hooked~

Yes!! I’m very grateful to the past me who bought all three volumes at once.

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Have you read Shinigami no Hanayome yet?