The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Youthful Journey

What's It About? 

Childman's class is comprised of the most promising students at the Tower. Problem is, they're a band of misfits that seem intent on blowing up the very institution they're attending! But they'd best watch out; danger lurks in more than one corner here.

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Youthful Journey is a spin-off manga of the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen light novel series, drawn by Kirouran. It is currently available as a digital purchase from J-Novel Club at $8.99. The original novels were written by Yoshinobu Akita and are also available at J-Novel Club.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Another Manga Preview Guide, another Sorcerous Stabber Orphan spin-off manga. And, unfortunately, this one is just as oddly forgettable as its predecessors. The gimmick this time is that it takes place at the Tower of FANGS when our protagonist is still a fifteen-year-old known as Krylancelo, Azalie is still human, and thus magic school hijinks can ensue. And that's about it, really.

But since that doesn't count as a review, we may as well look at the kind of magic school hijinks that ensue. They're fairly typical of the genre – students fight in slightly-school-sanctioned duels that result in massive amounts of property damage, an older student attempts to reign in her kohai, and of course there's that funny one who desperately wants to be a ladies' man but fails miserably. What's perhaps more interesting than all of this is that Azalie and Professor Childman, both nominal members of the class of troublemakers under Childman's supervision and important players in the main series, are largely absent here. Both pop in and out of the story, but for the most part we're following the rest of the class, with a focus on Leticia and Krylancelo. That means that if you were hoping to learn more about Krylancelo's relationship with Azalie, you're bound for disappointment in this volume, at least – the most she's in the story is when she and Leticia are forced to enter the “Miss” pageant, a beauty pageant for students at the Tower. About the only defense of that storyline that I can offer is Leticia pointing out that it's outdated and in poor taste, so at least the story is aware of one of its own issues.

Things do start to get more interesting in the final chapters, when Krylancelo and Heartia go on patrol in the town and get involved with a girl who is defending herself from predators. The boys are supposed to be arresting her for treason, but there's clearly more going on with her, so they're hesitant to do so, which seems to indicate that if they're troublemakers, there's at least a good reason behind it. (In this case, at least. Other times in the book they're just causing trouble by existing in each other's vicinity.) That does give the series a bit more potential than this volume would indicate, and I do like the art, which is very pleasant to look at and easy to read, but as a first book in a series, I can't say that this one makes me want to read more…kind of like all of the Sorcerous Stabber Orphan manga that have come before it.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

Spinoffs like Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Youthful Journey can put me in a really awkward place as a reviewer sometimes. As an episodic comedy, it technically stands on its own, but still presumes that the audience knows who the characters are and how they relate to one another. My familiarity with Orphen extends to exactly one episode of the 2020 anime, so I barely knew who the characters were with no context for any referential humor or inside jokes that may have popped up.

My understanding is that this is a prequel, based on the characters' lives in school together. They live out their halcyon youthful days before… whatever the inciting incident in Orphen happens, getting into scrapes that are, ultimately, inconsequential. Ah, youth. I'm sure if I knew who these kids would grow up to be, I would be far more invested, sighing over how young and innocent they are, how they were just such good friends until… something happened. I think there's a dragon involved. That's what I remember from that one episode, at least.

As a standalone comedy, The Youthful Journey is just okay. Childman's class is full of troublemakers with big personalities – the kind of people who grow up to be fantasy adventure characters. What a coincidence! That's exactly what happened! Some of the humor is kind of funny, though I undoubtedly would have gotten more of it if I'd known who these wacky kids were. At the very least, it's never crass or cruel. There was, however, one chapter that genuinely bothered me: the school festival. Azalie is entered into a beauty contest against her will, and all of her extremely fair objections – that it's objectifying when everyone is supposed to be equal at the Tower, that it's outdated, and so on – are brushed off, because apparently every comedy with a school festival has to have a gag about the beauty contest. Outdated indeed!

Unlike my preview guide comrade Rebecca Silverman, I really don't know much about Sorcerous Stabber Orphen at all, nor do I know anyone who's really into it. Still, someone must be, or else they wouldn't keep bringing over its many, many, many spinoffs. So, if you're one of those people, maybe this'll be for you.