The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

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

Adachi, a thirty-year-old virgin, has developed the power to read people's minds by touching them. After a brush with his very handsome colleague, Adachi realizes he has a raging crush on none other than Adachi himself.

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! is based on a manga of the same name by Yū Toyota. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

I was a little wary of Cherry Magic! going into its premiere because the whole concept of a 30- year-old virgin literally getting magic wizard powers is just…I mean, c'mon. Really? We're doing this in 2024? I teach angsty teenagers for a living, and even a terminally uncool authority figure such as myself has to wonder why we're out here making shows based on decades-old memes.

Thankfully, Adachi's narratively convenient telepathic powers are just that: An easy way to get a socially awkward and sexually frustrated protagonist-type to stumble his way into his first love affair—and with the office's token handsome stud, no less! Also thankfully, Kurosawa is the kind of immediately handsome but likeably gentle guy that you can see a guy like Adachi falling for—especially since our hero here has seemingly never considered the possibility of getting involved in a same-sex relationship before. It's cute, and there are funny jokes that Cherry Magic! mines from its meet-cute, such as the bit where Adachi and Kurosawa are respectively terrified and delighted at getting conveniently “hooked up” for a work dinner by their well-meaning boss.

Unfortunately, this is where my particular rom-com foibles come into play, and Cherry Magic starts to lose some of its appeal based on its approach to traditional genre formula. Specifically, I've never been a huge fan of the main character that is so utterly lost and inexperienced with romance that the entire process of talking to and eventually falling in love with someone is treated as the most pants-crappingly terrifying prospect imaginable. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why this is one of the most common tropes in all of romance fiction, because love really can feel like that sometimes—especially to the young and/or inexperienced audience members that Cherry Magic is presumably targeting (nevermind all of the aspects of coming to terms with ones sexuality and navigating the waters of queer romance in a society that is still not particularly good at normalizing those things). Still, for me, it ends up making stories like Adachi and Kurosawa's feel stuck between the cartoonishly oversimplified and rose-tinted romance of YA fiction and the more complex, nuanced, and relatable romance of more adult oriented dramas, and I tend to gravitate towards romance that can plant its feet firmly in either camp and represent their different strengths to the fullest.

Still, even with all of my reservations, I'd be lying if I said that Cherry Magic didn't make me smile and go “Awww, okay, that's cute” at least once or twice, so it must be doing something right if its managing to sway even my grinchy old heart. I don't know if I'll keep up with this one on the regular but I'll definitely be keeping it in my back pocket for one of those rainy days where I want to bust out a cute cartoon and daydream about the magical alternate universe in which that Yuri On Ice movie was allowed out of the MAPPA dungeon to see the light of day.

When it comes to the general concept, I think Cherry Magic has potential. It feels perfectly realistic that even mind reading powers don't make you a master of interpersonal relationships. After all, socials skills are just that: “skills.” They aren't something you are either born with or not. To be better at socializing you have to practice socializing. You have to put yourself out there, fail miserably, take note of how you messed up, and then try again. There is no cheat that allows you to simply skip this—and even hearing a person's innermost thoughts can only get you so far.

Unfortunately for me, while this part of the story is interesting enough, it's not the true focus of the anime. That would be the burgeoning love story between Adachi and Kurosawa. As a straight man, I didn't feel any sort of titillation at the cliché romantic scenes we get in this episode—like the infamous kabe-don. Because of this, I found my mind focusing on other things.

On one hand, it's nice to see that this story exists in a world seemingly free of gay stigma. Adachi isn't worried about what being with another man might mean when it comes to his place in society nor is he having some kind of crisis of sexuality. Instead, he is more concerned about not accidentally leading Kurosawa on and exploiting Kurosawa's feelings for his own personal benefit.

On the other, I found myself rather annoyed by the implication that the baseline for being “a good person” in Adachi's mind is someone not sexually assaulting the person they like. Helping with work, treating you to food, letting you crash at their place when you can't get home, these are all “good person” things. Not forcing yourself on someone when they're vulnerable is not a “good person” thing; it's a “normal person” thing. Or to put it another way, not doing evil doesn't make you good. Doing good makes you good.

Anyway, as you can tell by how far I went into the weeds, this one isn't for me—nor was it intended to be. However, if relatively-innocent homosexual romance anime are your thing, you'll probably enjoy this one.

There are two major questions any romance series needs to answer for me in its opening episode. First: why are these characters interested in one another? Second: why should I want to see them together? The first can have any number of answers to varying degrees of satisfaction, ranging from a deeply personal connection to a simple attraction. The second is harder to quantify, but can often come down to something as simple as "they're cute together." Unfortunately, this first episode struggles to give a convincing answer to either question.

First and foremost, our leads just don't have a ton of chemistry. While I'm usually all in on introverted loners being broken out of their shells by a confident and gentle partner, Adachi and Kurosawa just don't have much spark yet. That's mostly down to the main premise of Adachi's mind-reading powers allowing him one-way access to Kurosawa's inner feelings, making their relationship drastically uneven. There's certainly tension to be had with Adachi knowing his coworker is crushing on him and trying to navigate those feelings, but in this episode, it mostly takes the form of Adachi flinching away when the other man's fantasies get too steamy, or else feeling guilty that he's in on the secret at all. Ironically, Kurosawa gets almost no interiority that doesn't involve going, "Omg, Adachi is cute," which really hampers any romantic sparkles between the two.

There's still room for that to develop, and I appreciate that much of Adachi's hang-ups are due to his own anxieties about relationships. While there's some less than pleasant homophobia to his early reactions – though he even reprimands himself for that later – most of his issues come from the fact that he has no idea how to react to somebody else liking him. It's as if the thought that anyone could be romantically interested in him has never entered his brain, and trying to accept it leaves him spiraling. Adachi is at his most relatable and endearing when he's driving himself crazy trying to figure out how to act around Kurosawa, or discerning the line between friendly affection and romantic intent, and struggling with the guilt of potentially taking advantage of the other man's feelings. That's a solid characterization that could make for a developing romance, provided we start getting more from the other half of this duo.

This could be a good time if the show can capitalize on that foundation. While office romcoms are becoming more common, it's still refreshing when we can get love stories that aren't trapped in the halls of high school. The touch of magical realism at play could offer a lot of interesting angles to explore emotional intimacy – not to mention comedy. If these two ever get down and dirty, then Adachi will be in for a very strange time. Like I said, there's a lot you can do with what we have here, but right now, they haven't quite put it together.

I'll admit it: the opening parts of this story aren't as good as what's to come. There's also the base conceit to get over, along with the silly title; the idea that somehow not having sex by the random age of thirty grants you magic powers is almost as weird a social construct as the idea of virginity itself. But we also start to see some of what's to come in this first episode, namely that Kurosawa's feelings for Adachi are the real thing. It can be hard to realize that when you look at how they're initially presented (and the preview doesn't help) – Kurosawa's inner monologue of things like buying Adachi pajamas so that he could fantasize about him staying the night or his endless litany of "he's so cute" could set your teeth on edge at the least and come across as very, very creepy at worst. For Adachi, there's the added factor of how this person he barely ever interacted with has been burning with desire for him for some time now. Gender doesn't even factor in here; that could just be unsettling to learn.

Fortunately, this leans into Kurosawa's genuine adoration and Adachi's equally real discomfort. The former we can see in the little moments, such as when Adachi is looking around the elevator to see who has bedhead and Kurosawa sneaks a glance at him or Kurosawa's crestfallen face when Adachi insists on paying him back after dinner. He does so because he's not sure it's okay for him to take advantage of Kurosawa's feelings for him when he doesn't return them, and is even made uncomfortable by them. Should he be relying on the other man to help him at work or to pay for dinner when he knows full well that Kurosawa loves him, but Kurosawa has no way of knowing about Adachi's new power? We've already seen earlier in the episode that Adachi is concerned about using it in the objectively wrong way, such as touching someone to see how they feel about him. He's self-conscious, and knowing about Kurosawa only makes that worse.

Yuu Toyota's art didn't translate into anime particularly well, although that last scene with Kurosawa's face falling looks very good. I also don't love the overwhelming use of brown as the base color, though it does make their eyes stand out more. But mostly, I'm feeling optimistic about this adaptation because once we get past the opening gambit, the story can stand on its own.