Cinderella is one of the most widely disseminated folktales in the world. At least one version of it exists in nearly every culture on the planet, and between 1893 and 1895, British folklorist Marian Roalfe Cox catalogued 345 different variants alone – the first morphological study of the tale type and one that wasn't nearly a complete catalogue. (For one, it left out variants from the Americas.) That means that Kureha's The Ogre's Bride is standing on some very impressive literary history, and while elements of it may strike modern readers as outdated, it nonetheless gives us a Cinderella story that shows why the fairy tale has such enduring power and appeal.

Our Cinderella figure is Yuzu, an eighteen-year-old high school third-year student. Yuzu has spent most of her life being abused by her family: her parents lavished all of their time and affection on her one-year-younger sister Karin, who had a more outgoing personality and more sought-after looks. (Here it's worth mentioning that in many Cinderella variants, her family is biologically related to her.) They had dreams of Karin elevating the family by becoming a “Bride,” the destined partner of an ayakashi, and to that end sent her to a fancy ayakashi school while basically isolating and ignoring Yuzu. Their ambitions paid off when Karin was chosen by Yota, a kitsune (fox demon in the English translation), putting Yuzu even more on the outside.

What's interesting is that the girls' parents clearly have no real understanding of how the whole Bride system works. Borrowing a little something from shifter romances and omegaverse, ayakashi (who rose to prominence post WWII) sometimes feel drawn to a specific human woman. If they marry her, the children she bears will be incredibly powerful, and her mere presence will also increase her husband's power. But this isn't something that just anyone can do: each ayakashi man has one human woman he's fated to love, so it was just dumb luck that Karin met Yota at school. As we see with two other couples, most ayakashi just stumble into their Brides on the street. Any woman has the possibility of becoming a Bride.

And it is that gender-segregated, at least as far as these chapters reveal. At one point Yuzu asks if ayakashi women have a similar Groom system and is told that they don't – the excuse is that ayakashi women are “more serious” than men and simply pick powerful partners. This doesn't quite work for me as a reader because of the lengths the story goes to prove that the pull one feels towards one's Bride is basically an inescapable fated mates situation, although I suppose it could be interpreted that ayakashi women are simply less emotionally fragile than the men. They aren't so weak as to be forced into anything by something as silly as “fate.” There's also no mention of queer ayakashi and how the system works for or against them, but given that there's a fujoshi character in the series, we can safely assume that queer couples exist. Perhaps we'll get some idea of that later on.

The Ogre's Bride's first fifteen chapters operate on two levels: the Cinderella dream, where a downtrodden girl is swept off her feet by a princely character, and Yuzu learning that she's worth something. While it is possible to read these two thematic elements together – and they do complement each other – the more interesting piece is the latter. We've all seen or read Cinderella before; we know how that story basically works. But Yuzu making real attempts to recover from the abuse she suffered is what gives this story its appeal. As early as chapter eight, it becomes clear that Reiya's affection alone isn't enough to heal Yuzu. When he proposes to her in the first chapter, she asks him if he will love her. He says yes, but hearing that is one thing and believing it is another. While Reiya goes out of his way to shower her with gifts and affection, that's not what Yuzu needs to heal. She needs to see value in herself, not just as the woman Reiya was fated for, but as a person.

Her grandparents and her friend Toko (a bakeneko's Bride) are instrumental in this. Reiya legally detaches Yuzu from her parents, allowing her grandparents to demonstrate that they've always seen her for herself and loved her. Toko provides unwavering support, as does her fiancé, both of whom have clearly been worried about Yuzu for some time. But the hard work has to be done by Yuzu herself, and that means learning to make her wishes clear. It's not a thrilling story; this isn't easy for her to do. Her journey can easily be lost under the romance plot and the pure vileness that is Karin, who is incapable of learning that she can no longer harass her sister. (There's a good chance this could get her in serious trouble or even killed, as we see in the later chapters covered by this review.) But Yuzu's recovery is the heart of this story, and one that Cinderella variants like Cap'o'Rushes or the Donkeyskin versions tell us is a key component of the tale type.

The Ogre's Bride's first fifteen chapters make for easy reading. I don't love having to read them on Manga Plaza's site, but that's more because I prefer reading in a different format than any issues with the platform. With sweet art and an emotional story, this is a good bet for fans of the Cinderella tale or paranormal romance in general. It may feel old-fashioned, but when you retell Cinderella, the weight of its history makes that somewhat inevitable.