The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

Disney Twisted-Wonderland: The Manga – Book of Savanaclaw

What's It About? 

Stranded in the world of Twisted Wonderland, Yu must brave a magical school filled with ghosts, monsters, and uncooperative students!

Yu finds herself at Night Raven College, a school for magic users, where the staff and students are getting ready for the interdormitory Spelldrive tournament. It sounds fun, but Yu soon learns that intensity, intrigue, and fierce competitiveness abound!

Disney Twisted-Wonderland: The Manga – Book of Savanaclaw has a story and art by Suzuka Oda, with English translation by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley. This volume was lettered by Effie Colton. Published by Viz Media (April 8, 2025). Rated T.

Is It Worth Reading?

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

It will never not be funny to me that the Disney movies I watched when I was a kid—The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, etc.—are now tied to this reverse harem property. Each of these characters is a gijinka based on a Disney villain no matter how minor: even Flotsam and Jetsam, Ursula the Sea Witch's two cackling eel cronies, get hot guy makeovers. Now, the world of Twisted Wonderland is even more accessible to fans of Disney and sexy men. Unlike the manga we reviewed for the Fall 2024 Manga Guide, Disney Twisted-Wonderland: The Manga – Book of Savanaclaw is a direct adaptation of the game, no prior knowledge necessary.

Yu is the player character in the Twisted Wonderland game, so it's not surprising that she's also the protagonist of this manga. Here, she catches the reader up to speed on how she ended up attending a bizarre school where everyone can use magic except for her. From there, the story follows the second “book,” or story arc of the game, a tale focused on Leona Kingscholar, the Scar from The Lion King gijinka and his fellow Savannahclaw dormmates. Yu and her adorable feline companion Grim must put on their detective caps and figure out why so many of their fellow classmates are falling victim to bizarre accidents right before the upcoming Spelldrive tournament (think Quidditch Lite). Could the leonine leader of Savannahclaw Dorm have a lead on what's going on? (Yes, duh, of course.) This is a beat by beat adaptation of the second story arc of the Twisted Wonderland game. There is no manga for the first story arc, but no worries, it's all summarized in this book. If I had the capability of finding out why they decided to adapt the second book first, I'd use my powers to answer more interesting questions like “why does Disney let this outrageous series pimp out its IP, not that I'm complaining?”

As expected, a manga adaptation does lose some of the appeal of the game. When Yu and her pals play a Spelldrive scrimmage against Leona and co., this is portrayed as a couple of pages of action manga. But in the original Twisted Wonderland game, this takes the form of a fun rhythm minigame. This IP was designed as a game first, so the story was bound to lose something in the transition to a manga. But if you'd like to enjoy this charming story without making your smartphone overheat, it's a serviceable alternative.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Despite the fact that Book of Savanaclaw starts at the beginning of the Disney Twisted Wonderland game of the same name, I felt a little lost having never played it. That feels a bit silly to say, because parts of the Twisted Wonderland concept are so very basic: a random Japanese teen is sent to a world based on Disney villains and Disney's version of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, where everyone is a ridiculously attractive student at a fancy school. And I do mean everyone - somewhat to my bemused horror, even Scar's hyena buddies from The Lion King and Ursula's eel minions from The Little Mermaid get the ikemen treatment.

Savanaclaw's player character is Yuka, who appears to be the lone girl at the school. That doesn't seem to be a factor in the story; more important is the fact that she can't use magic, although her cat Grim can. Being magicless, Yuka ends up in the unaffiliated Ramshackle Dorm without a Disney villain to call her own – unless she ends up with Leona, the Scar stand-in; I have no idea if these games have a romance component. There's a distinct effort to make the book interesting in its totally-not-Hogwarts school life, and Leona's deep-seated sense of his own inferiority as the second son of the Kingscholar family is the most successful component. I was much more invested in his emotions than in the backstabbing going on before the major sports tournament or any of the wacky shenanigans, most of which involve Grim.

As a non-player, I have to say that I can really only recommend this for the art. Suzuka Oda does a beautiful job with Yana Toboso's original character designs, and the level of detail, although occasionally overwhelming, very nicely sets the scene. But the story felt unnecessarily confusing and Yuka like a non-character in what I, perhaps wrongly, thought was her own story. This isn't bad, but it's definitely more for the fans than anyone else.