Aria, an honor student and prefect at her magic school, has just one problem― Jade, the black mage. Known for being cold and harsh towards his peers, Aria has been doing her best to avoid him. But when she runs into him by accident, she hears...his thoughts?! Now that she knows what he's thinking, he's almost kind of cute...

My Super-Cute Black Mage! has a story and art by Takidon. English translation is done by Minna Lin, and lettering by Vitor Batista. Published by Yen Press (April 28, 2026).

Erica Friedman
Rating:

At Hardiquartz Magic Academy, prefect Aria is sweet, smart, and beloved, while Jade is a jerk. So who gets the attention and admiration? You guessed it. Oh, but no, nothing is what it seems since Aria can read Jade's mind, and even though outwardly he's abusive, threatening extreme violence, his real thoughts are how cute she is and how much he likes her! Aria suddenly remembers that her family can read minds when they are touched. Wow, what a thing to forget you've been told. And how amazing to go all the way into high school without touching another living thing. Jade's not all ill-tempered asshole, just “…a super-nice kid who's just easily misunderstood!?”

This is not sarcasm, for surely it will go well. And just as Jade is warming up a little to Aria, he will face bias for being a black mage from classmates, then professors, then surely other entities, until, through Aria's unwavering faith, Jade's abilities and the power of teamwork and love, they will gain allies and friends. And probably every volume will bring Jade and Aria a little closer (from the outside, internally Jade is already imagining them as a family with children). It all might be cute, except that Jade is saying “I'll kill you” with his outside voice at the same time. I'm not a fan of training young women to think that abusive men are a catch.

The main story is followed by a silly one-shot about a saint who is a slob and the demon who decides to clean her life up.

I wish I enjoyed this story more. The art is nice, the ending is going to be happy, but the idea that underlying contempt and threats is a warm, fuzzy person just waiting to be discovered is just not that cute to me. If you like the Darcy type, with a little uptick in the violent rhetoric thrown in for spice, then it might be for you.

Rebecca Silverman
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My Super-Cute Black Mage! is the very definition of a “3” series. It's too good to be a two – it's really very sweet in a lot of places and delightfully silly. But it's not good enough to be a four. It's a textbook shoujo romance with a tsundere love interest whose cuteness is offset by the fact that a guy who says, “I'll kill you” isn't a healthy relationship prospect…to say nothing of the way this feeds into damaging tropes about boys being mean only because they like you. It's an odd blend of traditional romance elements and the no-longer-ubiquitous magic school genre, and it works just well enough to be decently fun.

The story follows Aria, a third-year prefect at the aforementioned magic school. In her group of first years, there's a boy named Jade who is ostracized at school because he's the scion of a family of black mages. Apparently, there was a whole thing with black magic hundreds of years ag,o and the magic world holds a grudge, and Jade's method of self-defense is putting up as thick a wall as he can. But when Aria doesn't appear to care about any of that, he falls fast and hard for her – something she only figures out when she touches him, which enables her to read his mind. Something is charming about him saying evil things aloud while in his mind they're married with three kids and blissfully happy, although it's remarkably embarrassing for poor Aria, at least at first.

The art is very pretty, especially in the unrelated short story in the back, which features some of the best saint clothing designs I think I've ever seen, and I think that's probably the major point in this book's favor. The story may be a touch bland, but it's hard to complain when it looks the way it does. All in all, this is a perfectly fine book that doesn't do too much to distinguish itself. I'll probably read volume two, but I may also forget about the series until it comes out.

Bolts
Rating:

I'm not a big fan of tsundere. I understand the appeal; the contrast between how a character acts versus how a character really feels can be nice to read, playing with that law of contrast that I like so much in media. The problem for me with Tsundere's is that there's a very fine line to walk when it comes to portraying a character that is openly abrasive but also appealing in a likable way. It's also very hard to double down on because, when you double down on the abrasive character, you potentially create a problematic relationship dynamic or glorify actions that probably shouldn't feel glorified. I was getting very close, feeling like that's what I was reading here. It's hard to find a character appealing when the volume keeps repeating the joke of a guy just yelling abusive quotes at his crush.

The gimmick of the series is that the main character discovers randomly that she can read minds, and this never seems to conveniently come up during any other interaction she has throughout the book. It's more so used to highlight the vast difference between what the titular black mage thinks and what he says. He could literally call the protagonist a piece of shit while also fantasizing about how he wants to have kids with her. That's funny for a moment, but it does get old really quickly, especially since I do feel bad for the protagonist more often than not.

The story tries to play with the idea that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The black mage is ostracized because of his lineage, and there's a solid conversation about how his abrasive attitude is more of a front to push people away so they don't get dragged down with his bad reputation. I don't feel like that idea is handled particularly well, even when it gets brought up as a plot point, because his attitude doesn't ultimately change. Everybody else changes around him, but he is still standoffish and abrasive. If anything, there are moments where it feels like he doubles down, and personally, I would've liked more of a change in his demeanor to better complement his real thoughts. Maybe if the point of the story was that the gap between what he is saying and how he feels is getting smaller, then that can be more satisfying, but instead, the story seems to be about making the gap even wider as his affection grows. That gets really tiring since it is always the note that the chapter ends on, so even when I like some of the things that the story plays with, it always sort of has the same unsatisfying punchline.

Ultimately, I just found the story a little bit exhausting. A lot of the presentation is pretty generic for this type of fantasy setting, the prejudice angle isn't really developed as much as I would like it to be, and the joke the story leans on as a crutch just feels unfunny to me. If you love Tsundere's, especially brutish male ones, then this feels like it was tailor-made for you. Personally, the story was already fighting an uphill battle, only to trip and stumble along the way.