What do you do when you try to summon a savior from another world but end up with two potential candidates? That’s the dilemma the Kingdom of Salutania is currently facing — after performing an ancient ceremony to summon a “saint” who can fight off the monsters invading the kingdom they end up with two people from Japan: the adult office worker Sei Takanashi and the high schooler Aira Misono, with no clue who is this supposed saint. As Sei goes off on her own adventure, Aira catches the eye of the crown prince overseeing the summoning ritual and she’s off to school to train her magic powers; but if she’s not the saint, and there’s no records of returning a saint to their home world, what’s going to happen to her?
After watching the anime adaptation of The Saint’s Power is Omnipotent I did find myself wondering what exactly was going on in Aria’s side of the story, since she and Sei don’t have the time to interact very often, so I was rather pleased to see this title get brought over as well. I am curious about how much of this story was laid out by Yuka Tachibana, the original creator, and how much was created by Aoagu the manga-ka; so far the story goes almost exactly as expected based on the glimpses of Aria we get in the main story (and especially if you’re familiar with how “reincarnated in an otome game” stories tend to go, since that’s very much what Aria’s side of the tale feels like) but there is a sadness to her story that I didn’t expect. Typically when a character gets sent to another world in one of these stories, they accept their fate with grace and move on quickly (Sei herself did) but Aria spends more time than usual quietly mourning her loss and being anxious about this new future. That is something I like to see in these kinds of stories. Personally I feel like too many stories too often just skip through how big of a life change this kind of event would be to get to the “real” part of the story so it’s rather nice to have a character with very natural, complicated emotions about the whole thing.
Another thing I found interesting about this version of the story is that it seems like the people around Aria are rather unsure about her status as the saint from the start (aside from Prince Kyle and his retinue of course). In the original light novels there were frequent interstitials where you got to see “behind the scenes” about how various palace officials were handling Sei with kid gloves and, while there aren’t similar scenes in this story, I got the impression that the characters were instead treating Aria as an extraordinarily gifted mage but not as a potential saint.
This story is progressing at a faster clip than the original light novels, as the first light novel ends with the grand magus waking up and finally being able to assess the two saint candidates while here that’s the start of the second chapter so it is revealed rather quickly that Aria isn’t in fact the saint which could be another reason why her story gives off this different impression (this manga has retained the “status screen” that characters in the light novels could see of themselves but the anime wisely cut, meaning that Aria could see all along that she was simply listed as a mage while Sei had stubbornly refused to accept that her screen said saint). That does mean that the title of this series is a bit out of date immediately: Aira isn’t another saint but another summonee, but that does have a nicer ring to it than say “The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent: I was summoned to another world but it turns out that it was by mistake after all?!”
With its quick pace The Other Saint was a fun first volume to read but I’m not sure how engaging it would be to someone who hasn’t consumed the original story (in any format) before; the premise is easy enough to pick up so I don’t think it would be confusing for a new reader but it is assuming that the reader already has some feelings for the characters. Aoagu’s art is light and cute, although the few times Sei appears she looks a bit off (like something is wrong with her proportions), and the art definitely works well with the story’s shojo feeling. It’s a fun read while waiting for the second season of the anime and I’m definitely interested to see what Aria does next, now that she’s found herself some new goals for her new life.