Nebelhaum is an arrogant, reclusive wizard who only cares about collecting things he finds “beautiful.” When he sees a real, live fairy in a circus sideshow he goes to take her, not to rescue Sti, but merely to have her for his collection.
Well ugh. From the title and cover alone I knew that The Wizard and His Fairy would feature a close, most likely romantic, relationship between the two titular characters (since, in the words of Someone-san, “That’s how it is when two people are together in this world we live in”) but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as Stockholm Syndrome-y as it turned out to be. Nebelhaum has yet to do a single nice thing for Sti — he even discovers by accident that she feeds on sunlight instead of making a conscious effort to do that most minimal of things, and yet Sti is already falling for him. The story seems to expect the reader to buy into this relationship simply because that’s what the story is, not because the story has made an effort to get the reader invested in the relationship at all!
While the cover art looked interesting, with a unique texture that reminded me of watercolor paper, once you open up the actual volume, the art inside turns out to be a rather bland mess. Chisato Nesumi doesn’t appear to have any interesting visual quirks, such as a particular style of shading or character design, and while the art is a bit too pretty to call “workman-like” it does feel rather rote; Nesumi’s art feels as if it was being drawn while half-asleep and no care was put into the composition of most pages and panels, background design, or really anything. Someone might wonder “well, you read so much manga, does the art really grab you that often?” and the answer is yes. Even with as much as I read I am still delighted by the artwork in a new (to me) series on a regular basis! I don’t mind art styles that are similar to each other, in fact it can be fun to pick apart an artists inspirations or references, but The Wizard and His Fairy doesn’t even have that going for it.
In short, this story, the whole concept really, needed a few more rounds of editing and polishing before it was ready for reader consumption. I actually had the opportunity to read and review the second (and final) volume of this series as well but by the time I got halfway through this first volume I could tell that I was so bored that reading another volume would just be a slog. Some romance fans may enjoy this work more than I do but frankly the sheer laziness of the relationship is likely to be a turn-off for everyone.