As soon as 16-year old country girl Emma arrives at the city of Hawk Eye, every man in the city falls madly in love with her. The king in particular tries to force her into marriage... and then a sorceror kidnaps her.The sorcerer introduces himself as Shion, one of the youngest and most talented in the nation. He explains to Emma that she is cursed with the Echidna, a mysterious magic that happens every 500 years where a girl is born with her heart packed with such powerful dark magic that it has the potential to destroy the world. With the Echidna, one could rule the world, and Shion explains that people are going to try and hunt her down to get her heart.However, just when Emma has given up on living a normal life, she is told that there exists a ritual that might rid her of the Echidna curse: the ritual Magico, which consists of many difficult trials... the first of which requires Emma and Shion to marry each other.Do note that the official spelling of this manga's name is with a lower-case M as "magico". That is not a typo.
Tropes include:
Abusive Parents: Shion. His mother couldn't accept her son wasn't "perfect" and forced him to go through a forbidden ritual designed to improve his abilities at the cost of the lives of ten children. And when that ritual failed and ended up doing the exact opposite, his mother abandoned him. She apparently made Faust go through it, and it turned him into a monster.
The Ace: Raven, headmaster of a magical school, brilliant scholar, powerful mage, kind hearted, and in love with Emma just from reading about her and what she had to endure.
Ax Crazy: The Magi. They're after the Echidna so they can kill everyone in the world, and one of them kills a guy by twisting the guy's head all the way around.
The chapter after that the first of the Magi to fight Shion have no qualms about using a Human Shield... or several.
The eldest of the Magi, Gaspar, takes the cake though. He kills both of his brothers to "nourish" himself, and it's revealed that the reason they wanted to slaughter everyone was so Gaspar could, in his own words, "to cheer myself up".
Big "NO!": Emmas reaction to another girl kissing Shion.
Big Screwed-Up Family: The people Shion comes from. First we have his mother who sacrificed ten children to turn Shion into an archmage but only made her son a degraded human whose every attribute was dropped a few levels. And now we have his brother Faust who wants to achieve a great power through a risky ritual and is willing to use anyone as a test subject, including Shion. He plans on getting Shion's help by threatening to tell Emma about Shion's past. Oh, and he got freedom from his and Shion's overbearing mother by destroying her and the home they came from.
Birthmark of Destiny: Emma has a heart-shaped birthmark on her chest that signifies she has the Echidna.
Book Dumb: Shion can't get the multiplication table right, but he's one of the most powerful mages alive.
Born Lucky: Emma has fantastic luck when gambling. Even when the people are cheating via magic, she WILL NOT lose.
Captain Ersatz: Luu bears an incredibly strong resemblance to Niche. Strikingly similar appearance, seen as cursed from birth, thrown off a cliff by superstitious villagers, grew up in the wild, obsessed with meat, ridiculously strong for her size, lack of human interaction... if not for her borderline Genki Girl personality, she'd be a complete clone.
Casanova Wannabe: Faust tries to approach girls with lines asking to touch their boobies, not realizing this is why every girl generally hits him.
Equivalent Exchange: Magic can only be used by people who've accomplished the accompanying Rituals, which could include kissing a person, reciting specific verses, hunting down monsters and procuring certain artifacts. And even after all that, magic still can't be used indefinitely - it will eventually "run out" and the Ritual for that magic will need to be accomplished again. And unusually, it seems that it's possible to set the conditions of the exchange, such that one can create a unique type of magic as long as he or she can invent the proper Ritual, wich is what Faust is trying to do with Ainīs help.
First Kiss: The second ritual, "Kiss of Oath" is this for Shion and Emma. After Shion erases his memories to preform some powerful magic, Emma gives him another "first" kiss.
The Gadfly: For Joshua, mocking people seems to be his standard form of social interaction.
Golden Snitch: The quiz show pulls this out for the final question. Played with in that Emma gets it wrong, but the judge lies and claims it was right.
Grandpa Garlan is one of the rare bug-men, specifically being half-giant-centipede. He's also the guy who generates the bug monsters for Shion's Broom Magic Ritual.
Shion's family tries a ritual to turn Shion into a half demon but it fails and he became a "Degraded Human".
In chapter 18, Luu's sight, hearing, smell, and sense of pain are sealed by an evil Magi. She still wins by relying on her survival instinct and leads to great upset.
Shion too. The failed ritual he endured as a child turned him into a "degraded" human, leaving him with reduced intelligence and a far weaker body. He still managed to become an Archmage through sheer willpower.
Heel Face Turn: Gaspar after his defeat turns himself in to the authorities.
Heroes Prefer Swords: Shion's next level of broom magic turns his broom into a sword.
Heroic Sacrifice: Joshua, injured, switches places with Shion so Shion doesn't end up as an undead puppet.
Hero with Bad Publicity: Shion is called "The Great Criminal." His latest criminal escapade involves saving some slaves from a cruel slave trader, which in the news is called "stealing property".
The entire reason why Shion became so damn powerful is so that he would be able to accomplish the top-level ritual Magico in order to free Emma from her curse.
Rogue is also this towards Lily, such that when Lily was kidnapped he didn't even stop to sleep while looking for her.
Luu has the same feeling towards her new family, willing to risk her life to protect them.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He does care about some people, but won't ever show it. His attacking Faust when Faust tried getting Shion to sacrifice himself for an evil ritual shows that much.
Kill It with Fire: Shion's magic broom is weak to fire magic. He knows this, so he has developed plenty of counters if someone tries to exploit it.
Sephirot has a vampire that can eat memories and used him to cover-up Emma's confession she's Echidna.
Shion's strongest magic requires he sacrifice something incredibly precious to use it. For him his happy memories are taken.
Lethal Chef: Emma (at first) and Shion... but the latter is technically good at cooking, it's just that his sense of taste is horrible, so anything he thinks is good is disgusting for anyone else.
Mad Love: This is the shape of Ain's feelings for Faust.
Magitek: There is a telecommunications branch of magic, so TV and phones run on magic.
Mood Whiplash: At the end of chapter 40. After the heartwarming conclusion to the fight with Juubee and Ayame, where it looks like everything is going to work out...One of the remaining couples in the competition shows up carrying the bodies of another couple, attacks Juubee, and says, "One dead."
My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad: During the Love Festival, Luu meets up with the son of Juubee and Ayame. Musashi, their son, promptly starts saying how his mother and father are better than Emma and Shion. Luu replies by beating him up.
Nightmare Face: First time Faust raged. He was crying, but it looked like his eyes were melting.
Nightmare Fetishist: Ain loves Faust precisely because he is such a despicable excuse for a human being.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Going by his name, appearance, and the fact that he's the richest man in the world, Marouni Gate is probably derived from Bill Gates. That said, his personality is nothing like the real thing.
Not so Different: Zodia seemed to think he and Shion were this when they were children. Subverted in that Shion shoots him down as they have different motives for their actions.
Played straight with Rogue and Shion.
Not So Stoic: When Ain meets Caph when watching the last event in the couple tournament, they have a little chat and Ain begins to drool when she remembers how much she was paid for developing Faustīs forbidden ritual. Working with such forbidden magic seems to excite her as well.
Raised by Wolves: Luu has lived alone in the wilderness for the vast majority of her life. A wilderness on the edge of a cursed spring with all sorts of man-eating plants and animals. No wonder she's so tough.
Really 700 Years Old: The water spirits in the Lover's Tournament are around that age, but do not show it in the slightest.
The Sages Behind the Thrones: There exists Sephirot, a group of Sages whose power runs above the rulers of any country, and monitor all mages in the world. They are strong enough to have the memories of three thousand spectators at the Lover's tournament erased to preserve the secret Echidna has returned, bribe the man running the tournament to continue like nothing had happened.
She Is Not My Girlfriend: Averted, Shion and Emma are pretty okay about saying they are husband and wife to people.
Shipper on Deck: Anise, Shion's black talking cat enjoys teasing Shion about his feelings for Emma.
Shmuck Bait: Joshua turns himself into a piggy so Alice the Werewolf would stop avoiding his and Rosette's attacks and eat him. It works and makes her an easy target.
Shion give a spectacular one to the priest after he mocked of Rogue and Lily.
Joshua gives one to Faust. It also brings out his own Nightmare Face.
Spot the Imposter: The Lover's Tournament has one of these as the challenges. The contestants are asked to identify the one difference the mimics had in the categories of Appearance, Thoughts, and Experience.
Utopia Justifies the Means: Zodia. To quote him: "It (the Echidna) is a secret treasure with unlimited possibilities. And all that for the price of a single mere life."
Villainous Breakdown: Faust doesn't take Shion's refusal to go along with his schemes very well at all.
We Can Rule Together: Zodia makes this offer to Shion when they were young. Subverted as Shion doesn't care about the world, he just wants to help Emma.
Played straight with Juubee and Ayame, who can materialize words they link with the word game shiritori.
The basis of Joshua's magic, which transforms his insults into weapons. Specifically, he can turn people into whatever insult he says, mostly pigs, and can summon enormously powerful monsters based on the pure malice of his insults.
Worf Had The Flu: Zodia was in the middle of a ritual and couldn't even use half of his full strength when he fought Shion.
Worthy Opponent: Juubee sees Shion as this and honors him by going all out to finish his 1000-word chant.
You Are Already Dead: Well, not dead, but just when Balthazar had successfully frozen Luu's time and about to take her out, he realizes that Luu had already managed to punch him with more than enough force to take him out.
of this manga's name is with a lower-case M as "magico". That is not a typo.
0 reviews 
