Mahou Shoujo no Majo Saiban (魔法少女の魔女裁判) Review

• 31 August 2025
• visual novels,
• review,
• manosaba

There's a strong argument to be made that the 'death game' genre of mystery storytelling is a well run completely dry. It's a fully realized genre——an isolated group of individuals; the slow elimination of one character after another amidst deepening horrors and tragic betrayal; a conclusion with some bombastic revelation that upsets your understanding of the premise, rug tugged out from under your feet.

Fact is, there's only so much rug to pull.

The best evidence of a genre spent comes from the codifier of these cliches. Danganronpa has, over its decade-long run, played the premise straight, subverted it, took it to the metafiction prom, snuck it out back and shot it dead all within a single series. In 2025, we now see characters like Hundred Line's Darumi here to mock the genre, painting over all of these narratives with a single brush. Now, death game fans are murder junkies on the prow for one more hit, one more twist, pining for nostalgic days that seemed rife with originality.

In some ways, I think this was inevitable. There's an inherent one-upmanship in this kind of 'isolationist', twists-aplenty genre where each new work has to think of something crazy and original with each entry. When subversion becomes expected, there's nowhere to go but subverting even those expectations. The focus begins to turn further and further away from concrete, solid writing to cheap tricks and gimmicks to whet the audience's appetite.

This is best evident in Uchikoshi's sequel to AI, nirvanA Initiative, where no level of out-there plot structure could overcome the lazy character writing and banal, dogwater pacing on display.

In this dire landscape, Manosaba feels like a course correction, and it has me buzzing as a result. I'm not exaggerating when I say it might be one of the best mystery visual novels in years. Well, maybe a little, but still humor me.

Manosaba is a 'death game' murder mystery story taking cues from what I would call modern Magical Girl fiction. What do I mean by this? Well, it's like Madoka, basically.

There's a 'system' by which teenage girls gain magical abilities. The truth behind this system is tragic and inherently malicious in nature, and the story uses this to explore the inner selves and duplicity inherent to its characters. These girls are on the verge of becoming 'Witches' as they descend further into their inner cycles of trauma and despair, and as they do, their destructive impulses spike alongside an incredible growth in their magical abilities. The reader is tasked with uncovering who among the cast has succumbed to their Witch nature, thus simultaneously unearths ugly truths about people who seemed so amicable on the surface.

This premise is solid, but what makes Manosaba really stand out from the crowd of copycats is the superb character writing and laser focus on moment-to-moment details and pacing. Many visual novels in this space tend to drag as they struggle to fill the time between murder to murder, stuffing the story with slice of life or comedy segments, rank with irrelevant, sometimes contradictory information. Manosaba avoids this pitfall entirely, and I was very impressed with how certain details would reveal themselves as being critical plot details many hours later. Scenes are fast-paced and snappy, but also multi-faceted, achieving payoff and setup with elegant precision. It's very rewarding to reread earlier segments knowing the character's backstories and the tricks behind the murders.

This attention to detail was something I appreciated so much coming from other works in this genre. Probably the best example comes when you lose a trial——unlike Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, the game has a separate bad ending prepared for every potential eventuality where you can run out of time. Instead of some generic nonsensical 'everyone suspects me' even when it wouldn't make sense, the writers cared about having logical endings where the characters vote for the wrong person.

What I found even more impressive about Manosaba was how relentlessly it cares about each and every character. Nobody feels like a gimmick or 'along for the ride'. In trial sequences, every character contributes, actively trying to solve the answer of who the culprit is. Nobody is 'just an idiot', and the only mistakes they make are rational ones from a lack of information.

This goes a long way towards making them feel like real people, and also makes their motives all the more tragic when their schemes are uncovered. While many of the girls seemed like cliches initially, their backstories revealed them to be messy, contradictory people on the inside. The protagonist especially was no exception, and the events of the story and character development felt downright brutal by the end.

Manosaba reminded me a lot of more abstract, character-driven drama anime in the vein of Revolutionary Girl Utena and Revue Starlight. The murders which take place are but a backdrop to explore each character's own drama and tragedy. The whole game, really, has this overflowing 'theater kid' energy to it, down to the little diorama confessions by each murderer about their motives and MO, and it's just oozing with style and performative talent.

This isn't to say that the mysteries themselves are bad——anything but. Instead of being flashy and overbearing, they were each delightfully restrained and elegant, and I appreciated the focus on straightforward, honest puzzles, often with simple tricks with alibis or misdirection, rather than mind-blowing twists that don't hold up to scrutiny. And there's a lot of mysteries, too! I won't reveal how many, but it puts most games in this genre to shame.

So, after all this praise, what am I less enthusiastic about in Manosaba? I'll point to some of the 'bad endings'. The game has many choices unrelated to the 'death game' premise which lead to fairly unique bad endings, usually involving the protagonist's demise. Some of these endings are funny——'oops you dug up a land mine, BOOM'. Some are enriching, providing a unique perspective where a character joins forces with another one, or the consequences of letting despair take hold. But most of these I could've done without, as they are just filled with odd horror cliches that feel oddly cheap and out of place with the rest of the solid writing.

The art is, across the board, absolutely fantastic. It carves out a unique identity while being rich with its own level of storytelling and emotional depth. I can see many people using scenes from this game as wallpapers in the near future. But still, I think there's some flaws on a technical front. The trials could use some love and animations to bring them up to the standard set by Danganronpa or even Ace Attorney. It's passable at present, but there's room to grow here which I'm excited to watch for in Acacia's future projects.

Within the trials, while the writing itself is fantastic, I found the supporting materials to be a little lacking. Some evidence pieces that the characters would talk about would either be missing, or not all details would be written down. Some clues are only present in the icon for the evidence piece, but some pieces don't have unique art, resulting in confusion about whether the art shown will count for being a piece of 'evidence' that can be presented. I think more assets in this area——or at the very least more explicit clues in the evidence listing——would help a lot.

Lastly, while I do think the ending of the game is quite strong and very appropriate given the narrative's heavy character-driven focus, I did find myself wishing for a more lasting conclusion. Compared to the powerful message about the nature of fiction seen in Danganronpa's V3, I felt that the ultimate thematic questions posed by Manosaba's story were left a little too up in the air. But perhaps that's the way it was always going to be. In the end, Manosaba isn't about its overarching plot, or the setting, or even its mystery. No, Manosaba is its characters, and once their stories are resolved, so too is Manosaba.

So should you read Manosaba? If you're looking for crazy Uchikoshi/Kodaka-style twists, then honestly maybe not. I think you'd find it interesting for sure, but nothing absolutely mindblowing. But if you're someone into Madoka, or more character-driven tragedy stories with a dash of mystery——or perhaps somebody that likes more smaller-scale murder mysteries and doesn't sweat not having a big conspiracy to unfold——then this might be more up your alley. It's a mystery visual novel which shows sincerity, restraint, and care for its characters in a way not often seen.

I do hope it gets a English release soon. I need other people to see my GOAT Tachibana Sherry.