September is back-to-school time and we'll be doing the same here at The Manga Test Drive with a month of school-centric manga. I could have easily started this month with one of the countless magical school harem isekai titles available today, but instead I decided to look a little further back to one of the ancestors of that wretched little sub-genre.
ZERO'S FAMILIAR (Zero no Tsukaima), based on the light novel series by Noburo Yamaguchi with art by Nana Mochizuki. First published in 2006 and first published in North America in 2013.
PLOT:
Saito Hiraga was an ordinary Japanese boy who stumbled upon a strange sigil in the street one day. He walks blithely into it, whisking him away to a faraway realm and a school for magic. The sigil was cast by the tiny, moody Louise de la Valliere, who is known by her classmates as "Louise the Zero" for her inability to successfully cast even the most basic spell. Now Saito is bonded to Louise as her magical servant, but Saito may possess more power than anyone (even himself) could guess.
