For those who have been following my reviews for a while, I once watched and reviewed a short OVA called Ijime, which was supposed to be an animated PSA about bullying. But its attempts at tackling the issue came off as forced, preachy, half-assed, and needlessly melodramatic, and was in general a very poorly made after school special. Bullying is an issue that's very hard to tackle in any form of media, as there's no one way to depict it and the solutions to the problem. You need a very deft hand in order to depict it with the gravity it deserves, and there's been a ton of them over the years, tackling the issue with varying degrees of sensitivity and success. As somebody who has been bullied, I can tell you that everyone's experiences with it are different, so the methods of dealing with them have to be different as well. The subject of today's review, Lonely Castle In The Mirror, or more specifically the manga version, also tackles the issue of bullying, and in my personal opinion, manages to succeed in depicting the subject with sensitivity and grace. Lonely Castle In The Mirror started out as a novel written by Mizuki Tsujimura, published in 2017, and adapted into a manga in 2019, with an anime movie coming out this past Christmas in Japan. Seven Seas just licensed the manga and will put it out before the year ends, and in case you couldn't tell by the rating I gave this manga, I'm absolutely buying the physical copies when they come out. I found an English scanlation online, and I wish this had come out when I was a child. I would have devoured it in a heartbeat.

I actually do own the novel as well, but I didn't get around to finishing it. The story centers on a young girl named Kokoro Anzai, who was so traumatized by a violent bullying incident that she refuses to go to school anymore. She spends what seems to be months confining herself to her house, and she doesn't feel like she can talk to her parents about her trauma, both because she doesn't want to relive it, and because she's afraid no one will take her seriously or believe her. One day, the life-sized mirror in her room glows with light, and when she touches it, Kokoro is pulled through into a fantastical castle, where a young girl in a wolf mask, calling herself the Wolf Queen, tells her that she and six other middle schoolers have one year to find the key that will grant the wish of whomever uses it. As Kokoro begins to get to know her fellow castle-visitors, she starts to think about her own situation in comparison to theirs…and what the price of a wish might actually be.

The manga adaptation for Lonely Castle In The Mirror is five volumes long, which to me feels like the perfect length for this, as every character gets the right amount of development and depth, with ample time to flesh them and their roles in the narrative out, with the fantasy setting being more of a way for the kids to get to know one another and feel safe among people who understand their struggles and explore their feelings. The seven kids don't get along right away, but their relationship grows slowly yet organically, and they do feel like real kids with their own sets of strengths and issues, mainly Ureshino with his inability to respect people's personal boundaries and not understanding how his so-called school friends take advantage of him financially. Lonely Castle In The Mirror is mainly about finding solidarity and comfort in those who went through similar struggles and the empowerment that comes from having that support and having people actually listen to you and not try to invalidate your experiences. The story makes it clear that it's firmly on the side of the victims rather than trying to be preachy, encouraging the hurt children to see the bully's side, or flat-out blaming the victim. Yeah, I'm gonna get lynched for saying this, but I found Lonely Castle's take on bullying to be better than that of A Silent Voice, because as much as the latter tried to condemn it, it wanted the audience to sympathize with characters who were flat-out malicious and continually blamed the victim for the bullying they went through, along with the ending being way too mealymouthed and poorly thought out. No, A Silent Voice, you cannot make me like Ueno and Kawai no matter how hard you try to make me do so.

I also like that Lonely Castle uses fairy tales like The Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and the Seven Goats and their themes of predation as a framework to scaffold the manga's themes as well. Their subsequent retellings over the centuries and the fear that the predatory wolf in both tales inspires allow for all sorts of ideas to build upon, and Lonely Castle is no different, especially as the story gets closer to the end and the mystery of just who the wolf girl is and what the castle is for come to light. Just earlier, I watched the stop-motion short film My Little Goat, which is an adaptation of the Grimms's story The Wolf and the Seven Goats, but uses the themes of deception and predation to tell a story about child abuse and healing from trauma, something Lonely Castle also does, but it doesn't go in the extremely dark direction My Little Goat does. It helps that because the castle has a strict set of rules, and the kids are given only a year to find this so-called key and fulfill their wish, there's always a sense of urgency looming in the air, and the story never feels like it drags or plods along, but still keeps enough of a steady pace to let the kids grow and develop as people. Granted, as the mystery gets revealed, it does leave some unanswered questions, but I did genuinely love the payoff that came out of the ending twist.

For the most part, the artwork is pretty good, too. The backgrounds are well drawn, the character designs are down-to-earth save for the girl in the wolf mask, the paneling flows well, the linework is crisp, and Tomo Taketomi has a good knack for conveying a lot with very little. In one scene, she draws a sick girl covered in lines, which conveys both how frail she is and the despair both she and the person looking at her feel. There are times when the proportions can be off, especially with Ureshino's design, and there's one point where Ureshino is talking, but the way his mouth is drawn makes him look like he's wearing lipstick. These moments are few and far between, so it never comes off as being too jarring. Plus, some readers may not like that some characters aren't shown getting much in the way of closure, and I can understand that. I personally didn't mind how the story turned out in the end, but your mileage may vary. Overall, I think Lonely Castle In The Mirror is a sweet, wholesome, heartfelt story that cares about its subject matter and handles it with grace and sensitivity, and the manga adaptation is a pretty damn good take on the novel it was based on. Like I said before, I haven't finished reading the novel, but I am absolutely looking forward to both buying the manga when it comes out and watching the movie if it gets shown in theaters in my area.