Nina the Starry Bride was the first manga that I read 100 in Japanese and I read the bulk of it in the span of a week or so spending hours every day reading. It was so addictive that I would read it even when my head was hurting from reading too many kanji. I could not put it down. And in the following months while I was waiting for a new tome to come out I found myself thinking about it again and again. It really is a strange story too cruel to be a fairytale and yet too impossible and extreme at times to not be one it is at the same time dark and lighthearted unsettling and charming. The manga follows Nina a girl abducted to replace a recently deceased princess Alisha who was supposed to marry a prince of the neighboring country to prevent a war. Nina hasnt been given much of a choice really but her life before has been kind of a hell she has no one to care for and no one to care for her so since nice people are ordering asking she decides to go along with it. Her life is empty anyway. Its definitely the characters that make this story shine theres clearly something wrong with all of them even if they seem fine at first. Watching their relationships grow and change is like watching a train wreckits wrong but you cant take your eyes off it. And these characters have so much unexpected depth that they even managed to fool me. Our protagonist Nina seems like such a bright and somewhat sillily optimistic character but her optimism is tinted with desperation. You cant help but admire her strong will and her ability to take anything thrown at her with almost a smile but that ability comes from her having lived through many traumatic experiences and then suppressing all of them away in her head. She is strong and yet always on the verge of breaking because this manga gives her no time to pause or reflect. Shes so empty and broken that when her captor gives her a mission she enthusiastically accepts that mission as her lifes purpose because she literally has no other purpose or dreams to keep her going. But on the outside she seems like your regular overly cheery and happy person. And then there are the other characters. We have Azure who treats himself and people around him as means to achieve goals he doesnt even truly care about he is dutybound yet selfish. He exerts himself for the sake of the country yet that exertion is somewhat egocentric as he has merged his identity with his duty to a point where he cant separate the two. He is cold calculating and cruel yet he has a charming streak of kindness and nobleness to him that makes him seem like such a nice guy. Azure is empty but he was told he has a country to protect and that phantom purpose almost makes him feel whole. And then there is Seth who is just madness incarnated a black empty void of a person. Hes unpredictable and casually cruel he can kill a person without batting an eye. And yet in his empty despair he has the most potential out of all the other characters because he is the only one who doesnt lie to himself. He has given up on everything and everyone and believes he is beyond saving and that the world would be just better off if it burned. He thinks that there can be no real human connection that isnt selfish or obsessive which is why hes given up on people. He is crazy and cynical yet refreshingly honest. He also has the prettiest white lashes and man its unfair. What these characters have in common is that they are all terribly lonely and all feel somewhat estranged from their own lives since everything has already been decided for them. They are encouraged to live to fulfil someone elses goals for the sake of duty or live according to someone elses beliefs. Not only does this estrangement make them mentally unwell but it also forces them to look for ways to compensate for it to try to find some personal meaning in the cards theyve dealt. It could be by feverishly chasing those phantom purposes that are assigned to them by others or by trying to find fulfillment in the relationships with people around them. Or in the case of Nina both. When you are empty yourself its easy to choose to live for the sake of somebody else to exert yourself to attain what you imagine to be their happiness. But that sort of care and altruism is not always as noble as it might seem at firstit might be a form of catharthic selfdestruction because in the end by striving to make someone happy you might end up doing exactly the opposite. So can this masochistic phantom attachment be called love? They say love is blind and all but why is it blind and how is it blind? Could it be that someone who is very lonely can catch feelings for literally anyone who shows them enough kindness and compassion? Those questions are explored in one of the truest love triangles ever written which is 100 guaranteed to make the characters and the reader suffer no matter how it ends. What makes it even more intense is that both sides of the love triangle are antiheroes and they both seem like horrible people at first glance and at second too. And the three of them crave human connection so much that it makes their feelings for each other selfish and unhealthy. But sometimes we can see glimpses of something genuine in this vortex of selfdeception some real connection there but the story takes so many unexpected twists and turns that it scatters those feelings around and reassembles them in new confusing ways over and over again. This manga is truly bizzare sometimes and is full of contradictions characters motivations are obviously messed up but painfully relatable their feeligns for each other are just tools to compensate for their own loneliness and yet they are fascinatingly contagious and feel real. Ninas feverish enthusiasm for her life purpose is somewhat unsettling and yet her perseverance is admirable. No matter how you look at it Nina is powerless the only thing that she has except for her own free will is a name that doesnt even belong to her and yet its Nina who drives the story forward making her own choices even when shes been robbed of all options constantly refraiming her circumstances and finding meaning and the will to live when all seems lost. I love this story to pieces it makes me happy and yet breaks my heart all the time. Its dark but cheery cruel from the first chapter but even cozy at times. I should hate some of the characters but instead I get carried away sympathising with them. This manga is so well thought out and it reveals layers and layers of meaning with every new tome making me think that maybe we can change the world and the people around us with nothing but will and wishes even while chasing silly phantom purposes.