The story had quite a heavy start - this magical girl is not without worries, and the contrast between this approach to a magical girl and the nostalgic popular versions is apparent. I think I may have missed some of the metaphors, and the story might be more meaningful that what I grasped from it. The way this book starts by submerging the reader in the main character’s depressed thoughts was creative and unique.

I found it hard to get past the beginning of this book. However, I read this book as an ARC, and did not know what to expect. I think that other readers might enjoy this short story, especially if they read the description of the book prior to starting the book itself.

I found the illustrations to be a delightful addition to the story.

When I read the translator’s note, which is at the end of the book, after the actual story concluded, things started to fall into place.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an electronic ARC of this book for my honest review.

TW: discussion of suicide

thank you netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this arc!

a cute little book about the issues of girlhood with a magical twist. really tackled some topics i haven’t seen talked about before.

fast paced at times, but definitely something i couldn’t stop reading once i started!

Thank you NetGalley for the digital review copy!

I was enamored by the premise, title, and the cover as a fan of magical girl series such as Sailor Moon. (the cover alone is eye catching and gorgeous, and I loved the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter.) But it was a painful read. I found myself at times glazing over at the end, because I just wanted it to be over.

The main character is going through some of the toughest hardships of her life (losing her job, death of a family member, driven to unalive herself over debt, etc.), but there wasn’t anything about her that grabbed me at the beginning and nothing that sustained me throughout that allowed me to feel her on a deeper level. Perhaps it was a short amount of time and we couldn’t delve too deep without sacrificing pace, though very linear.

There are deep questions raised in the book that I love: “When is the proper age to shed the moniker ‘girl’? Do you stop being one with your first period? Are you an adult once you grow taller than 160 centimeters? When lots of adults don’t reach that height anyway? And is it not true that all of our girlhoods are different, not just in terms of physical growth, but in the growth of our hearts and minds?”

I also really loved the antagonistic, cynical side of the Magical Girl of Time and really wanted to delve way deeper with her. The rushed aspect of the book left me hanging.

Didn’t leave me too much to think about but I definitely wanted more.

I really enjoyed this book! The balance between magic and shining the light on the real world problem of global warming was perfect! It had me reminiscing my favorite cartoon as a child, Captain Planet in the best way! I also really enjoyed the LGBTQ+ representation mixed in with sensitive topics such as domestic violence and suicide. All of these things having representation especially in our current social/political climate is so important. I enjoyed following the main character from depression, to feeling worthy, to acceptance and finally to greatness accompanied by confidence. It was a wonderfully done roller coaster of emotions both the characters and the reader alike. A great bonus were the chapter illustrations that helped bring the book to life.

I absolutely loved this and wish it had been longer, even! I've always loved magical girls and it was so fun and refreshing to see one around my age. The illustrations were beautiful and really added to the feel of the book, although they were a little small on my Kindle screen! They had just the right whimsical feel of traditional magical girl manga. I did feel the translation felt a bit awkward or overly wordy at times, but nothing especially egregious. I heard about this book through word of mouth from another magical girl enthusiast and I will be spreading the word now too!

With the most gorgeous manwah-esque cover, A Magical Girl Retires is the most whimsical, silly, and witty short novel about magical girls and their fight to make the world a better place, one silly little transformation at a time.

Ah Roa is 29 year old drowning in debt who learns she might just be the most magical girl to ever magical girl. Joining the Union for Magical Girls, Roa fights her own crippling self esteem, and learns to channel her inner magical girl powers to fight the greatest threat humanity has ever faced: climate change (and maybe finds love along the way. kyaaa ^w^ !!)

This reads quick (do not look at how long is took me, i am the magical girl of slow reading) and is paced like magic girl anime, sprinkled with silly social commentary that will appeal to the modern existentialist, climate activist, feminist, and to those who grew up watching every single different variation of sailor moon and magical girls there ever was.

the art was beautiful and added to the whole silly anime aesthetic of the novel. i am so thankful that this was translated so that i was given the opportunity to read it.

My first impression of A Magical Girl Retires was a playful reimagining of classic fairy tale and fantasy tropes. We have the Chosen One, a magical quest, and the power within us. But within this novella, Seolyeon explores what it can feel like to be seen. To have this potential people haven't recognized yet be finally appreciated. That's why part of the 'let down' is so heartbreaking, because I think we've all been in her shoes. With whimsical illustrations, A Magical Girl Retires balances the line of seriousness and self-reflection.

"... the first battle a magical girl must fight is the fight to save herself."

⭐⭐⭐.5 / 5 (rounded up)
BUT an ENTHUSIASTIC ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 for that cover art and section/chapter illustrations by Kim Sanho, am I right???

Anyways, I had to take a moment before rating this book to not let my nostalgia and love for all things magical girl inflate my rating. Is it completely awesome to read a story about a magical girl like the ones of my childhood but as a depressed 29-year-old in the present day struggling with credit card debt? Absolutely. But I don't think it would be fair to rate this higher just because I'm obsessed with the concept.

The delivery wasn't fully there for me. Which made me really sad because the concept was so amazing and it sparked joy in me just reading the synopsis. I felt like the book tried to tackle too much as a novella without really committing to anything fully or taking the time to truly make you think. Yes, it mentioned heavy topics - but little time was spent expanding on those topics and making you feel something about them.

We see this story through the eyes of our depressed millennial FMC (who I DID actually like for the most part, because she was portrayed so realistically). I also really enjoyed Roa and the depth that you start to get with her character - but it still just felt like every writing element came up a little bit under my expectations and was just missing something.

I really hope that the author might choose to write a more involved story around this concept and make this world more vivid, the ensemble characters less basic, and the overall thing a bit deeper. But my nostalgic self still enjoyed this, just for the concept and whimsy of it all - so I wouldn't say I regret reading it! It was a fun little magical girl snack that just left a bit too much to be desired.

The premise for this is RIDICULOUSLY cool – but the reading experience was just painful. It’s impossible for me to say how much of this is the fault of the translation, but the sentence structure, the way things were worded, just sounded off, the way a song does when you hear it in the wrong pitch. Clunky and weird and nothing like the way people actually speak, which, when a story’s written in first-person, is kind of a problem.

Both the worldbuilding and the info-dumping that conveyed it to us seemed really poorly done to me. If you’re writing an Adult novel about Magical Girls, then you either have to go sarcastic and scathing (which seems like a shame to me) or lean in and embrace the glitter and jewels and over-the-top-ness. A Magical Girl Retires read like it couldn’t decide which it wanted to be – maybe trying for both? There was definitely a strong flavour of apathetic cynicism running through it – see the MC’s ‘wand’ being a credit card – but then we also had different Magical Girl characters being very obliviously perky, and earnestly trying to explain how they needed our main character to save the world, and it was a very oil-and-water situation. Forget not mixing well, they don’t mix at all.

The prose itself, besides having a very jarring rhythm, is very dry, which, again, seems like an odd choice when half the fun of Magical Girls are the costumes and accessories and sparkly superpowers, all of which deserve to be lavishly described. But there was basically no description at all here. Maybe this could be explained away by our MC’s depression – the book opens with her about to commit suicide, and people in the grip of depression generally don’t care much about glitter. But even if that’s the case, it’s a) not clear, when I feel like it could have been explicitly stated that that was why the MC wasn’t vibing with it all, and b) still a very lame reading experience.

And I’m not even going to get into how rushed everything was. It’s not obvious on my ereader, but I think this is quite a short book? If so, it ought to have been longer, giving all the various facets of the story time to shine (and breathe!), giving the reader time to take everything in and process it and form attachments to the characters, etc. As it was, everything’s going at warp-speed, so I had no chance to come to care about anything before the next thing was happening.

I was desperate to get out long before the 25% mark (which was as far as I could make myself go). Sigh. This could have been so great!

I fell in love with the cover and the summary of this novella immediately, and the fact it was a translation sealed the deal on me wanting to read it because I not only try to aim to read translations as often as I can but I’ve also been loving the Korean translations I’ve read in the last year or so.

First, a caveat: I read the eARC for this on a Kindle Paperwhite, and this may have messed with the formatting somewhat. This title does have some illustrations and as Amazon has it classified as a manga in hardcover format I worry I might have missed some of the illustrations due to reading it on a Paperwhite. I can’t know for sure, so I’m putting this statement here just to let any readers of this review know I might not have had the full experience with this title that some others had.

I really did love the story and plot as it was first put to us in this book: When do we stop being “girls”? When do we actually “grow up”? Is there a point in time when a Magical Girl stops being magical? Is it ever too late for someone to become magical, or can we bypass that issue by giving some magic to every girl so she can navigate the world with a little more power under her belt?

It’s impossible to read this novella and not think of South Korea’s 4B movement, which has only been growing in strength and numbers since 2015-2016 (that I know of). The women of South Korea are rejecting Korean culture due to its inherently patriarchal and misogynistic nature and often outright boycotting the presence of any males in their lives–sometimes even to the point of having no male friendships. The central conflict in this book hinges on how to handle feminine rage as the result of mistreatment by the patriarchy.

Sadly, this story is split in half for me. While the first half is entertaining and read smoothly for me, the second half is rather chaotic and doesn’t read as smoothly, resulting in a great deal of confusion on my part as a reader. The narrative and story felt a little choppy in places, and the ending didn’t quite make as much sense to me as I would’ve liked. While I absolutely loved how you could tie this story into the 4B movement, it really felt like an incomplete metaphor.

In the end it was fine, but I would’ve liked a little more to chew on.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review is rated three stars or lower, so it will not be posted to my social media. Thank you.

File Under: Fantasy/LGBTQ Fantasy/Novella/Urban Fantasy

This book is okay. It reads like a light novel or a graphic novel. The story progression is quite linear with no real deviations. There's one small plot twist that I found pretty anticlimactic. The resolution was not my favorite, I'm afraid.

I really like the concept, but I didn't love the execution.

This story is really short, so I’ll not give plot information out on this review.

I really enjoyed A Magical Girl Retires. It’s a quick, easy read. The story is funny and entertaining. In the short amount of pages, it manages a decent, setup, conflict, and resolution. This is a pretty fun read, although there are mentions of a few serious issues.

I loved the way the “magical girl” system was set up. It felt a fun but more grounded than a Sailor Moon type of magical girl. It’s basically of magical girls were 30.

If it sounds interesting to you, it’s worth a read! I’m glad I gave it a shot!

I enjoyed this novella a lot! As someone who grew up loving magical girls, this felt like a love letter to my generation and all of our current anxieties and worries that drag us down. I hope to see more translated works in the future!

Of all pop culture’s attempts at capturing femininity, only the magical girl has stood the test of time. Definitions of the feminine shift as society does, and are as varied as each individual connecting to it. But, whereas most media attempts to constrain it, the magical girl embraces variety. Few can argue that Sailor Moon is comparable to Puella Magi Madoka Magica past basic genre-typical details, after all. Park Seolyeon’s A Magical Girl Retires pays homage to the magical girl genre while delivering a whimsical, darkly witty tale tackling problems of the modern era.
The story follows the familiar beats of the genre–regular girl meets a magical girl, discovers she is a magical girl, attempts to navigate her newfound identity, is met with a crisis, and so on. Where A Magical Girl Retires stands out is in its specifics. There are no aliens to fight, no dimensions to traverse to save the world. What the unnamed protagonist and the other magical girls face are the same universal problems we as readers face–adulthood, financial trouble, misogyny, capitalism, and climate change. Seolyeon’s writing conveys her protagonist’s frank and witty disposition through a first-person narrative, with Anton Hur’s translation carrying those characteristics across language. A Magical Girl Retires is a spark for anyone whose life has begun to weigh heavy. 3.75/5 stars🌟

A young woman is standing on the edge, literally and figuratively, after losing her job during the pandemic she has nothing left to live for, except her crushing debt. As she prepares to end her life by jumping off the Mabo Bridge a taxi passes her thinking nothing of it she moves closer to the edge. However, now she's sees the headlights from the same taxi coming back toward her and allowing curiosity to get the better of her she greets the young woman who emerges and with one sentence the young woman's life is saved and she is given the greatest gift on the planet; More Time.

This was cute, way too short but cute and relatable. There are far too many of us in the same situation the main character finds herself in, still trying to recover from the pandemic and getting absolutely no where and thinking that maybe it would be alright to just give up, until someone reminds us that the world needs us. What I think I really enjoyed about this is in the end maybe the main character isn't the most important Magical Girl in the world but she is the most important person to someone else.

I also loved the fact that Park has a villainous Magical Girl. As this is distinctly not meant to be an anime version of a magical girl story I found it far more realistic. Quite honestly I'd like to see this theme played out in more anime. Yes we've got a few of them that do this but personally I think we could stand for a few more.

My only complaint here is that it was way too short. I'd have liked to see at least a hundred extra pages and to have explored not just the main characters and Roa's relationship more but also simply more of the villain. Why she goes dark side is almost justifiable and I'd have love some chapters simply exploring her character.

Overall, this was a really cute short read that any fan of Magical Girl tropes would enjoy!

As always thanks to HarperVia and NetGalley for the eArc!

"A Magical Girl Retires" by Park Seolyeon offers a refreshing and imaginative twist on the classic magical girl genre. Our main character faces the harsh realities of modern life—depression, financial struggles, and a sense of hopelessness amid the chaos of the pandemic.What follows is a charming exploration of what it means to be a magical girl in the real world. There are none of the sparkly powers and easy victories; instead, our protagonist must navigate job fairs, trade unions, and classes.

Through the lens of magical girlhood, Seolyeon weaves together elements of fantasy and reality, creating a narrative that is both whimsical and thought-provoking. What sets "A Magical Girl Retires" apart is its ability to blend social commentary with witty storytelling. The author deftly addresses pressing issues like mental health, financial instability, and environmental degradation, all while maintaining a sense of whimsy and charm.

Overall, "A Magical Girl Retires" is a novel that reminds us that even in the darkest of times, anyone can be a magical girl.


Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a very quick read, and if you've ever been a fan of "magical girl" stories, this is an interesting look at what happens when you come into your powers as an adult, and maybe your powers aren't as cool you as you might hope. Can you still save the world? Do you want to? What happens after that?

This book had such an interesting premise, and for the most part, it was executed well! The protagonist was fairly likeable and easy to empathize with, especially knowing how brutal the work culture is in Korea. I enjoyed reading about the more realistic aspects of navigating mental health and real problems (like climate change) while also enjoying touches of magical girl lore. I almost wish there was just a bit more world-building on the latter—because having magical girls of all ages and backgrounds was intriguing.

Overall, a short and fun read for anyone who wants to feel just a bit of hope under our rather dreary circumstances.

4.5 rounded up!

The girlies who get it, will get it. The girlies who won't, won't. This is for the girls who have felt weak and wished that they had the power to change their lives. It's for the girlies with credit card debt who feel buried by the realities of our modern, soul-sucking world. It's for the girlies who don't feel like they belong anywhere. Honestly, it's just for the girlies! This novella is short and sweet so I recommend you read it and see for yourself.

Thanks to HarperVia and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

⭐⭐⭐

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was a huge fan and still am of the magical girl era, Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura are my jam, so I 100% requested this ARC because of that lol.

This story follows a 29-year-old who lost her job during COVID and is about to end her life due to piling up credit card debt. Her plans are halted when she discovers she is a Magical Girl and is asked to join the fight against a looming enemy, climate change.

This was an interesting novella and I’ll be honest I didn’t know which way it would go. It did take me a bit to get into and I did think about DNF-ing at almost every chapter, but then a twist would appear so I kept going. It could’ve also been the way this was originally written and some of the nuances were lost in translation. I can imagine this would make a funny K-miniseries but as a book was a little flat. This book tackles some topics including the obligation of Magical Girls to use their powers for good. In the end, it was entertaining and the chapters began with a fun illustration that also helped set the tone.