Reviews for Once A Fighter Slave, Now Mate to the Dragonkin Who Freed Me Manga

This review contains spoilers. I loved reading this cause honestly it isn’t like those other ones that will say the girl who looks like she’s literally 5 is 128 years old but instead she looks like a kid and is a kid and is treated like a kid. No desire just pure “I want to take care of her and I have morals” type of male lead that I can get by with that. While also the kid doing kid things, she’s learning and she’s not doing anything adult like.

This review contains spoilers. The FL has a very nice pace of character development. I really wish she's able to flourish now that she has previous life memories and able to tell her mate about it. It depicts perfectly the PTSD and how complicated it's to heal the trauma and I appreciate that. I hope the FL has training in her magical powers too. The story so far is really nice. I'd appreciate some extra coloured pages too. They are beautiful

This review contains spoilers. Definitely a fantasy read, and the age gap and race gap prove that. But its fantastic. A plot of pure fantasy

This review contains spoilers. Currently, their situation is more of family, and I guess that’s where the sweetness lies. Really looking forward to when she grows up. Hehhehheh

This review contains spoilers. The art is what first attracted me- but the character writing so far stands on its own and the age gap is acknowledged in a way that doesn't creep me out like these genres tend to. All in all, I think the author wrote the age-gap trope quite well. It doesn't try to ignore the glaring issues and clashes this dynamic can bring out.

For specifics- Celeste cherishes Yui as a guardian and more. His feelings for Yui is definitely romantic love but also admiration with the desire to protect. He leaves Yui room to feel and even acknowledges that Yui is a child- that she isn't ready for such a relationship and the only viable form of communication for Yui in his position would be to stand as her guardian until she is more independent. Then, before you have time to feel creeped out, she's given the choice to never reciprocate. It helps that despite this "soulmate" thing that Celeste has due to his racial features, he finds the power to respect Yui to this extent, teetering the fine lines of not grooming Yui but actually being her support. Celeste might be too perfect but I think that's the point.

A vanilla and very respectful exploration of such a dynamic type compared to other stories that try this kind of age-gap soulmate relationship.

Bonus points for the variety of races in the story that actually add flavor and individuality, instead of trying to exemplify some kind of badly written race game of "uurrr orc bad, elf racist... must hab war!!" etc, etc.

Hope to read more.