Manga: How To Treat Magical Beasts

How to Treat Magical Beasts: Mine and Master's Medical Journal Vol 1
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

In an age of science and forgotten magic, mythic beasts are beginning to disappear from the world. A young girl named Ziska, born into a line of mages, becomes the apprentice to a veterinarian of regular animals?but Ziska's interests lie with beasts of a more magical nature. Can she help these creatures of legend survive in a world that is leaving them behind?! 

First things first...the art is really gorgeous! The characters, and the creatures are really beautifully drawn! I found myself admiring the art properly on each page, rather than just zeroing in on the speech bubbles and giving the art a cursory glance like I sometimes do with some series! 

I thought the world was really interesting, science is taking over and magic is being forgotten and as the world forgets about magic, people can't really see the creatures. Ziska can see them because she's a magic caster and her master Niko can see them too even though he's all about science and medicine and uses that to help cure them. He and Niko use a combination of her magic and his medicine to heal them, which is a combination that makes sense...like a lot of time I find the series all about magic just use that to heal a lot of the time! Niko seems to know all about these creatures, and he's passing that knowledge on to Ziska! 

I was fascinated by all the magic and myth and legend throughout the volume. I loved all the information on the creatures and what they could do and how they're perceived. One creature was seen as a shooting star, for example! 

There's a bit of mystery as Ziska's magic could be more than it first appears, and we do get to see two different sides to it. One side you could arguably call the Dark Side. It'll be interesting to see if she's going to struggle with that, or if it'll be all healing magic, and rainbows. So far we've had a creature a chapter, although we're left on a cliffhanger as we experience a two parter! How To Treat Magical Beasts is a quirky, and fun little volume, with gorgeous art and I can't wait to see how the story will progress, especially as we're introduced to a fun companion for Ziska towards the end!