If you’re familiar with shojo and josei light novels and manga, you’ll know there’s a Cinderella story trend that involves a young woman who’s mistreated by her family, but there’s something secret about her or amazing that makes what essentially the most desirable man in the country interested in her. Sometimes, this is handled very well! While the Bubble Love of the Mermaid manga is fascinating in some ways due to the way it also incorporates mermaid mythology, it also feels like it relies too heavily on those staples in the first volume.
Editor’s Note: There will be some light spoilers for the first volume of The Bubble Love of the Mermaid manga.
The put-upon heroine in this story is a high schooler named Asana Amamizu. Her family is descended from an individual who ate a mermaid’s flesh and apparently lived for 500 years as a result, and some of her descendants are “cursed” with the ability to quickly recover from any wound. They feature a mark on their body to indicate their condition, and the Amamizu family’s basically become rich from exploiting these women by using that poison/capability as part of the secretive medicines they sell. Toxic capitalism and child abuse in one story!
Image via Yen Press
While at school one day, Asana learns they’re about to get a new Language Arts teacher named Sakuya Shigure. That same day, when she gets home, she learns her family canceled the engagement to a 40-year-old man who was going to pay a pretty price for her hand due to another family and person willing to pay double to marry her and be adopted into their family. Coincidence? Nope! Turns out Sakuya has a birthmark of his own signifying his own connection to that supposed myth and his grandfather, upon recognizing it, set all this in motion.
Naturally, there’s also a bit of a destined meeting element to all this too. Asana and Sakuya met when they were children, with him mistaking her mark as an injury and giving her ointment and a pair of gloves (that she still wears). I warned you The Bubble Love of the Mermaid was a Cinderella story shojo manga following all of the tropes. At least they both still remember each other.
Basically, if there’s a plot beat from one of these types of stories, we see it in the first volume of The Bubble Love of the Mermaid manga. Asana is an over-achiever due to her low self-worth and self esteem issues. She’s abused. There’s no jealous sister as a rival love interest, but it seems her classmate Kyouko is being set up for that role to ensure there’s a love triangle. There’s an obstacle to their love in the form of a friend of Sakuya warning him. Even though he’s only just met Asana, he’s also extremely and immediately taken with her.
The thing is, I do suspect the mermaid mythology tied to it could end up eventually making The Bubble Love of the Mermaid more interesting. The fact Sakuya is so taken and has some sort of supernatural mark on him makes me wonder if the attraction and interest could be influenced by that. The first volume also hints at how the Amamizu is taking advantage of Asana and her ability, but doesn’t show how, so I’m curious how that could go. I’m a sucker for modern mythology too, so I’m curious what the actual truth behind the first mermaid is.
The Bubble Love of the Mermaid does seem to have some unique element with the mythology element, but it’s otherwise filled with shojo manga tropes. It’s sticking to the stereotypical Cinderella story elements. That did hamper the experience for me for the first volume. But I do wonder if things could improve in later ones if it gets a chance to better set itself apart.
Volume 1 of The Bubble Love of the Mermaid manga is available via Yen Press, and volume 2 appears on December 15, 2026. The company also handles the light novel.
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