The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Maiden of the Needle

What's It About? 

Yui was reincarnated into another world as a member of the noble Nuir family. But when it appears that she failed to inherit her family's unique enchanted tailoring gifts, the young seamstress is in for a life of torment and misfortune. Will a meeting with a kind-hearted noble be enough to change her fate?

Maiden of the Needle has a story by Zeroki and art by Yuni Yukimura, with original character design by Miho Takeoka. The English translation is by Kiki Piatkowska, with lettering by Chana Conley. Published by Yen Press (September 19, 2023).


Content Warning: This manga discusses child abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

The question when reading both the original version and adaptation of a series is, to me, whether to recommend one over the other or to leave it up to personal preference. In the case of Maiden of the Needle, whose first light novel was in the last Guide we did, I'd say to go for the manga. That comes down to one particular reason: the manga version leaves out a lot of the bits that made the novel come off as slightly uncomfortable. That means that Yui spends paragraphs describing her breasts after her growth spurt, and musings on pubic hair are not present in this version. She is still asked to marry a much older man, and her birth family abuses her, but those are at least present for plot purposes. The other stuff? Not so much, so its exclusion here is a bonus.

The story itself is relatively run-of-the-mill. Yui's a typical Cinderella figure (in the variants where her father's still alive and an active participant in the abuse), and she naturally has a preternatural gift that her parents can't understand. In her case, it's “blessweaving,” a method of enchanting fabric with protective spells based on a contract with a magical spider. Yui's blessweaving and sewing skills are far superior to her father's, but the implication is that the family power has declined so much that he can't recognize the real thing when it shows up. Yui is bought (in the dowry sense) by Rodin Calostira, who doesn't know about magic but is aware of her incredible sewing technique, and from that point on, Yui's life begins to improve drastically.

We don't get much sense of Yui as a person, which is a shame. She's been reincarnated after an ill-fated meeting with everyone's favorite truck back in Japan, but that's neither here nor there in terms of the actual plot, and it feels shoehorned in. She's cute and enthusiastic about her work to the point where she tries to strip a guy whose clothing looks like impaired sloths made it, but that's not a personality, per se. The world-building, however, looks just to be taking off, so if this is intriguing enough, it should be worth another volume to see how it continues – such as whether or not the predatory lesbian maid is left out. If nothing else, this is an improvement on the original and has some adorable fairy designs, and that's something to be pleased about.