Love at first shot? In Love Bullet, when people die before finding love in life, they’re reincarnated as Cupids. Unlike the classic cherubs, these modern incarnations are armed to the teeth with magical rifles, machine guns, and grenades to make everyone in a ten-mile radius fall in love. The first volume follows new recruit Koharu as she tries to find a partner for the girl who once confessed to her.
The road to an official overseas release for Love Bullet has been a long one. First written in English by mangaka Inee, the series was picked up in 2023 by seinen magazine Monthly Comic Flapper, and translated into Japanese. Following this, fan group Sancho Step took an interest in the manga and started sharing fan translations, always pointing readers to ways to support the comic at the end of each chapter. With this publication, the series has been re-translated back into English for the second time by editor Thomas McAlister and Masaaki Fukashima, who first translated it into Japanese, to make a “polished” English edition of the title.
The first chapter, a one-shot set later on in the overall story, sets up the world with a shoot-out between Cupids in that classic food chain WcDonald’s. The main cast—protagonist Koharu, mentor Kanna, wildcard Chiyo, and analytical Ena—are squabbling over how to break up a love triangle where a high-school girl’s two friends, a boy and a girl, have both developed crushes on her. From the outset, Love Bullet embraces a queer-normative approach to love, with anybody able to be a good match for anyone else.
The main story of the volume follows Koharu, once a matchmaker in high school before her death, navigating the competitive life of a Cupid. The Goddess of Love saves her after she dies in an accident and reincarnates her as a white-haired, red-eyed Cupid, already clad in a bulletproof vest. Cupids are among us, but out of sight, sent on missions to clear up love triangles and help people find a partner. Do enough jobs, and they’ll earn enough karma to be reborn as a human again, albeit years after their death.
Even though the power of love is literally in their hands, Cupids can’t make their targets fall head over heels with just anybody. Instead, their love bullets (hey, that’s the name of the book) are used to light a spark of interest that’s already present. Recon is as important as action for the Cupids; understanding their targets’ lives, preferences, and social circles before pulling the trigger. Then again, some Cupids like Chiyo are content to bullet-spray and see what happens.
Love can be a volatile thing, and the amount of collateral damage Chiyo risks with her open fire and grenades, which fittingly leave heart-shaped craters, conveys this well. These action sequences are littered with the sound effects of punches and bullets, as this all goes down around oblivious humans whose lives would be changed forever if just one projectile went astray. Better yet are the full pages given to the final shot of each mission, with all other action stopping and the world’s color draining as the new lovebirds get their start.
This is especially poignant at the end of the first arc, where Koharu finally finds a match for Aki, her childhood best friend who confessed to her just before she died. Picking up five years on, we see how Aki’s life has been shaped by the loss of Koharu, and only now is Aki starting to live for herself instead of hiding away due to these poignant feelings. Love Bullet conveys how, when it comes to grief, those we’ve lost soon turn into copies of copies in our mind, a version smoothed down to the most salient aspects, as no one can carry an entire extra person with them forever. Moving on from the death of a loved one is difficult, and in some ways, you never truly do; the river of your life is redirected forever by the change. But life still goes on, and that means you can love again, too. Cupids are often tied with the idea of undying true love, but this series rejects that with this opening arc.
That said, although romance is at the core of the series and the book is marketed as Yuri (girls’ love), people looking for a straightforward love story may be let down. The Cupids themselves are incapable of feeling romantic love, overwhelmed with anguish if hit by a shot. Instead, the romances are left to the secondary characters the Cupids are assigned to, putting the cast in a position similar to that of most Yuri readers. Nonetheless, with the first arc centred on Koharu’s lost love moving on, there is still plenty for fans of romance and heartbreak to enjoy and connect with.
In September last year, Inee shared a short comic on social media telling readers that without better sales, the story would end with the second volume. Thanks to fans around the world making guides and showing support with award nominations and purchases of the Japanese books, Love Bullet has persevered. In her afterword to the book, Inee outlines her goal to “tell Koharu’s story in its entirety,” and thanks to support from her publishers and fans worldwide, we should see it happen.
