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Did any of you see the TV show Dead Like Me? George Lass died when a toilet seat from a space station fell on her and, by luck of the draw, ends up being a grim reaper who takes the souls of the living until she meets her quota and can move on. Love Bullet, a fantastic new manga localization from Yen Press feels a bit like that, only involving cupids, love, and a splash of yuri. It’s absolutely fantastic, and reading through it made me feel a bit like Yen Press saved what might be one of the best new-to-us series to close out 2025. The premise is just fantastic.
Editor’s Note: There will be some minor spoilers for the first volume of the Love Bullet manga below.
The lore for Love Bullet is fascinating, and inee does so much in such a short period of time. Koharu Sakurada was in high school when she died. She was known for helping people find love and get together, as she was so good at analyzing and understanding folks. However, she wasn’t as good about prioritizing herself and never noticed her best friend Aki Tamaki was in love with her. The day Aki confessed is also the day a terrible construction accident claimed Koharu’s life. She pushed Aki out of the way, but ended up impaled by debris as a result. She “wakes up” five years later with her new mentor Kanna explaining that she is a Cupid now. If she gathers enough karma by helping people find love and relationships, then the goddess of love will revive her and grant her a new human life.
From there, Love Bullet helps explain the written and unwritten roles of being a Cupid in clever ways through the narrative. For example, the volume begins after Koharu already went through some introductory missions. We see her with some fellow Cupids, like her mentor Kanna, rival Chiyo, and fellow “agent” Ena. They’re trying to work out which pair in a love triangle would work best, but they’re split between the two evenly and can’t decide. So, they gunfight it out amongst themselves. So we learn how they handle tricky situations and see if a Cupid is hit by one of their own bullets, they are basically super jealous of the living and love for about 10 minutes. We also get to see Koharu make a match for the first time in front of us as the reader, establishing her innate abilities and observation skills.
From there, we watch a flashback to how Koharu became a Cupid. With this decision, Inee gets to establish her past relationship with Aki and show an origin for this type of entity. It allows us to “ride along” and learn about things through the eyes of another newcomer. This is how we learn about the karma system and the ability of those who are Cupids to get a second chance. It also means we get to see how Cupids might not necessarily be friendly and might try and snipe others’ possible assignments in the name of earning more karma, like Chiyo does. It also shows that a Cupid can temporarily take on a human form to help with their tasks.
And throughout it all, the localization of Love Bullet also seems fantastic. Masaaki Fukushima does a great job of capturing the characterizations and ensuring every Cupid’s lines conveys their personalities. The honorifics use is also quite helpful, especially given the situations we’re seeing everyone in during these initial stories. It all just reads so perfectly.
Love Bullet feels like a really special manga series, with Inee doing a fantastic job of crafting a world and characters. It feels like a blend of action, slice-of-life, and romance that includes peeks at all different types of relationships. (At least, in the first volume!) There’s so much potential here, and Yen Press saving it for December 2025 feels a little like a reward for making it through the year.
Volume 1 of the Love Bullet manga is available now via Yen Press, and there’s no release widnow for the second volume of the manga yet.
