Manga / Tales of Wedding Rings

Tales of Wedding Rings (Kekkon Yubiwa Monogatari) is an ongoing high fantasy adventure/romantic comedy manga written and illustrated by Maybe. It started serialization in 2014, and the following year Crunchyroll began publishing it in English online. Yen Press began releasing English print volumes of the series in February 2018. An anime adaptation aired from January to March 2024 for 12 episodes. A second season was announced.

For almost as long as he can remember, Sato has been in love with his neighbor and best friend Hime. However, one day Hime announces that she is moving and that they may never be able to see each other again. Sato decides to follow her and admit his feelings to her before he loses the chance forever, but finds a strange portal where she was supposed to be. On the other side, he finds Hime about to get married.

And then a demon attacks the wedding.

Hime uses this chance to kiss Sato instead of the prince she'd originally been betrothed to. The wedding ring she gives Sato grants him immense magical power, which he promptly uses to vanquish the attacking monster. Hime and her caretaker then explain that she was actually a princess from a parallel world living on Earth for her own safety. A prophecy states that the man she marries is destined to become the Ring King, a hero who will vanquish the Abyssal King and save the world.

Things will not be so simple for Sato, however, as he currently only has one-fifth of the Ring King's power. The rest of it lies in another four elemental rings, each of which is held by the female heir to the royal families of four nations. For Sato to gain enough power to save the world, he must marry the other four princesses and earn the rings.

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This work contains examples of:

• Above the Influence: In chapter 40, the Elder, frustrated by how little progress Satou and his wives have made since she locked them in her lab, floods the room with a powerful aphrodisiac. All the girls but Amber succumb to its effects, tearing off their clothes and throwing themselves at Satou in an amorous frenzy. Satou manages to keep his wits about himself, however, and runs away, not wanting to take advantage of them in their current state. When they corner him in the bath, he uses the Ring of Wind to knock them away and disperse the gas, bringing everyone back to their senses.
• Adults Are Useless: Played for Laughs in chapter 71. The teacher of Hime and Satou's homeroom class clearly has no idea how to introduce Nefritis, Granart, Saphir, and Amber to her students, or how to keep said students from gawking at the girls' nonhuman features. The poor woman is visibly sweating bullets and shamelessly passes the buck to Hime at the first opportunity.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents:
  • Granart's mother Rubyn makes her first appearance in the Sorcerer's Spire arc. She quickly embarrasses Granart in front of Krystal and Nefritis by being very affectionate with her and telling them stories about how Granart couldn't pronounce her own name when she was a child.
  • When the party returns to Maasa in chapter 58, they find that Saphir's father has gone overboard in preparing for the imminent arrival of his first grandchild. Not only has he filled his throne room with baby toys and accessories, but he himself is shaking a pair of rattles like all these toys are for him. Saphir is left utterly flabbergasted by the sight.
• Amicable Exes: After years of hating her parents for abandoning her due to their unhappy marriage, Granart discovers that they're perfectly happy divorced, and they've separately been improving their skills. They come off as a couple of Bash Brothers, to her embarrassment.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The elder of the elven city reveals that she was the original wind-ring princess, and that one of the other four, well as all the people that the original Ring King fought with, killed him out of fear; while the elder and the other three princesses each did it for their own personal reason, though the elder implies that the light-ring princess was the only one to show the hero remorse before he died. The rest of the world agreed to destroy all records of his treachery so that they could have their unblemished hero. The Ring King's final act was to place a curse on the rings.
• An Arm and a Leg: In Satou's first confrontation with the Abyss King, he uses the full power of all five rings to hit the Abyss King with a tremendous explosion. This obliterates a good chunk of the right side of the Abyss King's body, including his arm, though it doesn't kill him.
• Anti-Regeneration: In Chapter 43, Granart and Nefritis run afoul of a Giant Spider which can regrow severed limbs near-instantaneously. They overcome this when Granart unlocks her innate fire magic, letting her strike faster than the spider can heal and superheat her blade to cauterize its wounds. Even then, it still falls to Satou to finish the beast off.
• Apocalyptic Log: In chapter 60, Amber leads the party to an underground dwarven city. There they find a palace that's been converted into a mausoleum, and a console which takes control of Amber to make her recite a dire message:
  Amber: We are the earthen. The craftsmen. The dwarves. Here lies proof that we existed. We were a brave race. We faced the Abyss King and ensured the Ring King's triumph. The Abyss King was sealed, but his curse remains. We stood at the fore and bore the brunt of it. The curse will destroy us. It robs us of our will to live and our hope of a future. It returns us to the Abyss. We cannot break the curse. The dwarves will soon cease to exist. Such is the price of world salvation. We have only grief... and lamentations.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Krystal and Nefritis get their first look at the catfolk, Krystal remarks on how cute their catlike ears are. At this, Nefritis goes on a sudden rant about how the catfolk are a race of fearless, ferocious warriors — and how elf ears are much cuter, thank you very much.
• Artifact of Doom: Abyssal Knights are people who take up, sometimes unwillingly, a Ring of the Abyssal King.
• Artificial Human: More like artificial dwarf. The Earth Ring is carried by a replica of the dwarf princess since the entire race went extinct centuries ago. They sent her to Sato's world to keep her secret and safe.
• Assassin Outclassin': In the Land of Water arc, the fortune-teller's assassins make several attempts on Satou's life. First they try to poison his food. Then they try to sneak into his room while he's asleep. Finally, they try to snipe him while he's walking down the street. Thanks to the vigilance of Satou's allies, these attempts all fail.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Saphir's ability to turn into a gigantic dragon made of water is undeniably cool and useful, but doing it takes a lot out of her and she can only use it in places where there's water in abundance. Put her in a place where the nearest body of water is miles away, like the mountains around Idanokan, and her greatest ability becomes unusable.
  • The Empire has a vault full of artifacts like this. Such as a shield that will deflect any magical attack... so long as the bearer's magical power is already greater. Meaning it's just a tool to bully the weak.
• Bad Samaritan: A mysterious woman approaches Krystal during the Sorcerer's Spire arc and helps her to master light magic, which she was struggling with. This woman is really a minion of the Abyss King, and her help is meant to gain Krystal's trust so she can corrupt her into embracing her inner darkness and joining the Abyss King's side.
• Bald of Authority: Marse's father, The Emperor of Giseras, is the bald, stern, uncompromising leader of the mightiest nation in the world.
• Barehanded Blade Block: Several instances of this occur throughout the manga.
  • The first Abyss Knight and the Abyss King are both shown using magic to stop a blade from hitting their outstretched hand on separate occasions.
  • When Granart challenges Amber to a sparring match in chapter 32, Amber blocks one of Granart's sword strikes by catching it in the palm of her hand. Justified, as she's an android with superhuman strength and durability.
• Barrier Maiden: The previous elven king and queen turned themselves to stone so that they could use the Wind Ring to forever power an impenetrable wind barrier around the kingdom.
• Battle Harem: In theory, the princesses use their rings' magic to fight alongside the Ring King. In practice, only Saphir has demonstrated that level of magical proficiency; Granart at least is strong at close-quarters combat, but Hime and Nefritis have basically zero fighting ability, while Amber proves her strength to be in both areas.
• Bears Are Bad News: The party runs into an enormous bear while making their way to Romca. It's a normal animal rather than an Abyss beast, so Satou assumes it's safe to approach. The bear quickly disabuses him of that notion. Cue the party chewing Satou out for his stupidity as they run for their lives.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Granart has this as part of her "marriage interviews", as is standard for catfolk princesses. Unlike most princesses, Granart has never gotten anywhere close to being defeated. It got to the point that even foreigners are invited to fight her, with no success. She offers to throw the fight for Sato, but he insists they fight for real. He doesn't actually beat her, but wins her hand by defeating an Abyssal Knight that interrupts their match.
• Big Brother Instinct: The elf prince is very protective of his younger sister. He tries to have Sato locked up until she reaches maturity in fifty years in order to delay their inevitable marriage.
• Black Sheep: Prince Marse is treated like this by both his older brother and father due to not only being a child of a concubine but failing to gain the powers of the Ring King for the Empire.
• Bloodstained Defloration: Implied when Hime and Satou finally consummate. Hime mentions losing her virginity was easier than she thought it would be, but the story doesn't directly address whether she bled.
• Brutal Honesty: In Chapter 32, Amber, having just bested Granart in a very one-sided sparring match, bluntly tells the other princess that her overreliance on physical skills will get her killed. Granart may be a match for any one of the Abyss King's monsters, but without magic she stands no chance against an army of them, especially if they're all attacking her at once. Granart realizes that Amber has a point, and she decides to start learning how to use magic.
• Bullet Dodges You: When an assassin fires an arrow at Satou, Alabaster uses his magic to stop the arrow in its tracks. This feat, and the shit-eating grin that Alabaster shoots the assassin a moment later, convinces the assassin to back off.
• Catapult Nightmare: In chapter 11, Krystal has a dream of welcoming Satou home after a day at the office. They go to the bedroom to make love, only for Krystal to suddenly find herself trapped on the sidelines behind an invisible wall as the "Krystal" on the bed morphs into Nefritis. Cue Krystal catapulting awake with a Big "NO!".
• Chainmail Bikini: The warrior women of the Fire Country, including Princess Granart, fight in extremely revealing clothes.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early in Chapter 27, Nefritis notices a small shrine near the spot where they arrived when Alabaster sent them all to Earth. Said shrine then fades into the background until the end of the chapter, when it suddenly opens up to reveal Amber, the fifth ring princess.
• Chiaroscuro: The sequence where the Elder recounts her backstory as one of the first Ring King's wives makes heavy use of this technique. Peridot and the other princesses are depicted as faceless shadow figures contrasted by their own bright, detailed clothing and hair, while the Ring King is constantly veiled in shadows which get deeper as he slips further into lust-fuelled madness.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Sato and Hime made one, even though Hime already knew at the time that she would end up in an Arranged Marriage with someone else. When Sato follows her and accidentally interrupts her wedding, she takes the opportunity to marry him instead.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Hime gets upset any time Sato is told to marry the other princesses to obtain their rings. Though she understands the role of the Ring King, she still doesn't like having to share Sato with other women.
• Close-Call Haircut: In chapter 12, Granart lunges at Satou and slashes at his face. He barely manages to dodge with some frantic backpedaling, though her sword still trims the tips of his bangs.
• Cold Flames: The Romca library contains lamps lit with a magical "frozen fire" that gives off light without burning anything. It's a godsend for navigating this dimly lit and highly flammable storehouse.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Prince Marse is conflicted over his friendship with Sato and his loyalty to his family and the Empire.
• Crippling Overspecialization: According to Granart, all of her people are the frontline fighting type with no magic skill; chapter 39, however, implies it wasn't always that way.
• Curse:
  • The Abyss King lays a curse on Satou during their first encounter. This curse takes the form of a black mark on his chest which gradually expands, threatening to kill him, mutate him into a monster, or something worse. Fortunately, the power of Krystal's Ring of Light can suppress the spread of the curse.
  • In Chapter 37, Peridot reveals that the first Ring King, having been betrayed by his brides, laid a curse upon the rings to bring misfortune on those who bear them.
    A curse be upon you! On the rings! On the princesses! On this very world! May the rings become cursed! A curse that will not leave the princesses, a curse received by those she kisses! May those who seek power find their destinies gone mad! May your descendants suffer until the Abyss swallows this world once more!
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Granart doles out two of these in quick succession in chapter 12. She takes on one of her suitors in a swordfight, effortlessly blocking his first attack before smashing him into the floor. Then she lunges at an unprepared Satou, and while Satou barely manages to dodge her opening slash, she knocks the wind out of him via Hammer Hilt before he can do anything else.
  • In chapter 32, Granart decides to pass the time by challenging Amber to a sparring match. It starts and ends with Granart getting Punched Across the Room. When Amber admits that she was holding back, an indignant Granart demands she take the fight seriously and tries to attack her again—at which point Amber demonstrates the power of her Chest Blaster, gouging a long, deep trench into the stone floor.
• Cyclops: The most humanoid of the Abyssal beasts are orc-like creatures with a single glowing eye in the center of the face. The giant spider beast likewise has a single glowing eye.
• Dark Is Evil: The Abyssal Knight and his demon army. Notable that there is a Light Ring but no matching Dark Ring. The Abyssal Rings are referred to as "dark rings," but they are corruptions of the five elements.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Land of Water arc gives Marse a lot of focus, delving into his backstory, relationships, motivations, and secret anxieties.
• Deconstruction: Of the Harem genre. What happens when you give an everyday kid superhuman powers that are dependent on constantly having sex with their many arranged wives? You get a power-hungry, Ax-Crazy rapist. The first Ring King may have saved the world from an overlord with his corrupt power, but he immediately tried to conquer the world afterwards and had to be put down, by his own wives no less, and was effectively rewritten out of history with a false idol. Satou manages to avert this by not treating his wives as sex dispensers and as close friends instead.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: In chapter 57, Krystal and Satou return to the party after spending the night having Their First Time. The other princesses quickly notice that something is up: Satou seems more confident than usual, Krystal is keeping an awkward distance from him, and she's started calling him by his first name, which none of them have even heard before. Saphir is the first one to put all the pieces together, and she spells it out for the others:
  Saphir: To put it bluntly... they did it.
• Dimensional Traveler: Alabaster can use his magic to open temporary gates between Earth and Arnulus, allowing travel between the two worlds. Amber has this power as well, though she can only use it once.
• Dirty Old Woman: The elf elder. She rescues Sato from prison, then asks to watch him and Hime have sex. Later she encourages Nefritis to do it while they're all taking a bath, which Hime protests strongly against. She casually remarks that she's had many human lovers but she wants to see how a human from another world would have sex. When Satou later returns to be with Hime and Nefritis in their bedroom, he strongly implies that the elf elder tried to sexually molest him prior and escaped with his chastity barely intact.
• Dramatic Unmask: In chapter 64, Satou slashes the Abyss King across his mask. This results in the Abyss King clutching his face as the mask disintegrates. He then lowers his hand, revealing himself to be the original Ring King.
• The Dreaded: Abyssal Knights. Alabaster, who easily defeated some demons earlier, tells Sato to run from one when they first encounter one. He's told that his power at the time simply isn't enough to defeat one head on.
• Elemental Powers:
  • The five rings include the Ring of Light, the Ring of Wind, the Ring of Fire, the Ring of Water, and the Ring of Earth.
  • The Abyssal King creates corrupting rings to turn people into his Abyssal Knights. They use the same elemental powers as the Wedding Rings.
• Establishing Character Moment: Granart quickly establishes herself as a formidable warrior who won't accept any man weaker than her as her husband. She first demolishes a would-be suitor in a swordfight, and upon noticing Satou, she attacks him to gauge his strength. When she quickly defeats him, she expresses disappointment that the Ring King is so weak before challenging him to come back in a few days if he wants another shot at courting her.
• Evil Chancellor: A mysterious fortune-teller has the king of Maasa wrapped around her finger. She uses his authority, and her own manipulative magic, to weaken the country and to try and seize the rings from Satou. She turns out to be an Abyss Knight.
• Evil Knockoff: In chapter 62, the Abyss Knights are revealed to be copies of the five original ring princesses, created by the Abyss King to serve him.
• Expy: The manga is The Lord of the Rings as a harem story, albeit with the Rings being Plot Coupons in a Gotta Catch 'Em All scenario rather than the goal being to destroy them.
  • Sato is an unlikely hero who has to bear a magical ring and travels alongside a group of companions from various different nations and species, just like Frodo. Of course, the very concept of the magical rings themselves is reimagining the Rings of Power as wedding rings.
  • The Abyssal King is an Evil Overlord who uses corrupted magical rings to turn humans into otherwordly Abyssal Knights... Sauron and the Nazgûls, anyone?
  • Saphir's father is heavily based on King Theoden of Rohan, being a once-great king who has degenerated into a withered, powerless, and borderline senile figurehead under the influence of an Evil Chancellor. Much like Theoden, his youth and good character are restored once he is freed of his chancellor's influence.
  • A wise old man very knowledgeable about history and magic, with a special relationship towards the elves, who also wields a staff and sports a long beard... Are we speaking about Gandalf or Alabaster?
  • And an elf king and queen using the power of their magical ring to isolate their elven realm and protect it against the forces of the Evil Overlord might also sound familiar...
• Fighting Your Friend: In the Land of Water arc, the fortune-teller brainwashes Marshe by giving him a magical sword and orders him to kill Satou. He strikes during a monster attack, but even in his brainwashed state he can't bring himself to kill his friend. Satou frees him from the sword's influence by shattering its pommel.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In chapter 12, Marse is visibly disappointed when Alabaster decides that they're going to visit the land of fire next instead of the land of water. Satou notices this, and privately wonders if Marse is upset because he knows someone in the land of water. Six chapters later, Satou is shown to have guessed right: Marse was looking forward to seeing Princess Saphira, the woman he loves.
  • The mysterious woman who approaches Krystal at the Sorcerer's Spire looks exactly like the original Princess of Light. This foreshadows the reveal in chapter 62 that the Abyss Knights are copies of the original ring princesses.
• Fridge Logic: An In-Universe example occurs in chapter 42. Krystal is partway through ranting at her sister Morion for tricking her into using the Elder's imperfect birth control spell when it suddenly occurs to her to wonder how the Elder determined the spell's 70% success rate. Morion, taken aback, guesses that the Elder must have tested it out herself. The implications of that thought gross both girls out.
• From Zero to Hero: The first Ring King was a legendary hero who saved the world from the Abyss King in ancient times. Much about him is shrouded in myth, with people thinking that he was chosen by the gods if not a god in human form. But as Peridot reveals, he started out as a normal man, a common farmer who just happened to find the first ring in a field.
• Giant Spider: Nefritis and Granart discover a giant abyssal spider lurking in the depths of the elven library.
• Great Big Library of Everything: The elven library of Romca is the oldest and greatest library in the world, containing the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of every elf who ever lived. The heroes visit this library to learn more about the original war with the Abyss King after it becomes apparent that they are not strong enough to beat him at present.
• Grim Up North: Vanna, the Abyss King's realm, is located far to the north of the other nations. It is a barren and desolate place where only the hardiest of people can survive, and it is crawling with the demonic creatures of the Abyss.
• Gunship Rescue: A fantasy version appears in Chapter 30. Satou has just taken his best shot at the Abyss King, but failed to kill him, and he is too exhausted to defend himself as the Abyss King retaliates. Granart and the other princesses leap to Satou's defense, only to be surrounded by hordes of the Abyss King's demons. Just when it seems all hope is lost, Alabaster swoops in on the back of a giant bird to save the day.
• Haunted Technology: The Abyss Knight which attacks the party in Chapter 25 is an ancient dwarven robot possessed by one of the dark rings.
• Healing Factor: The giant spider lurking in the Romca library can regenerate severed limbs. Whenever Granart cuts one of its legs off, the severed appendage dissolves into black smoke which flows back into the main body, and the missing part instantly grows back.
• Helping Hands: Peridot keeps the severed, mummified hand of the original Ring King locked up in the deepest level of the elven library. When she brings Satou's party down there to show them the hand and explain why she has it, the hand, sensing the power of the rings, suddenly springs to life and lunges at Satou.
• Hidden Backup Prince: Hime was raised on Earth by her wizard guardian posing as her grandfather, away from the dangers of their kingdom. Unlike other examples, she is aware of her future duty as a Ring princess.
• Hikikomori: The elf princess, Nefritis, never leaves her room. Her older brother encourages this, thinking if she's too afraid to go outside she'll never leave him.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In-universe example with the first Ring King. While he did vanquish the Abyss King and save the world, Peridot reveals that he was not the selfless hero that history and legend make him out to be. He was a flawed, fallible man who quickly got drunk on the power of the rings, raping his wives in order to empower himself, and everyone could see that he was probably going to turn around and conquer the world himself as soon as he defeated the Abyss King. To prevent this from happening, his wives betrayed him, then created a false narrative so the world would never know what an awful person their great hero was.
• Honor Before Reason: Sato shows this tendency during the Fire Princess arc.
  • He refuses to let Granart throw the match for him, as she doubts he could win even after the training.
  • Done again after the attack by Abyssal forces when he requests another match with the princess despite her truly acknowledging him after he refuses to run away.
  • Done a third time when he admits shortly after their match that the reason he won was because of help given by a voice from the rings. She reveals she already realizes it and that the only reason that such a chance appeared was proof of his perseverance and hard work, which is why she acknowledged him.
• Horned Humanoid: The dragonfolk look like normal humans with small horns growing from their temples.
• Hotter and Sexier: The anime adaptation is pretty faithful to the manga but adds a lot more fanservice, especially explicit nudity much earlier on in the story: the original manga didn't start showing nipples until after Satou and Hime had Their First Time.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Implied in chapter 61. The rest of the party clears out so Hime and Satou can have a private Pre-Climax Climax. When the two rejoin the party the next morning, Morion quips that last night was something else, making Hime realize, to her embarrassment, that everyone could hear her.
• Incest Subtext: Its mainly Played for Laughs, but Jade has an unwholesome and one-sided fixation with his sister Nefritis. His efforts to keep her locked away seem motivated as much by keeping her to himself as by honouring their late parents' last wishes, and when he learns that she plans to leave him to marry Satou and save the world, he reacts like a man who's just been cuckolded. When Satou and Nefritis later return to Romca, they learn that Jade has gone a little crazy since Nef left; while he does come to his senses upon seeing her, he is dismayed to learn that she is not, in fact, ditching Satou to leap back into her big brother's arms. When the party leaves Romca again, Jade starts stalking Nefritis in much the same way that Smaragdi stalks Alabaster, much to Nefritis's visible disgust.
• Internal Reveal: In chapter 36, Peridot tells the party that she was one of the five princesses who married the original Ring King. This revelation comes as a big surprise to the protagonists, but it was first disclosed to the reader all the way back in chapter 10. The rest of what she has to say is new to both the reader and the characters, however.
• Interspecies Romance: Sato, the Ring King, gathers quite the variety in his princess harem:
  • His second wife is Nefritis, elven princess of the Wind Kingdom.
  • His third wife is Granart, a warrior Cat Girl and princess of the Fire Country.
  • Nefritis' aunt Sumaragdi fell in love with a human, who turns out to be none other than Alabaster, the man who raised Hime on earth and the party's resident Wizard Classic.
  • Sato's fourth wife is Princess Saphir of the Water Kingdom, who is part dragon.
  • And the fifth and final wife is Amber, an android created by the now-extinct dwarven race to stand in for the dwarven princess.
• In the Hood: The mysterious fortune-teller encountered in the Land of Water has a shawl which she wears like a hood. It hides the fact that she's wearing the mask of an Abyss Knight.
• I Reject Your Reality: When Satou's party returns to Romca after the Abyss King's awakening, they learn that Jade has deluded himself into thinking that Nefritis never left. He lurks outside the door to her room, claiming that if it remains shut, nobody can actually prove that she isn't inside.
• It Can Think: Implied with the Giant Spider in chapter 43. When it captured the party and strung them up in its webbing, it went out of its way to blindfold Amber and pin Saphir against her so Amber can't fire her Chest Blaster without hurting the other princess.
• Jumped at the Call: When Sato realizes the girl he is in love with just walked through a portal, he follows her without hesitation. He's a bit more leery about the whole "marry five princesses to save the world from an encroaching evil" thing, but he goes along with it with minimal angst.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In Chapter 46, the party decides to split into two groups so they can tackle two objectives at once. Krystal, Nefritis, Granart, and Morion leave for the Sorcerer's Spire so the former three can receive some much-needed training in the use of their newly awakened magic. Meanwhile, Satou, Saphir, Amber, and Alabaster remain in the empire's capital so they can sneak into the imperial mythology storehouse and obtain the sword of the original Ring King.
• Literal Disarming: When the original ring princesses decided to turn against the Ring King, the first thing they did was cut off his arm so he couldn't use the rings against them.
• Little Bit Beastly: The cat people of the Fire Nation have cat ears and tails but otherwise look very human.
• Living Ark: Robot Girl Amber serves as this trope for the Dwarven Race. There used to be five races: human, elf, catfolk (Cat Girl), dragonkin (lizard hybrid), and dwarf. In addition, there's a prophecy that the princess of each race would someday have to marry the hero would become the Ring King. The problem is that the dwarves died out ages ago, but they thought ahead and built Amber who could "sleep" until the hero arrived and take the place of the dwarf princess. Amber isn't a dwarf (nor does she look like one), but does have their accumulated knowledge and mentions that she has dwarf DNA within her to be able to give birth to dwarf babies (or rather dwarf hybrids).
• Locked in a Room: Invoked in Chapter 38 when the Elder locks Satou and the princesses in the Romca library. The front door can only be opened through the magic of the rings, meaning that the party can't get out unless they strengthen that magic by deepening their bonds... preferably in a way that allows the Elder to indulge in her voyeurism fetish. It takes them a week, but they find a more platonic means of gaining the power needed to open the door.
• Love Is in the Air: In Chapter 40, the Elder floods her lab with an aphrodisiac mist to get Satou and his wives in the mood so she can watch them go at it. Nothing comes of it, as Satou proves to be Above the Influence.
• Made of Evil: The Abyss beasts are not natural creatures. They are unholy monsters formed of the Abyss itself, able to spawn wherever there is sufficient darkness.
• Magic A Is Magic A: In chapter 32, Alabaster and Morion give Satou and Hime a lecture on the workings of magic. Essentially, everything in the world is made up of particles drawn from the four classical elements. Magic is the act of manipulating these particles to achieve desired effects, such as drawing the fire particles out of a tree to set it ablaze. The rings exist outside this paradigm: ordinary magic relies on manipulating existing particles, while the rings can create elemental particles from nothing.
• Magitek: The dwarves were adept at creating "sorcerer's machines", technological devices created with and powered by magic. Amber, a lifelike android capable of wielding magic in her own right, is the pinnacle of their craft.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Abyss Knights who command the Abyssal King's demonic armies wear masks that conceal the top half of the face.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Over fifty years before the start of the series, the elven princess of Romca fell in love with a human traveler. The other elves didn't approve of this relationship, both because the princess's lover was human and because they feared he was only romancing the princess to steal the Ring of Wind. They drove the traveler away, but in doing so they turned the princess against her people. She cursed her xenophobic kinsmen and abandoned Romca to seek out her lost love. Her younger sister and successor, fearing that the princess might one day return to take revenge on those who wronged her, sacrificed herself to create the Vortex Barrier which cuts Romca off from the outside world.
• Maou the Demon King: The Abyss King is the demonic overlord of the dark realm of Vanna and master of the Abyssal beasts that have plagued the world since time immemorial. His goal, so far as anyone can tell, is to destroy the world by plunging it into the darkness of the Abyss, and the only thing which can stop him is the Ring King wielding the full power of the rings.
• Marital Rape License: According to Peridot, the original Ring King eventually stopped seeing his wives as people and started seeing them as, essentially, batteries to fuel his own power. He would have sex with them whenever he pleased, whether his wives were willing or not, and they had no choice but to endure this until the Abyss King was finally defeated.
• Marry Them All: Sato must marry five princesses, making this enforced. However, Sato hasn't actually had sex with any of them, and everyone acknowledges that Hime is the one he really loves. With the revelation that the original Ring King was corrupted by having five wives and they killed him for it, there's a real possibility that it may be defied in the end, with Sato winding up with only Hime. This idea goes out the window once Sato has a three way with Hime and Nefritis, making a harem ending all but certain as he starts to accept the feelings of the other girls. This possibility is only furthered when he allows Granart to make love to him after she bests him in a duel.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Nefritis's aunt Smaragdi once fell in love with a human man, but circumstances forced them apart for decades. By the time they reunited, the man was now elderly, and Smaragdi didn't even realize who he was until someone else mentioned his name. Once she did, she decided to make up for lost time... much to the dismay of the old man, who can't keep up with his passionate, insatiable lover anymore.
• Meaningful Name: Krystal, Princess of Light, is named Hime in Japan.
• Merchant City: The Mobile City of Needakitta is home to the finest warriors in the world. Because of this, traveling merchants flock to the city for protection, making the place a massive mobile trade hub.
• Missed the Call:
  • Prince Marse was chosen to be the Ring King, but Hime instead chose Sato. Interestingly, Marse didn't want to be the Ring King and is happy that someone who genuinely loves and knows Hime has taken the role instead.
  • It is revealed that he made a promise to marry one of the Water Kingdom's princesses. Giving up the title has caused him problems romantically with her and socially with his family, but he is still genuinely supportive and appreciative of Hime and Sato.
• Mobile City: The Land of Fire is a train of gigantic wooden vehicles with buildings built into and atop them. It travels the world constantly, the better to let its mercenary denizens sell their services.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Chapter 29. Satou and his allies have returned to Arnulus to find the Abyss King on the warpath. Armed with all five rings, Satou goes on the attack. He tears through the demonic hordes with his elemental powers, clearing a path straight to the Abyss King. The five rings then merge into one, and Satou uses all their power to hit the Abyss King with a Sword Beam that produces a massive explosion, wiping out the remaining demons and leaving Satou completely spent. But when the smoke clears, Satou is horrified to see that the Abyss King, though missing a big chunk of his body, is still standing. He then collapses, and the Abyss King nearly kills him before Granart and the other princesses come to Satou's aid.
• Nice Guy: Both Marse and Sato.
  • Marse isn't a jealous rival who covets the crown or the position Sato is in. He acts sportingly to the young man who crosses dimensions to be with the girl he loves.
  • Sato, despite truly loving Hime, seeks to treat each girl fairly and with the respect they deserve. He doesn't want to take their feelings or positions for granted.
• Nipple and Dimed:
  • In the manga, if a female character appears topless, something will inevitably conceal her nipples from view. The series stops doing this shortly before Krystal and Satou make love for the first time.
  • The Hotter and Sexier anime, by contrast, shows the girls' nipples all the time, sometimes even full-frontal with only a Lens Flare Censor concealing their genitals.
• No Sympathy: In chapter 38, Elder Peridot has just finished telling the protagonists the tale of how she and the other princesses of her time were abused by the Ring King, how they murdered him once he succeeded in defeating the Abyss King, and how he cursed them to suffer misfortune for their betrayal. While most of the group is troubled by the tale, Morion expresses no sympathy for the original ring princesses, dismissing them as traitors who got what they deserved.
• Older Than They Look:
  • The elves age slower than humans to reach full adulthood, and don't age from then on, much like classic fantasy i.e. Tolkien-style elves. Nephrites in particular is fifty-four.
  • Amber, as an Artificial Human designed by the dwarves to wait for the next Ring King, is roughly a thousand years old, but still looks the same age as everyone else.
• Once More, with Clarity: As the party is leaving Romca for the second time, Nefritis glances over her shoulder and notices a tiny speck on the horizon. She reacts with visible disgust, but when Krystal asks her what's wrong, she says it's nothing. The final page of the chapter holds a magnifying glass over the panel, revealing what the speck was: her brother, flying after her as if begging her not to go.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: The Staff of Light was magically sealed into a pedestal following the death of its previous wielder, Krystal's mother. In theory, the magical power of the royal family should be able to unseal it; unfortunately, Krystal was never taught to use magic. This leads to Alabaster and Morion giving her a crash course in magical theory; this, and some intimate experimentation with Satou, enable her to unseal the staff and claim it for herself.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Saphir's dragon form resembles a horned, fishlike sea serpent with two pairs of ray-finned wings, a single pair of arms, no legs, and a mane of tentacles.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The dwarves seem to have been typical fantasy dwarves before they went extinct: short, muscular, hirsute people who dwelled underground and were expert miners and craftsmen. They were also pioneers of Magitek, creating robots, perpetual motion machines, and other devices which remain functional—if unpowered—in the ages since their makers disappeared.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Alabaster is a grandparent substitute for Hime.
  • Nefritis mentions how Krystal and Sato sometimes feel like this to her, what with helping her come out of her shell and adapt to this big new world. Krystal doesn't like this comparison, especially since Nefritis is in her fifties.
• The Peeping Tom: In chapter 58, Satou and Hime slip away to make love in a private bedroom, unaware that Nefritis and Granart are watching them from an adjacent rooftop with a clear view of the window.
• Perpetual Storm: The elven kingdom of Romka is surrounded by a cyclone which has raged ceaselessly for decades, keeping out all intruders. The storm is explicitly magical in nature, having been conjured by the king and queen using the Ring of Wind to protect their kingdom—and their daughter—from the forces of the Abyss King. The storm peters out once Nephrites takes the ring and marries Satou.
• Pointy Ears: Nefritis takes pride in her pointy ears.
• Pre-Climax Climax: In chapter 61, the party makes camp just outside the Abyss King's realm. Knowing that this might be their last chance to do so, everyone else clears out to let Krystal and Satou make love before the final battle.
• Production Throwback: In chapter 70, Morion is shown reading a volume of Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, one of Maybe's earlier works.
• Projectile Webbing: The giant spider can spray its webbing from its abdomen to ensnare people from a distance.
• Proud Scholar Race: The elves dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, conducting research on whatever topics strike their fancy throughout their lives. When they die, their writings are stored in the Romca library with as much reverence as a corpse being interred in a mausoleum; indeed, the library is their equivalent of a graveyard.
• Ragnarök Proofing: The dwarves have been dead and gone for so long that the people of Arnulus no longer know what they looked like, but their magical machines remain intact and functional, if unpowered.
• Refuge in Audacity: The second time the group goes to Earth, Amber suggests solving the problem of their obvious inhuman traits by... doing nothing to hide them. Everyone is clearly too intimidated by these beauties to ask too many questions.
  Amber: Just act like you own the place.
• The Resenter:
  • One knight who fails the "marriage interviews" is seen grumbling about the princess defeating him easily and shows jealousy towards Sato for being able to use magic. This allows the Abyssal King's agents to corrupt him with one of the Dark Rings, turning him into a monster.
  • Ironically, Sato refuses to use the rings as this would be relying on his wives. Instead he wishes to prove his worth as their husband by fighting with his own strength. Despite this, a voice from the rings helps him during his marriage interview but assures him that the help is not the power of the rings.
• The Reveal:
  • Alabaster, the old man who raised Hime, is the former lover of the elf princess Sumaragdi. She didn't recognize him when they met because of how much he aged, though she finally does after they've left and she overhears two elves talking about them and revealing the sage's name which prompts her to realize who he is.
  • The first Ring King didn't "disappear," his wives killed him when it became clear he was mad with power and about to become a conqueror as bad as the Abyssal King. The kingdoms helped them cover this up.
  • Chapter 64 drops a big one. The original Ring King and the current Abyss King are one and the same. The ring princesses banished the Ring King to the Abyss, where he merged with the remnants of the previous Abyss King to become the latter's successor.
• Ring of Power: The titular wedding rings confer great magical power upon their wielders once they are wed. There are ten rings in total, broken up into five pairs corresponding to the elements: Light, Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth. The Abyss King has a competing set of dark rings, which his Abyss Knights use to wreak havoc.
• Ring on a Necklace: Nokana wears a pair of wedding rings on a necklace. She's actually a princess from a parallel world and the rings are magical, intended for her and her husband when she gets married.
• Rising Empire: The Gisaras Empire is stated to be a relatively young nation: compared to Maasa and the other ring nations, which have been around since the time before the Ring King, Gisaras has only existed for a few decades. In that time, it has swallowed up many lesser nations through conquest or diplomacy and has made itself into one of the mightiest nations in the world.
• Samus Is a Girl: The first Abyssal Knight is the former bearer of the Elven Ring of Wind, Sumaragdi. After being forced to abandon the human man she loved, the Abyssal King tricked her into putting on an evil ring that possessed her.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Abyss King is stated to have lost his physical form after his defeat, with his spirit being sealed away in the northern realm of Vanna. He eventually manages to free himself and regain a physical form.
• Shout-Out:
  • Has many to The Lord of the Rings, starting from the title itself as LOTR was translated into Japanese as "Yubiwa Monogatari", "The Tale of the Ring(s)".
  • In Chapter 27, the group, stuck in our world, eats at a restaurant called "Joestar's".
  • In Chapter 30, Smaragdi copies Yuuno Gasai's infamous "yandere trance" while explaining how important Alabaster is to her.
• Shown Their Work: The author draws large breasts rather realistically. Whereas most fanservice series would have a woman's breasts be plump and upright even without a bra, here they're drawn more like what they would be in real life without support: less round and more baggy.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In Chapters 64 and 65, the Abyss Knights each try to convince one of the ring princesses to give up the fight and serve the Abyss King. Each princess, in her own way, tells her respective Abyss Knight to put a sock in it.
• Spanner in the Works: The Empire originally planned to gain the power of the Ring King using Prince Marse and later conquer the other kingdoms. They were thwarted thanks to Sato getting the power instead. Interestingly, the Emperor didn't particularly care about the rings; he just thought if there was a power like that, it was better to be under his control. He's mostly insulted that Marse didn't fight harder for it.
• Spell My Name With An S: Some names are inevitably rendered differently in the scanlations and official translation, like Hime's true name - Crystal in the former, Krystal in the latter.
• Summon Magic: The Abyss Knights can magically summon hordes of monsters to do their bidding.
• Summon to Hand: The Abyss King can do this with his dark rings, making them dissolve into a black smoke which travels to his domain and reform around his fingers.
• Supporting Harem: Sato explicitly and repeatedly tells everyone that Krystal is his number one priority, and she absolutely loves him back. The other princesses pretty much tell them to just go ahead and have sex so that the rest of them can have their turns.
• Suppressed History: No records exist of the time before the original war against the Abyss King. Most books that existed at the time were destroyed by the Abyss King himself, and the few that remained were burned by the war's survivors in a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth of how it ended from future generations.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: Satou and his allies head to the Empire's capital to obtain the Sword of the first Ring King from the imperial mythology storehouse, believing that this legendary weapon can give them an edge in their battle against the Abyss King. In a subversion, the sword turns out to be completely ordinary, nonmagical, and rusted to the point of uselessness.
• Taken for Granite: Nefritis's parents turned themselves to stone so they could sustain the wind barrier around their kingdom forever. Nefritis and Hime end up shattering them with a sledgehammer so they can give the Ring of Wind to Satou and fend off an Abyss Knight who got through the barrier.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: In the Land of Water arc, the fortune-teller first tries to get rid of Satou by having assassins poison his dinner. This fails because Saphir is wise to the fortune-teller's ways and warns him not to eat, with Alabaster confirming that the food has been tampered with. Hime and Nefritis then bring in an alternative meal which they prepared themselves.
• Their First Time: After many interruptions and false starts, Hime and Satou finally get to consummate their marriage in chapter 56.
• Theme Naming: Many of the characters in the series are named after minerals, often of the same color associated with their nation's element. Krystal's name needs no explanation, while her sister Morion is named for a type of smoky quartz. Nefritis is derived from nephrite, while her brother is named Jade, the elder is named Peridot, and her aunt Smaragdi’s name is derived from smaragdine, another name for the emerald. Granart may be derived from garnet. Saphir and her sister Saphira are obviously named for the sapphire. And Amber is another no-brainer.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The official trailer for the anime makes zero effort to hide the fact that Amber is encountered on Earth.
• Trapped in Another World: Sato follows a girl through a portal to another world, leaving behind everything he ever knew. He assures Krystal that summer break just started and he locked the house before he left, so everything is fine. It's clear that he's mostly just happy to be with Krystal. It later gets averted when the Abyssal King awakens.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Subverted when Satou and the princesses are sent to back to Japan to keep their rings out of the Abyss King's hands. The outlandish clothes and inhuman features of Nefritis, Granart, and Saphir draw a lot of attention from passersby, though most people assume that the girls are just cosplayers.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Sato and Hime win in the first chapter, when Hime dodges an Arranged Marriage by marrying Sato instead. Later played with as Hime needs to share him with four other girls.
• Villain Decay: The Abyss Knights get progressively easier to defeat over the first five volumes. The first Abyss Knight was a powerful wind mage who sent Satou and his allies packing the first time they fought, and held her own against him, Alabaster, Jade, and Peridot all at once the second time around. The second knight was a swordsman Wreathed in Flames whom Satou and Granart had to work together to defeat. The third Knight was a schemer who never directly fought the party and fled after her biggest monster was eaten in one gulp by Saphir's dragon form. And the fourth Knight was defeated by Satou one-on-one, in the same chapter that it was introduced.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: In the Land of Water arc, the fortune-teller beats a hasty retreat after her trump card, a kraken, is eaten in a single gulp by a transformed Saphir.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted. Even after Sato unlocks the full power of the Rings which are supposed to be enough to defeat the Abyssal King, he is still only able to injure the Abyssal King. The protagonists realize that the Abyssal King has become stronger than he was in the past, which means they have to become stronger too.
• Wandering Culture: The catfolk's original homeland of Needakitta was destroyed by the Abyss King. After he was defeated, the surviving dwarves helped them build a Mobile City, and the Needakitta catfolk have been roaming the world ever since.
• Warrior Princess: Granart, Princess of the Fire Country, is a trained warrior. She will only wed a man who can best her in combat.
• Waterfall Puke: When Nefritis wakes up to find herself alone with (and apparently having been kidnapped by) the Ring King, she gets so worked up that she pukes all over the bed.
• Wham Episode: In Chapter 26, the Abyssal King awakens much earlier than expected, forcing Alabaster to teleport Sato and his wives back to Earth to prevent the rings falling into the Abyssal King's hands.
• Wizard Classic: Hime's "grandfather" Alabaster is actually one, and he's her constant guardian who accompanies their growing party.
• Wizarding School: The Sorcerer's Spire is the world’s foremost academy for mages. Morion was raised here, and she later brings Krystal, Granart, and Nefritis here so they can be trained to use their newly awakened magical powers.
• The Worm That Walks: The Giant Spider that menaces the party in chapters 42-43 is actually a colony of countless tiny, silverfish-like Abyss beasts that have joined together to form a single entity. This makes cutting off its limbs pointless, since the severed appendages will just break apart into their component critters and flow back into the main body, allowing it to regenerate.
• Wreathed in Flames: The Abyss Knight who attacks the Land of Fire is surrounded by magical flames hot enough to melt any sword. Satou manages to defeat him by using the Ring of Wind to extinguish the Knight's flames for just a moment, leaving him vulnerable.
• Yandere: After Sumaragdi found out who Sage Alabaster was, she began making moves to resume their old relationship—and being a little creepy about it, too. Alabaster disappears for several chapters, and when he reappears, he is alive but exhausted and shaken. It's strongly implied that Sumeragdi spent most of that time making love to him.
• You Have Failed Me: The fortune-teller offs the leader of her assassin squad after his third failure to kill Satou.

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