MJ Review: Shugo Chara! Volume One

[Eric]

Title: Shugo Chara!
Volume: 1
Manga-ka: Peach-Pit
Serialized in: Nakayoshi (Kodansha)
Genre: Shoujo, Magical Girl, Romance, School
Publisher: Del Rey
Rating: Teen (13+)
Price: $10.95 (US)

Amu Hinamori is an ultra-cool 4th grader (about 10 or 11 years old), but she doesn't feel that “cool” is really her true character. She wants to be someone else, someone who can be girly instead of reserved and detached. One morning she wakes up with three decorated eggs in her bed that turn out to be Guardian Characters -- chibi kids who can change Amu's character to whatever she needs at the moment. From here, Amu gets wrapped up in groups of people who also possess eggs and the hunt for "X" eggs and something called "embryo".

Where to begin…

I will freely admit that I’m not a big fan of shoujo art styles and this manga is chock full of it. Almost nothing is contained within a panel or border, with wild and inappropriate shifts from medium shots to extreme close-ups, bursting out of the panels, overcrowding other things on the page ...and screen tone. Dear lord, tons and tons of screen tone. Hair color can change from black to white without warning, making character identification even more difficult sometimes, and there's almost no way to tell without dialog cues which are the boys and which are the girls. To the extent you can tell them apart, the characters are all cute, and the Guardians are hyper-cute. Little Snow Fairy Sugar seems overly saccharine until you see this.

However, it's the story and characterization that are really the weak points of this manga. Just about every single character aside from Amu is a flat and shallow cardboard cutout that dances around the periphery. Amu is the one big exception to this -- her character is just about the only thing that interested me at all. She’s been trapped into having a character that others saw in her, largely by mistake, and is pretty much the one sane person in her world. On the other hand there are also some unrealistic things about her; she has her fans, but nobody thinks that she's a stuck-up bitch. Not that she is, but it's normal to have enemies -- it's just a part of life. There's one girl who is jealous of Amu, but there's no confrontational dislike. In other words, she has a perfect life. I have to ask myself, "Who is going to empathize with this character? Rich, popular girls with no problems at all?" Yeah, there's a big demographic for ya.

Furthermore, the little magical Guardians say explicitly that everything Amu does while under the influence of a Character is really her ability. So, the little magical people are what? Cheerleaders? That's certainly how the first one is dressed, who, by the way, makes Amu fly. That's right -- fly. So, Amu can fly on her own? Is there any downside to all this?

Of course there is: the staple of the shoujo story -- the unrequited love. She has a crush on a student council member but can't express her feelings. If this is the biggest tragedy in this girl's life, this is going to be one boring story. But wait! There's the dark and mysterious behind-the-scenes bad guy and his brooding bishounen minion (I'll take stock character #32 and #156, please -- black clothing, cat-ears on the side.)

I understand that Japan has quite a different idea about originality, that they have no problems seeing the same story again and again, done slightly differently. This can be a good thing, most of the time -- each refinement of the "formula" usually makes it better. There are elements of this story that are kind of fun: the eggs and the notion of changing character... but by the time the stock bad guy was (half) shown (never showing his face, of course!), I had lost almost all interest in seeing what would happen next. Not even Amu's somewhat interesting character rescued it for me.

Del Rey has given their usual good treatment to the manga, with good reproduction and almost no edges cut off. I continue to like their translation notes at the end.

Bottom line, this is a fairly standard Peach-Pit entry; weak in art and story but sure to strike a chord with some readers, just as DearS did. If you just adore cute shoujo stories, with magic thrown in atop that, than this is for you.

Reviewer: Eric Turner
Proofer: Eduardo Menendez
Editor: Lissa Pattillo