Speaking of child-like imagination, one of my personal favorites of the year was this modern take on a classic 80s magical girl anime.
MAGICAL ANGEL CREAMY MAMI AND THE SPOILED PRINCESS (Mahou no Tenshi Creamy Mami: Fukigen no Ohime-sama), based on the original series by Studio Pierrot with art by Emi Mitsuki. First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2021.
PLOT:
For years, Ayumi Megumi has been the star idol of Parthenon Productions. Her position is challenged when a mysterious new girl known only as Creamy Mami makes her debut. Megumi is not about to take this challenge to her fame lying down, but how can she counter someone who seems so positively magical?
STORY:
It's a hard thing to try and adapt a nearly 40-year-old magical girl show into a manga for modern audiences. It's even harder when the titular magical girl isn't even the focus of the manga. But Spoiled Princess makes it work not by radically changing the original work so much as shifting the focus.
Luckily, the original show makes it easy for Emi Mitsuki to make that shift. Creamy Mami itself always had a curious divide between the "up and coming idol" stories and the "Yuu/Mami goes off on magical adventures" parts. There's no real overarching villain or plot beyond the one year limit on Mami's power, so the show bounces back and forth between the two with abandon. Sure, by focusing on the idol stuff we lose all that whimsy (along with some of the kids in the supporting cast), but Mitsuki doesn't have to scramble too much to fill the gaps.
The same is true for Megumi. If there's anyone who close to being a reoccurring villain it's her, but she's played a lot more for comedy early on and a little more seriously and sympathetically as the show goes on. The episodes focused on Megumi highlight a lot of the qualities that Mitsuki does: her tenacity, her work ethic, her fondness for Parthenon's head honcho Shingo (and her refusal to put up with his nonsense, which is why she's frequently giving him such resounding slaps). That doesn't negate her haughtiness, her competitive nature, her tendency to bully her weak-willed managed Kidokoro, and her moments of two-faced cunning, but she's a lot more rounded that these sorts of catty rivals tend to be and she's just as much fun here as she is in the show.
Focusing on Megumi not only makes this more of a story of the struggle to gain and maintain fame in the cutthroat world of music but also turns Mami into a mystery. This is present in the show as well, but only in-universe; the viewer has known from the start who Creamy Mami truly is. This mystery gives the story some forward momentum, as it gives Megumi more to do than just find new ways to upstage her rival. No matter whether you've seen the original show or not, you can read this and still find something fresh to enjoy.
ART:
Mitsuki had a tough act to follow, considering how much people love Akemi Takada's original designs for the show. She doesn't mess too much with those original designs, but her take is a little less cutesy and fluffy and a little more mature. She does let herself loose a little during the performances, when the air around Megumi and Mami sparkles and shines with screentones galore. She also indulges in the show's 80s setting on the chapter splash pages, which lean hard into that trendy city-pop aesthetic (sadly, minus the color).
PRESENTATION:
In between each chapter is a little gag strip with Toshio and Midori (Yuu/Mami's teenaged friends, who are largely absent from the story otherwise) based around Japanese pop-culture trends and events from 1983. It's a nice way to incorporate these two and educate the younger kids this was made for at the same time.
RATING:
This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is ongoing in Japan with 3 volumes available. All 3 have been published and are currently in print.
No comments:
Post a Comment