Mangirl!

Mangirl!

Studio: Dogakobo

Dir. Nobuaki Nakanishi

Wri. Masahiro Yokotani & Reiko Yoshida

SYNOPSIS

A team of girls with zero experience in manga editing are off and running toward their dream of creating the biggest manga magazine in Japan! They seem to do nothing but run into problems and failures… But still they’re working hard every day!

REVIEW

+ Characters are cute and well differentiated visually.

+ The show has a very colorful, glossy look to it. Everything kind of looks like candy, especially the characters’ hair.

+/- Music is unremarkable. At least it’s not inappropriate and distracting. Theme song is cute, but a little irritating and manic.

– Very clearly made on the cheap. Not a big need for action, so nothing to complain about there. Lots and lots of static frames.

– The central conflict of the show is simply running this magazine. Each episode has it’s own conflict that emerges and gets resolved within the three-minute runtime. Because of this conflicts are resolved almost as soon they arise, often with nothing more than a jump cut and a line of dialogue like: “Somehow we overcame this obstacle! Yay!” It really feels like this show wants to be a full-length half-hour program, but simply doesn’t have the time to explore its episodic conflicts in an interesting way.

– Aside from the two most prominent characters, performances aren’t all that varied or unique. Everyone has the same cute cadence to their voice, which doesn’t lend much to their characters. The show has barely enough time to showcase the individual characters’ idiosyncrasies, so you end up with impressions like “the crazy one,” “the serious one,” “the kinda dumb one,” and “the one who likes donuts.”

Overall it’s a pretty cute, mildly interesting (albeit probably inaccurate look) at the manga publishing world.

[starrater]

2.5 donuts out of five.