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Reviewed by Steve Saville I am not at all sure I should be reviewing this Manga comic book, I’m not even sure that I should be reading it. You see it is overtly targeted at a specific audience that I quite clearly do not belong to. ‘Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mode’ is unashamedly aimed at adolescent girls aged from 10 to about 14. I am neither, although I do have a teenage daughter so I guess that gives me the faint chance for identification with the Mew Mew girls. This book is classic teenage Manga, complete with big eyed characters who are all exceptionally cute, school settings and over exaggerated teenage emotions such as embarrassment. All of these features plus romance when added together indicate very clearly who the audience is; for goodness sake this title even has its own programme on kids TV. An example of what I mean can be seen early in the comic when the main character, Berry, is about to start High School a school she sat the entrance tests for simply because she thought the uniform was cute. You see that makes very little sense to me but as my daughter has just started High School herself I have come to realise that apparently this is a vitally important consideration. This translation keeps true to its source and is read in the Japanese style [back to front for Westerners] There is even a big stop sign on the last page to warn those new to Manga that they are about to start from the wrong end. The story itself revolves around the aforementioned Berry who, without warning, becomes the latest member of the famous Mew Mew team. A group of young half girl half animals who save the day by morphing into their half creature states and shout oaths like “Pudding ring inferno.” Berry herself is described as half cat half rabbit, which dies not leave much room for the human part of her, her chant is “Ribbon love berry check.” Anyway Berry deals with the trials and tribulations of settling into her new school as well as joining the Mew Mew girls to combat a gang known as the Saint Rose Crusaders, whose leader has no real love for rabbits. . These five Tokyo Mew Mew whilst being cute cat like girls also have the responsibility to "defend the future of the Earth,” so as you can see Berry’s life quickly becomes quite complicated. For the most part this is a candy sweet tale but I did get concerned about the subtext on a couple of occasions. For example when Ikumi says, “Then one of my staff said, “I want to see a girl wearing bloomers.’ So this illustration came about because of that.” Hmm And when Mr. Akizuki, the new young teacher arrives [by the way although he is only seventeen he has already graduated from an overseas university and become a Nobel peace prize candidate] he tells the young girls that he would “like to play an easy game with all of you so we can get to know each other better.” Hmmm. On the whole though we have a typical teenage tale of school, kissing, friends and more friends with the Mew Mew girl narrative interwoven whereby the five girls including their new recruit have to do battle against evil foes to protect the planet. It is childish and childlike but that is its intention and therefore is a great success. In a word. Sweetened Comment on this review of Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mode v1 [II] on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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