Ultra Maniac, Volume 1

July 18, 2005
Tennis star Ayu Tateishi is the junior high school's "queen of cool," and she has her eye on Tetsushi Kaji, the star of the baseball team. All is well with her world, until she unwittingly helps out novice witch Nina Sakura, who then feels compelled to do her magical favors whenever she can. Nina has a "portable magic PC" with which she can download spells (and some cool MP3s) from the Internet. What she doesn't have is much experience with witchcraft—so her attempts to help Ayu result in predictably wacky hijinks. This first attempt at fantasy manga by Yoshizumi (Marmalade Boy
; Mintma Bokura
) is charming and good-natured. Her art is clean and uses the standard manga conventions, such as schoolgirl uniforms, to good effect. The storytelling occasionally veers into the cutesy—Yoshizumi uses chibi (cuter versions of the characters) regularly to telegraph jokes, and peppers her chapters with "Free Talk"—footnotes to the reader revealing facts like "I think the thing that has changed most about my art is that I'm drawing a lot more eyelashes"). Given the teen audience this work is aimed at, the breathless dialogue and unselfconscious goofiness simply add to the charm, and this book will likely be ultra-popular with the manga crowd.