Author: Ohta Tammy
Publisher: Asuka Comics DX
Year: 1995-1998
Volume 1: ISBN 4-04-852674-X, 505 yen
Volume 2: ISBN 4-04-852783-5, 505 yen
Volume 3: ISBN 4-04-852825-4, 520 yen
Volume 4: ISBN 4-04-852911-0, 520 yen
Reviewed by Katchan
Sometimes it's fun to be smug.
Not
so very long ago, my Esteemed Colleague had engaged herself in a rather amusing argument
on a newsgroup, as is her wont. Apparently her opponent had taken the stance that 'Mahou
Tsukai Tai!' was a shounen OAV series that had never been made into a manga. EC came to me
and asked for my opinion.
Well, Virginia, there is a 'Mahou Tsukai Tai!' manga, and it is shoujo. It ran in 'Fantasy DX' beginning in September of 1995, and ended its run in that magazine in December of 1997.
It's terribly cute, very much a mahou shoujo series, and features the requisite heroine lacking in confidence and grace, the cute but powerful boy she likes, and the various companions that go along with them.
The manga opens with Sawanoguchi Sae holding a dead bird in her hands and mourning. She is approached by a wizard (whose face we don't see), who causes the clearing in which they're standing to burst into blossom, and gives Sae a little teddy bear. Upon being asked (she calls him 'ojisan' and he corrects her -- he is 'oniisan'), he assures her that yes, she can learn magic. As he vanishes, he encourages her in this quest.
The
story focuses on Sae's development, her joining of the Kitanohashi High School magic club,
and her relationships with the members of that club: Takakura Takeo, the thoughtful
warlock president of the club; Aburatsubo Ayanojou, the delightfully queer vice-president
who adores Takeo (and frequently takes the opportunity to play tonsil hockey with the poor
boy); Nakatomi Nanaka, Sae's athletic and cross-tempered best friend; and Aikawa Akane,
who ditches most of the club meetings in favour of one of her many dates.
The manga characterisations are more subtle than those of the anime, which I have found is usually true with manga versions . Instead of being a sex-obsessed half-assed magic user, as he is in the anime, Takeo is clever and capable (if a little shy and -- as any normal high school boy would be -- inordinately delighted by seeing a girl's panties). Instead of weeping whenever something goes wrong, as she does in the anime, Sae has a little more gumption. And Ayanojou is a lot more seductive in the manga, than one might suspect given his near-slapstick advances on Takeo in the anime! But best of all, we get to find out just a little bit more about Jeff, the wizard who appears only briefly as a silhouette in the anime.
Absent
from the anime version of this series is a fascinating wizard boy named Peter, whose
father leads a mysterious magical group called 'the Zodiac'. The Zodiac's motivation in
sending Peter into Kitanohashi High, to get to know Sae, is very suspect...
The series is complete in four volumes. It's sweet and the characters are engaging, and the story's... a mahou shoujo story. It turns out as you'd expect it to turn out!
But if you don't care for mahou shoujo in general, you might not find it as charming and funny as I do. ^_^ So there. But -- to anyone who's argued otherwise, it's a manga, and it's shoujo!
Going back to being smug behind my purple computer, now.