Customer Reviews

Pretty Maniacs, Vol. 2

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Pretty Maniacs' second volume again follows the exploits of young Miss Shinano (the younger sister of Maniac Road's main character Takezou) and her quest to honor the otaku spirit by keeping her high school's manga club alive.

That's not so easy as her all-girls school is about to turn co-ed by merging with an all-boy's academy who just so happens to have their OWN club... one with more members and a charismatic reader.

But all is not lost, Shinano even gets her own devoted fan... in the form of an effeminate kohai (younger student) who isn't too adverse (maybe he's just that weak willed) to get the male members of the manga club to dress up in cross-play for an all-boy maid cafe for the school festival. There's even a sequence at the Maniac Road with appearances from Haruna, Aoba, and Isuzu (the three aspects of female fandom from the first series).

The art and flow is just about the same ole Kurihashi goodness, so no complaints there. My only wish is the the insulated stories had as much insight as the previous volume, let alone the originating series, Maniac Road.

All in all, a decent book for fans of the series, and worth a read in it's own right, but not without going through the rest of both this series and the previous series (Maniac Road) as well.

Shinano's all-girl school prepares for a shock as it merges with an all-boys high school. Even as female students have visions in their minds of yaoi love affairs, Shinano's manga club faces a more practical concern: the boys school also had a manga club and in typical male chauvanist fashion they think they have first dibs on the facilities. While trying to strike compromises with the boys, the two groups must come up with what they want to do at the school festival. One of the funniest bits of the book is when Shinano and Isuzu break a full-size hand-crafted anime character statue and must do everything in their power to piece it together again. And we all know what happened to Humpty Dumpty. And when Shinano and company attend a special event for one of their favorite anime shows, they're in for the shock of their lives. Another funny part is when the manga club comes face to face with their favorite anime voice actresses and find them wanting.

The best thing about Pretty Maniacs is that if you read it and you are an anime and manga otaku, you feel as if you're reading about your own life. I've been a fan of Kurihashi since the previous series Maniac Road, and I hope there are more manga out there of this quality. The art is well-done and NEVER grows cluttered or hard to follow. All the lines are clean. The characters are great within the context of a comedy comic, but you shouldn't expect complexity from a book like this. The only complaint about Pretty Maniacs is that there is only one more volume after this.