No matter how silly this series gets, it never reaches a point where it can’t get a whole lot sillier.
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Ken Akamatsu and Ran
Translation: Kathleen Westlake
What They Say
Mao-chan is back, defending Japan from the most adorable aliens ever. The invaders are set on stealing Japan’s most famous cultural artifacts and keeping them as souvenirs, but Mao-chan and her friends are determined not to let this happen–even when the aliens’ leader appears for a final showdown.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I have to admit, for a while there I was thinking Mao-chan had lost its touch. It still had the aliens; but the encounters didn’t have quite the same cuddly crisis situation feeling that made the first book work as well as it did. There were some fun ideas like last time – the train-shaped pig was a favourite with me, and so was seeing Mi-kun the tank turning delinquent and smoking cigarettes with a pack of stray dogs – but it seemed like something was missing. Half the stories were off topic and the rest couldn’t keep up the average in adorable goofiness. I was starting to get the impression that the first volume had all the best stories.
I was not helped in this by the initial story in the book, a strong contender for the worst chapter in Mao-chan overall. The focus moves away from the girls, nearly always a bad move in this series, and concentrates on the high-school alien spies. Making it all worse is that it’s one of those dreary, time-wasting beach episodes that tries to hide a barely-there story with barely-there swimsuits. A new character is introduced for no reason and then instantly dropped. It’s all very silly, and I don’t mean the kind of silly that Mao-chan is when it’s working right. And for a while, in some of the stories, Mao-chan isn’t.
But even in the mediocre first half of the volume there are flashes of the old qualities that characterize Mao-Chan at its best. I have already mentioned the pig-train: that story almost exemplifies the right kind of silly for Mao-chan. Mi-kun’s story, the one where he lights up, is even better. It’s that rare combination of absurd funnybone tickling and heart-warming emotion that seems natural and impossible at the same time. Not very many manga achieve anything quite like it, and not even Mao-chan achieves it often. But even among the least reliable chapters it can still break through, unexpected and irresistible.
But things improve quite a bit once we reach the second half, or the fourth volume, whichever way you like to think about it. This part of the story marks a return to Mao-chan at its ridiculous best. There a new surge of adorable alien activity, friendship, teamwork, and a few of those moments that are more touching than a book with a plot this unreal has any right to achieve. If you thought the rest of the story was bizzare, just wait till you see the ending. And I recommend seeing the ending. I think it’s just about exactly the right ending for the kind of series Mao-chan is. (Don’t ask me what kind that is – I have no idea.) Gigantic absurdities grow out of established characters, or even out of nothing at all, only to be eclipsed by even greater absurdities that arise a few moments later. The aliens wanting to steal Japan’s cultural artifacts and historical sites is quite silly in its own right. But it’s hard to think about that when the solution is to send three little girls blasting off into space so that they can get a pinky promise from the alien leader to stop doing it. Then get a load of the alien spaceship. Then…no, just go read the thing for yourself.
In Summary:
Mao-chan has had its ups and downs. Some of the chapters are pretty bad, and all of them require a high tolerance of sugar-coated nuttiness. But to those who have that tolerance, Mao-chan is a pretty good source of warm fuzzies and an almost singular kind of far-out whimsy. At the very least it stands out from pack where defending-the-earth-from-aliens stories are concerned. Take it in small doses, like you would any sort of candy, and you just might find it a treat; not to mention a good bargain at the price.
(Translation notes are once again a welcome extra, but a nice surprise is a bonus, unrelated, short and sweet story by the same artist.)
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Del Rey Manga
Release Date: March 24th, 2009
MSRP: $14.95
