rCreative Staff:
Writer/Artist: Satomi Ikezawa
Translated by: David Ury
What They Say
Ponta the Labrador retriever is no ordinary dog. With the magic Guru Guru bone, she can turn into a human girl at will. In her human form, she has fallen in love with Mirai Ikawa – and the couple has developed an unconventional but powerful relationship.
But what would happen if Mirai transformed instead? As a puppy, Ponta learned the true meaning of friendship and love. Might Mirai also benefit from living life as a dog? Of course, there’s a downside. For Ponta, all the changing between puppy and girl has taken its toll… Which raises the question: Is the Guru Guru bone more a curse than a blessing?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Though Ikezawa has included brief side story chapters at the beginning of quite a few volumes of Guru Guru Pon-Chan, Volume 8 is notably made up almost entirely of side story material. The first chapter gives us a glimpse at Ponta’s bizarre daydreams; while there’s a few chuckles’ worth of decent material in there, it’s more silly than it is actively funny. The second and third chapters sidetrack the present-day story even further, giving us chapter-length flashbacks to Ponta’s life as a puppy in the style of the aforementioned short stories. The first flashback, dealing with a four-month-old Ponta who keeps a lost little girl company, seems to center mostly around how adorable the pair are and really struggles to make a tenuous connection back to the main storyline. The next flashback story places Ponta even further back from the narrative’s focus, using her transition from the pet store to the Koizumi household as a catalyst to bring together Yuka’s cousin Jun and his dog-fearing classmate Oda. Like in the previous two chapters, Ikezawa frequently falls into the trap of being more cutesy here than actually interesting: the main appeal is watching two young adolescents fumble around with their awkward first relationship, which really doesn’t interest me all that much.
Frankly, I was kind of relieved when Ikezawa switched back to present-day mode for the volume’s concluding chapter. I was doubly surprised, then, that she used this chapter to take the story down a markedly darker and more dramatic path: Ponta starts suffering from narcolepsy attacks, causing her vet to conclude that she’s grown prematurely old from stress. While Ikezawa doesn’t completely abandon Pon-Chan‘s gag-heavy formula here — there’s some winking at the audience about the protracted flashback section and a lot of Ponta falling asleep at inopportune times — the dramatic angle is much stronger than it’s been previously. The black comedy of Ponta struggling to keep pace with Marai is especially well-done, and will probably resonate with a lot of readers who’ve dealt with aging pets.
In Summary:
For all the interesting stuff packed into this last chapter, on the balance, an awful lot of Volume 8 is throwaway material. If not for this final chapter, I’d be tempted to just write this volume off as one of Pon-Chan‘s low points and only recommend that completists check it out; but the dramatic angle at the end basically rescues this volume from the brink of being dull, while making me look all the more forward to what Ikezawa’s got planned for the manga’s concluding volume.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Del Rey Manga
Release Date: May 1st, 2008
MSRP: $10.95