If I was a Five-Year-Old Girl

If I was a five-year-old girl, or rather when I was a five-year-old girl, I would have loved to watch the anime Kamikazi Kaito Jeanne. However, as an adult, I was sitting there squealing with unreasonable laughter at it, proclaiming quite noisily that no one was allowed to tell anyone that I'd watched it. So, why now, do you ask, am I freely admitting it? Well, I had to stop watching it by like episode 28. After they did the finalle for episode 26, it turned to pure TRASH. I couldn't stand to watch it, it got so crappy, and this was really unsatisfying for me because I didn't get to see how Maron and Chiaki got together. And I really wanted them to get together, so I thought about reading the manga - and I thought that it would probably be less mature than the anime because it was published by Ribon magazine. Anime Insider Magazine claims that Ribon is the perfect manga magazine ... provided you're a five-year-old Japanese school girl. Well, I'm not. So, I thought that reading it would be ... there are no words. It was a seriel, so I thought that it would spread the story out even more than the anime. That's what I thought ... Holy Smokes! Was I wrong! I'm really glad I was wrong though.

It's the story of 16 year-old Maron, who transforms into a phantom thief (Kaito Jeanne) to seal demons in the name of kami-sama (God). Her world gets turned upside down when Chiaki moves next door and suddenly Kaito Sinbad shows up to challenge her. I'd decribe it as a mix between D.N.Angel and Sailor Moon, except that better than either of those.

The manga made the anime look like ... PURE CRAP. Even the good parts in the anime were played so badly that I have to question the sanity of the creators who seemed to want to see how ductile the story was - how far they could stretch it without everyone getting up to go to the bathroom and accidentally not coming back. It look like two chapters of the manga to cover everything fun that happened in the first 12 episodes of the anime. They made up entire episodes out of thin air, and added entire characters that sucked way more than the original ones. For instance, Maron's neighbour is trying to catch Jeanne (her alias) with the help of the police. In the manga, her father is drawn as a little chibi who almost has no lines and definitely never does anything assertive, but in the anime he's a tall man who even challenges Chiaki to a fist fight and has a crew of policeman who have names and are in the opening credits, but are never hardly seen in the manga. Who cares about the friggen policemen anyway? Not me, and there were several storylines that revolved around them in the anime.

When I read the manga I sat there slapping my knee the whole time because it was just so ... sparkly. If I ever got to trade in my talents to get new ones, I'd get talents to write and draw manga. To write and draw like that - breathtaking.

Anyway, if I was a five-year-old girl, there is no way I should have been reading that, so I think Anime Insider was quite wrong. But I think that would hit a 12 or 13 year-old in just the right spot. But then, I'm in my twenties, and it hit me in just the right spot. However, I can't give it a 100% rating. There were a couple things in it that I didn't exactly approve of, but for the most part it was excellent. Yeah, to write and draw like that ... lucky!

I wanted to do a pic, but it's not working for some reason (later - got the pic to work - cheers!). Anyway, IN SUMMARY - Manga: G-E-W-D - Anime: NOT G-E-W-D.