arina tanemura – Manga Report

Idol Dreams Volume 1 by Arina Tanemura

I was curious to check out this manga, mostly due to the fact that it is a slightly older skewing shoujo title. Also, the premise, about a 31 year-old office lady going back in time to relive her youth seemed interesting.

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The hapless office lady in question is Chikage Deguchi, who is bullied at work. She’s let her 20s pass her by while she’s stuck in a style rut, repressed, and unable to find a boyfriend. Her humiliation is complete when she goes to a high school reunion. She’s humiliated even more at a high school reunion. She manages to make incidental conversation with a classmate named Tokita who happens to be a pharmaceutical rep, but her encounter with her high school crush doesn’t go well at all. Chikage is depressed and determined to end her life, when Tokita rescues her and tells her all about an experimental medication that will allow her to replay her wasted teenage years.

Chikage clearly operates under different human subjects rules than most people in the pharmaceutical industry, as he supplies Chikage with pills that transform her into a 15 year old and then sends her on her way, with instructions to check in often so he can gather data. Of course, as soon as teenage Chikage steps foot on the street, she’s recruited to be a stand-in model opposite the most popular member of a boy band, and thus her career as a budding teen idol begins!

Teen idol Hibiki looks a lot like Chikage’s old crush from her high school days, and she finds herself getting swept up in the life of a teen idol. She’s determined to master the social skills that she didn’t pay attention to as a young teen. The situation of a 31 year old woman in a 15 year old’s body and a 15 year old boy being paired up has the potential for a great deal of creepiness. I wasn’t taking this romance very seriously though, because it is clear that Tokita has an unexpressed crush on Chikage, and he seems to be one of the few men her own age that she can actually talk to without becoming self-conscious. So, even though there might be a bit of a wacky love triangle developing (like the original Amethyst Princess of Gemworld with reverse aging) I’m fairly confident that the romantic resolution to this manga will be non-squicky. We’ll see what happens in the next volume though.

Tanemura is always at her best when drawing super cute people, and the contrast between older Chikage and young idol version Akari is pronounced. I enjoyed seeing the friendship develop between Akari and the other boy band members, but I thought that Chikage’s occasional encounters with Tokita were much more promising in terms of any romance developing. Overall, I thought that this was a promising start to a new series, with the potential for the romance plots to derail and become off-putting. I generally enjoy Tanemura’s manga, and a series set in the world of teen idols is the perfect excuse for her to break out all the stops with the flourishes and detailed costumes that she does so well.

Phantom Thief Jeanne Volume 1 by Arina Tanemura

Phantom Thief Jeanne is by far my favorite Arina Tanemura series. It is also one of her earlier ones, since it came out in 1998. It might be less polished than her more recent series, but I have always found it amusing because it has a certain magical girl “throw the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks” approach to plotting that I find amusing. It also has one of the most bonkers ending volumes I’ve experienced in shoujo manga. I already own the full set of this series from the CMX edition that came out in 2005, but this reissue from viz is based on what I assume are the Bunkoban volumes in Japan, so instead of a seven volume set, this edition will be 5 longer length volumes. There’s a new translation, a color page, and a couple extra sketches in the back.

The Jeanne in the title is in real life the ordinary high school student Maron Kusakabe, who is in the rhythmic gymnastics club at her school. At night, she magically transforms into Phantom Thief Jeanne, who fights for the forces of good in the universe by detecting demons hidden inside masterworks of art and exorcising them. The demonic possession will also extend to the owner of the piece of art, leading Maron to have plenty of encounters with oddly acting art collectors. Maron is aided in her holy quest by her helper, the tiny angel Finn. Maron’s phantom thief name is due to the fact that she’s the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, so she is extra skilled at being a art thief warrior for God. As the volume begins, Maron attempts to deflect her friend Miyako’s interest in her secret alter ego and she’s made a bit nervous by Chiaki, the flirty new boy who just moved in next door in her apartment building.

Maron has a frustrating day and heads out for her typical night out phantom thieving. Her best friend Miyako, who’s father is a police detective, is on the scene determined to capture Jeanne. Like any good phantom thief, Jeanne tends to leave warning notes with clues about where she intends to strike. Jeanne has one of the best magical girl introductions, as she proclaims “I am the Phantom Thief Jeanne…sent down before you by God!” It is hard to argue with the power of the Almighty. When she seals the demon inside the painting, she yells “Checkmate!” and a white chess piece appears. The painting changes into a depiction of an angel, and usually the owner of the painting is so happy at the quality of the new work of art and the lack of danger to their immortal soul that they don’t tend to mind Jeanne’s intervention.

Jeanne is bounding along in the night, trailing ribbons when an enemy appears! It is Phantom Thief Sinbad and he announces his intention to challenge her! Maron goes through her regular school activities, fending off Chiaki by day and dealing with Sinbad’s sudden appearance near all the works of art that she’s targeting at night. It is amazing how Sinbad basically looks just like Chiaki but with a headband and a cloth covering the lower half of his face. Sinbad has similar powers as Jeanne, but he can turn captured demons into black chess pieces and has a dark angel helper as a counterpart to Jeanne’s angel Finn. As a shoujo manga heroine, Maron is both exuberant and kind. Chiaki clearly starts developing feelings for her as he spends more time with her. Maron is also desperately lonely, because her parents went away and haven’t been in touch with her. Maron has a great deal of difficulty trusting people, but she starts opening up to Chiaki a little bit. As Jeanne’s missions continue, Sinbad acts as more of a helper than a rival, but he seems very conflicted about it.

The art in Phantom Thief Jeanne is exactly what you would expect from a Tanemura title, but maybe a tiny bit less detailed than her later works. I enjoyed having a chance to read the manga again in a new edition. I thought that the new Shojo Beat translation was a bit more subtle and smooth than the CMX editions. I also preferred the lettering in the Shojo Beat edition. The CMX version tended to use a great deal of variation in font size and font weight to convey emotional aspects of the dialog, and while that can be an interesting approach, when I was reading a few pages from each edition side by side, I thought that the CMX edition was a bit more choppy in terms of reading experience. Since this is a reissue, I almost wish that the edition had been a bit more deluxe, with a few more color pages or some other extras. I did like the new edition very much, I’m not sure I’d recommend that everyone who already has the CMX version rush out and buy it right away but it has been so long since the first edition of Phantom Thief Jeanne came out there’s a whole new group of readers that can experience this title for the first time!