Pita-Ten

    (Tokyopop, 2004-2005)
™ and © Tokyopop
reads right to left; b&w

Love just isn’t love, if it isn’t a little creepy, weird, and intrusive: This pre-teen supernatural supposed romantic comedy takes that premise to the absolute extreme. Latchkey kid Kotaru is unlucky enough to encounter a girl who (a) claims to be an angel and (b) wants to be his “new mama” (shudder).

The scariest thing about this baby-talking stalker in ruffles and crinoline is she really is an angel, one who tries to help a middle-school boy come to grips with the recent death of his mother by getting him drunk.

Readers are clearly supposed to go into convulsions over her enormous eyes and signature huge bunny-rabbit barrettes, and I’ll grant you she’s cute, in a calculated, saccharine way, designed to move merchandise. I’d like to think this is a parody of the magical-girl genre, but I’m afraid its creator is, sadly, in deadly earnest.

— S.A. Bennett
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#4

13-Jul-2004
Cover Price: $9.99
1 copy available for $7.99
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