Just a Girl

    (CPM, 2004)
™ and © 2004 Tomoko Taniguchi

Erica Fujita is a high school student who lives away from home with a roomful of stuffed animals that she talks to with great regularity. (There are entire scenes devoted to Erica’s conversations with her plushies—we worry about her mental health.) She shares her home with a roommate, Rena, who’s got her eyes on Erica’s good friend and “big-brother” Minoruji, while Erica herself sits around waiting for her own true love to come back to her… and nothing much happens.

Once again, Tomoko Taniguchi, creator of sappy manga titles, like Call Me Princess and Aquarium, has brought us another saccharine adolescent drama. This wishful work of autobiographical fiction is un–surprisingly un–exciting; and the focus of the storylines revolve around the subjects of who likes whom in Erica’s little universe. The artwork plays up the super saucer–sized eyes common to Japanese manga, but definitely dives overboard trying to make the characters “cuter” because their eyes are “bigger.”

— Shiaw-Ling Lai
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