Rizelmine

    (Tokyopop, 2005)
™ and © 2002 Yukiru Sugisaki

The Japanese have created the first artificial human, 12-year-old Rizel, who needs love and lots of it or she pitches a highly explosive fit. The solution their brain trust comes up with: an arranged shotgun marriage to supposed “average” 15-year-old Tomonori. (Who’s cruel, bitter, and obsessed with older women. I wouldn’t trust this kid with a lawnmower, let alone an emotionally unstable human bomb.) Hilarious consequences are promised but not delivered in this creepy, amateurish mess.

I keep reading manga by creators incapable of keeping their paper-thin premises spinning for even a single slim volume, and that’s the case with Rizelmine, an indifferent inversion of the classic Urusei*Yatsura with none of the original’s charm or grace.

Transparent complications are clumsily introduced. For Rizel, it’s Lux (a U.S.–produced version of Rizel) who inexplicably wants Tomonori. Later, the impossibly rich and spoiled Ryunosuke shows unfathomable affection for the underage Rizel. And, when it completely runs out of steam, we find out—nothing that makes this any more palatable.

— S.A. Bennett
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