My-HIME

    (Tokyopop, 2006)
™ and © Kimura Noboru and Sato Ken-etsu

The My-HIME 26-episode 2004-05 TV anime by the Sunrise studio has been popular with anime fans, but this manga adaptation is incoherent.

College student Yuuichi Tate transfers to Fuka Academy hoping to meet sexy co-eds. He is immediately caught in a literal firefight between two co-eds called HIMEs (for HIghly-advanced Materializing Equipment, a pun on “hime,” Japanese for “princess”) who use fiery wristbands to summon robotic animal “children” to help them battle the monster “orphans” that attack the Academy for “unclear reasons.”

Tate is a “key” who can increase a HIME’s power, so he quickly has both heroine Mai Tokiha and her rival, Natsuk Kuga, fighting to become his girlfriend. Competition develops between the HIMEs and the Ori-HIMEs. Yadda, yadda. The story is developed slowly and clearly in the TV anime, but this manga condenses it into too much action and hardly any plot depth. The characters, who are drawn as teens in the same school uniforms, look too confusingly similar. Recommended only for those who are already fans of the TV anime.

— Fred Patten
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