renner.london - 2014-03-14 17:51:09

Story: A bunch of young girls decide to work together into making there very own popular manga! This should be interesting.... or will it? What they don't know is that it's not easy doing manga, but there going to try it anyway! Will they succeed? Why are you reading this by the way? :P

Pros: Uh... the animation and art look nice, the characters are pretty average with standard personalities: (although this is basically just a rip off of K-on! No really, think about it) Hana is optimistic and dumb, Ako/Aki [forgot her name] is serious and gets scared easily, Tsugumi loves to eat food and is energized, and Ringo is cute, I guess. The voice actings not bad either, and they do bring up some interesting stuff about the manga which isn't much but its something.

There is some humor to the show also, but it isn't much (Hana: Hey look, I just got a response from someone! Tsugumi: Oh boy, what did they say about helping us? Hana: They kindly... declined. I think that how it went but I ain't sure?)

Cons: Opening is crap, they cannot sing, most jokes fall flat, not enough time to develop since the show is so short and the pacing is awful. The fourth wall joke at the end is pretty weak and pathetic if you aske me. There is virtually no development at all between the characters and no progression either. Wouldn't be so bad except the pacing sucks. The side characters do not add anything neat or fun into the mix either and its kind of a pointless waste of time.

Overall: Watch K-on! (for similar idea but better execution) or Encouragement Of Climb (for a more enjoyable anime short) instead, this is ok but its not something you'd crave for or watch impressed by it. Only watch if you have half an hour to waste.

Thanks for reading my 12th review~

stanford23 - 2013-08-18 21:18:57

I enjoy watching these short shows, believe it or not. While these short shows don't necessarily warrant long and thought-out reviews, I feel like giving an impression of what you're going to get yourself into would be good enough. I'll do this like a more traditional review that I do, but don't expect great length out of this.

The story of Mangirl! consists of four girls wanting to make it into the manga scene in Japan, despite none of them having any experience in creating manga. To be honest, I really did like this idea. Watching people work from the ground up in a certain job would seem like it would be a very nice experience.

To be honest, I was actually surprised that the show stayed loyal to its story, for the most part. There are a few episodes that don't influence anything to the girls' learning experience in creating manga, but for the most part, it does show them creating the manga and showing their struggle of selling the manga. Why I find this surprising is due to the fact that simple Slice of Life shows like this would probably end up being a "cute girls doing cute things" kind-of style, but it avoids it for the most part. Unless, of course, you think creating manga is cute.

While I'm not surprised to see this in a show like Mangirl!, the show does have its fair share of dumb fanservice being placed at dumb times. These scenes don't have any purpose at all and just creates a waste of screen-time that could be used to develop other things for the story.

The characters are honestly the weakest aspect of Mangirl!. Sure, the type of characters they are would be a nice idea to bring in some quick cash, but their type is also a big flaw to the people who actually want to see the struggle of the learning process in their creations of manga. Now, I don't think moe is necessarily a negative aspect of a character as long as it doesn't consume that character 100% in looks and personality.

Unfortunately, that is the case for the characters in this show. Other than the generic stereotypes of the girls, ranging from the smart one, energetic one, and so on, there isn't anything interesting about these girls at all. If they had moe aspects to them, I would be fine with that. Sadly, the writer thought it would be a brilliant idea to drown these characters in moe in an attempt to get more sales in the show.

Due to the show being a short, you won't find any development in this. Hell, you probably won't find any character development in most comedies as it is. This show just goes ahead and cements that idea.

These three categories are also weak parts to the show. First off, the seiyuu's do their job of making the girls sound as cute as they can possibly be perfectly. Personally, I don't find that to be a positive thing for them, but, again, that's just how I feel about it personally. The OP and ED are also just generic pop songs that really aren't that catchy.

Going into a comedy like this, I didn't expect to see much animation going on. I was correct on it. While the animation isn't necessarily lazy, you can't show much in a 3 minute time frame.

Now, I don't expect girls who are in school to be able to have the time to create manga, so I assumed that these girls were adults. As you can see from the cover art alone, that doesn't look like that's the case here. In order to bring more of a moe aspect to these characters, the designers had to make them look as young as possible while the writers are trying to convince you that they're grown up. I'm not blind, that isn't how it fucking works.

The only form of comedy in this show is pretty much done through their actions that do relate to their manga and aren't always done to show off how moe each character is, but there are moments of that, which, personally, really isn't comedic in the slightest.

I really did exaggerate the fact that I get to watch these girls do what they want to do: create manga. In all honesty, its really difficult to get into that part of the story in this show. I won't complain that the episodes weren't long enough to get me into it, because Inferno Cop was around the same episode length and I was excited for each coming episode.

At the end of the day, Mangirl! is a show that had some potential to be a really entertaining short, but it just feels like a waste of time. It does have its funny moments, but some jokes just get overshadowed by the fact that these girls need to show off how moe they are. The story could have at least been more compelling, but the writers failed to do that, which, once again, is still possible for a show of this length.