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Full Moon wo Sagashite – Manga Preview

Full Moon wo Sagashite - Manga Preview

Going through my Shojo Beat Manga Sampler, I still haven’t found a manga that speaks to me. Maybe that’s a good thing, considering I’m not a 12 year old girl… Does Full Moon wo Sagashite have what it takes to bring out the little girl in me? Read on to find out!

Full Moon wo Sagashite - Manga Preview

Going through my Shojo Beat Manga Sampler, I still haven’t found a manga that speaks to me. Maybe that’s a good thing, considering I’m not a 12 year old girl… Does Full Moon wo Sagashite have what it takes to bring out the little girl in me? Read on to find out!

Summary:
Koyama Mitsuki is a twelve year old girl who wants to become a singer. Unfortunately, she has a growth in her throat that will kill her unless she has surgery. If she does have the surgery, she’ll lose her voice! Talk about a dilemma…

Mitsuki is on her way to a new artist audition when her cranky music-hatin’ grandma forbids her to go. Her housekeeper is really no help either. To make things worse, a pair of shinigami (death gods) show up to make sure she dies at the right time. Somehow, Mitsuki escapes and runs all the way to the studio.

Full Moon wo Sagashite - Manga Preview

Upon arrival, she’s once again caught by the shinigami, but they decide to give her a chance and audition. If she fails, she’ll have to do whatever they say. Knowing death gods, they’d probably ask her to die. Takuto, the neko-mimi shinigami also gives Mitsuki a pill that transforms her into a healthy 16 year-old girl. Will Mitsuki pass the audition, or will the shinigami kill her off in chapter 2!? I’m guessing the former will happen.

Review:
As far as shoujo manga go, I actually enjoyed reading Full Moon wo Sagashite a lot. I really like the art style, which is much more comicky. The other manga in the sampler seem too obessed with bishounen, which is not really a plus for me. The characters are all really cute, especially Mitsuki. They all seem to have their own wacky quirks.

While the story feels kind of generic with its whole transforming magical singing girl vibe, I think it has enough original ideas to stand on its own. Especially noteworthy is that this manga first came out in 2001, yet it seems pretty fresh to me.

I haven’t checked out the anime yet, though I may have to wait a while to see all of it. Theoretically, if I were to pick up a shoujo manga, Full Moon Sagashite would be it. Lemme just get out my credit card…

7 replies on “Full Moon wo Sagashite – Manga Preview”

Full Moon wo Sagashite is one of the best shojo manga ever. The story may seem a bit too predictable at first, but as you go on it completely changes to a romantic and heartwarming lovestory. You’ll grow to love each and every character by the end of the series.

The anime is also quite good, but I enjoyed the manga better. It’s a bit more harmless and childish compared to the manga, but the singing parts are definetly worth listening to.

🙁 While FMWS has its own charm and certainly some interesting character moments, there are much better shoujo manga. Fruits Basket is one (that series gets incredibly unpredictable and is very moving), anything by Nakamura Yoshiki (Skip Beat! was just licensed by Viz; look for it in July), Basara (which is your war epic and still shoujo).. oh, well, this is just opinion here. ^^

Just re-read your review, and I will add that FMWS gets considerably darker. Tanemura was criticized for trivializing suicide, but in reply said that she was writing it as part of the grieving process for the death (suicide? not sure) of a friend. For that reason or another, the manga can get pretty (for the scope of the series) dark.

i absolutely loved FMWS. it was so cute and it was much better than i interpreted. adorable love story and adorable characters with truly beautiful art. definitely one of my favorite mangas/animes of all time.

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