I reached the manga chapter where Ana is introduced, and the anime episode had followed it nicely. I’m not sure about the manga’s presentation, though. I’ve already had my concerns from in the first volume when Matsuri said “Mew” rather than “Miu” at one point, and things have only stood to get more confusing for a more casual reader. The method for conveying someone speaking English is to write the romanized text, such as Miu’s “Guudo mohningu” greeting. No different font, no anything explaining thing. There wasn’t even a note on Ana’s “Konnichi-waaa-” reply. Further, when Ana accidentally writes あな instead of “ana” on the board, she says “だ” to which the teacher replies, “‘Da’?!” No notes on what だ is, and no reason given why it was left as a Japanese letter (which happens again when Ana sees Matsuri’s friends are Chika and Miu, and once more when Nobue hugs her). Maybe TokyoPop felt the only readers of the series would be people familiar with Japanese to some extent? Unrelated, Miu refers to Satake as female in the manga, whereas Nobue referred to Satake as male in the anime. I wonder if there’s really a gender difference, or if one of the translators got it wrong. As for the episode at hand…

(more…)

Nobue’s love for cute things is really starting to show up. I prefer how the manga handled the hat even more, though: Matsuri is concerned about how her hair looks, so she wants to buy a hat to cover it. However, that requires going out in public, so she needs a hat to wear in public to go and buy a hat. Don’t you just hate those situations? At Nobue’s request, Miu, reluctantly, lets Matsuri use one of hers, but Miu picks out a cat ears and tail outfit for Matsuri. It’s also Miu who pushes the whole “meow like a cat” thing in the manga.

(more…)

I still haven’t reached the end of reading the first manga volume, so I haven’t reached Ana’s entrance there. I wonder how it will compare with the anime’s.

(more…)

When a theme song begins with “かわいいなんてそんなこと言っちゃだめです” (“You mustn’t call us cute”), you know you’re in for something cute.

(more…)

It was a while back when I bought the Strawberry Marshmallow DVD box set, as well as the manga volumes. Due to other obligations (A Little Snow Fairy Sugar and Janggeum’s Dream), Strawberry Marshmallow continued to wait patiently. I planned to read through the manga chapters and watch the anime episodes fairly concurrently. I’ll take a moment to say the manga books are very well made, with a nice feel to the cover. I don’t know if the Japanese release had covers like these, of if it’s a common TokyoPop thing, but I like it.

(more…)