Ultra Maniac ep.1-3

January 22, 2004 | 46 Comments

I finally decided to watch this show after some recommendations from a friend. Created by Wataru Yoshizumi (Marmalade Boy), Ultra Maniac tells the story of a 2nd grade high school student called Ayu Tateishi, who befriends a young witch named Nina Sakura. Now, before you run in panic or rolled your eyes out after reading that description, I will say that I also had the same reaction at first. But I kind of liked Marmalade Boy so I figure it won't hurt to give this a try and I'm glad that I did since the show turns out to be quite entertaining and funny even though it doesn't break any new ground.

In the first episode, we find out that Ayu is a popular student in her high school and is admired by her classmates because they think she looks cool, nice, and also a good student. The truth is, that is just a front that Ayu puts up because the boy that she likes, Kaji Tetsushi, once told her that he likes a girl who has such qualities. Unfortunately, ever since knowing Nina, Ayu finds it harder and harder to keep up the appearances. This can be attributed to the fact that even though she is an apprentice mage, Nina is not very skillful when it comes to handling magic. Therefore most of the time her magic creates more problems instead of solving them. This makes life more difficult for both Ayu and Nina because Nina is not suppose to let too many people know about her secret identity as an apprentice mage.

Since Nina is still not good enough in channeling her own power, she needs a device in order to make various spells happen. This comes in the form of a mini personal computer which is capable of transforming her from being a normal high school student to become an apprentice mage, complete with a mage costume which IMO, looks like a nun outfit coloured in red. Once she dressed up in a mage costume, Nina can create different types of magical items by producing them using a magic box that is connected by a cable to her computer. Nina, despite her weaknesses, is a very kind person who only uses her magic to help her best friend, Ayu. Unfortunately, some of the magical items that she produces often don't work the way they supposed to work.

Episode one shows exactly the sort of problems that Ayu and Nina encounter when one of Nina's spells don't work the way it was intended. For example, in order to make Kaji falls in love with Ayu, Nina decides to create this magical chocolate candy which has the ability to make the person who eats it to instantly fall in love with Ayu. Unfortunately, the chocolate goes into the hand of Kaji's best friend, Hiroki Tsujiai, who of course, immediately falls head over heels for Ayu thanks to the influence of the chocolate. This, of course, terrifies Ayu who fears that Tsujiai may ended up kissing her in front of Kaji and stealing the first kiss that she has saved for Kaji. Therefore, she asks Nina to do something to solve this problem.

And just like the best friend that she is, Nina produces another item to solve the problem of Tsujiai chasing after Ayu. A ring that can repell any man who tries to touch her. Well, it repells them all right - by sending waves of electric shocks. It's not long before the poor Tsujiai is electrocuted, rendering him unconscious. Thankfully, he is okay and when he awakes, he seems to have been cured from the chocolate love spell. Unfortunately for Ayu and Nina, their actions have been witnessed by an annoying student called Kawanakajima, who's hell bent on exposing Nina's secret. Thankfully, Ayu reacts quickly and subjects Kawanakajima to an electric shock. There's just one more problem left for Ayu. Now that she has used the ring, she can't seem to take it off at all. Not even when she tries to do it by force. As a result, she ends up accidentally electrocuting a bunch of male students, including Kaji himself.

At first Ayu was shocked when she realised what she had done. But she was relieved when she found out that just like Tsujiai, Kaji seems to be okay and does not suffer from any major injury from the electric shock. He does have to rest for a while in the school infirmary. The nurse, who sees Ayu looking stressed out suggested that she rests in the infirmary as well. Ayu agrees but later on find herself unable to rest because she's nervous for being in such close proximity to her crush. After hesitating, she ends up staring at Kaji's sleeping form. Unfortunately for her, Tsujiai sees this unusual behaviour. The episode ends with Ayu being stressed out for fearing that Tsujiai may tell his best friend, Kaji, of what he sees in the infirmary.

The second episode continues from her the first left off with Ayu confronting Tsujiai and asks him if he told Kaji about what he saw in the infirmary. Tsujiai, however, tells Ayu not to worry about it because he won't tell Kaji what he saw in that room. Hearing this, Ayu is relieved. The story then moves to the Sakura's residence, the house that is occupied by Nina, her adopted parents, and her cat named Rio. This is the first time Ayu visits Nina's family and is quite surprised of the eclectic nature of Nina's family. In the middle of her visit, a whiz boy from the Magic Kingdom called Yuta Kirishima suddenly appears in the living room, telling them that he's on holiday and decides to visit Nina and her family. Yuta immediately taken an interest in Ayu and asks her to go on a date with him. At first Ayu refuses but after a while agrees to show Yuta around the city.

The next day, Yuta and Ayu go on the date while Nina, who's afraid that Yuta will create a problem for Ayu, decides to follow them from afar. And Nina was right after all. Although Yuta is a very good mage who doesn't even need a computer to execute magic commands, he uses his power to cause problem to others. When Ayu sees what he's done, she becomes angry at him and tells him that Nina may not be a good mage but she cares about other people and only uses her magic to help them. This was soon proven when Nina spots a guy who's about to fall into an ocean. Nina quickly changes into her mage costume and about to perform a spell to help the guy. Unfortunately for her, since she's inexperienced, it took her ages to find the right spell. Meanwhile the guy has already been saved by a couple of people who managed to pull him back to safety. Realising this, Nina can't help but looks on sadly from afar, lamenting her weak ability as a mage.

Meanwhile, Ayu and Yuta have resolved their differences when Yuta promises Ayu to never misuse his power again. After a long walk together, the two meets Nina. Yuta decides to use the opportunity to take a picture of the two girls together. However, the camera that he uses is not a normal camera. It's a camera that produces photographs of people that are liked by the person whose photo is taken. In this case, since Yuta took a picture of Ayu and Nina, the photograph came up as a picture of Kaji and Ayu. Kaji because he is the person that Ayu likes the most and Ayu because she's the person that Nina likes the most since Nina doesn't seem to have any guy that she likes at the moment. Ayu has the idea of using the camera on Kaji but because she tripped, she instead takes a picture of Yuta and in the process, revealing the person that Yuta likes the most: Nina. It seems Yuta has been using Ayu as a cover so that Nina doesn't know of his feelings for her. He also asks Ayu not to let Nina know about this.

The third episode begins with Ayu being forced to help the female tennis club to beat the head of the boys tennis club, Tsujiai, so that the female club can win additional tennis field. Ayu, who's not confident that she can beat Tsujiai in the field asks for Nina's help to be stronger. Unfortunately, Nina's help comes in the form of changing Ayu into a male. However, despite the sex-changing, Ayu still can't beat Tsujiai in the field because she's unused to her new body. The female tennis club almost lost all of their tennis field to the boys until Tsujiai interferes and tell the boys and the girls that he won't take any tennis field from the girls because the field is there to be shared between the two teams. In exchange, he asks the girls to be more considerate of the boys by not disrupting the boys when they are doing their training.

Ayu and Nina are impressed with Tsujiai but their problem is far from over because the sex-changing magic doesn't seem to wear off. To make matters worse, Ayu has been invited by Kaji and Tsujiai to join them singing in Karaoke bar because they need more males on their group. At first Ayu was reluctant but upon finding out that Akiho, a girl who's also interested in Kaji, is going to be there, Ayu decided to come and spoil the chances of Akiho being closer to Kaji. Unfortunately for Ayu, in doing so Akiho becomes attracted to her (because Ayu is still inside a man's body). And even though Ayu desperately tries to tell Akiho that she's not interested, she never the less get a kiss on the mouth from Akiho. Now, who said that girl on girl action doesn't exist on Shoujo? Okay, so it's not exactly girl on girl since Ayu has been turned into a male but still, in theory it was. Anyway, at the end of the episode, Ayu was horrified to find out that her first kiss has been stolen by another girl.

Overall, I find Ultra Maniac to be a fun, entertaining romantic comedy. Just don't expect any extraordinary storytelling because you won't find it here. I also think that it would have been better if Nina is the main character. I find her to be more sympathetic and interesting character than Ayu. The problem with Ayu for me is that her 'icy cold' facade that she shows to the rest of the world is very boring and when she does reveal her true personality, it wasn't that much interesting either. I have to admit that she's a good friend to Nina and is quite patient and forgiving of Nina's frequent blunder with magic spells. But I still think that as a lead character, she should have a more interesting personality. I also find the guy that she's obsessed with, Kaji, to be as dull and bland as a plank of wood. I think Tsujiai is a far more interesting male character than Kaji. So it's unfortunate that both Nina and Tsujiai seem to be relegated to the 'best friend' role to Ayu and Kaji at this point in the story. I hope this will change in the future.

© memento 2003