Beauty This.

HAVE YOU EVER WANTED A LITTLE MAGIC DONE TO YOU? Yeah a cheesy beginning, but really, have you ever wished to be beautiful, and have a fairy god mother that would come down to turn you into a beautiful princess for you handsome prince? Beauty Pop by Kiyoko Arai plays on this bizarre wish that many girls look for; don’t ask me why, but they do.

In the world of Beauty Pop, the Junior High has three boys that have created an excusive club made up for the three of them to make girls beautiful. They pick a pretty girl, and make her gorgeous so she can profess her love to the guy she wants. Seems nice enough, but it is not. As I wrote, these girls are already pretty. These girls are hand picked and when a girl with a real problem comes to the boys, they turn her down. When this happens, Kiri Koshiba helps the girl, by doing a little magic.

What I like about this Manga (a comic book made of about 200 pages), beyond the humorous antics, is how the story shows the patheticness of our society, and how it stresses too much on the physical beauty, and not what a person’s personality is like. Having a main character that isn’t interested in what the other girl looks like, or even her own looks, yet she still does everything she can to help, is something every person should strive for. This makes the story more then some fluff put together, but it has a real meaning, while still being enjoyable.

The art isn’t Da Vinci, but rarely are any of the Manga’s art amazingly gorgeous, but it does have substance. The characters are perfect for this book, and the funniest part of the art is the way Arai drew the antagonist: Shogo Narumi. This boy had never faced such an opponent before. Kiri is just helping people, and Shogo doesn’t realize that, so his reactions are incredibly comical.

I would suggest that every girl should read this, especially the ones that are entering into middle school, where beauty-is-everything really hits hard. Maybe this reason is why Arai placed the setting in a middle school. The rating is teen, but I didn’t see anything that would put it at such a level, except that there is a concept to the manga. There is not any romance so far, but it is just the first book. I think guys might like the humor, but not really get the storyline, so it was a good reason change to thing for it to be published by Shojo Beat ( a manga publishing agency for girls: for those who don’t know).