Idol A by Mitsuru Adachi

 Barely made the deadline this week. I went camping and didn't think enough to read a manga ahead of time. I've probably mentioned this about a thousand times, but I'm pretty lazy, after all. I love camping, though.


Idol A by Mitsuru Adachi 

Art and story (c) Mitsuru Adachi

Genre: Shonen, Sports
Length: One Volume – 6 Chapters



           This art style is one of the more simplistic types of art (and probably most famously

represented by Ranma ½) with characters with rounded faces and oval eyes. Its not that there isn't variation, there is plenty, I'm just generalizing here due. The hair is solid black, and either flat edged or with messy spikes. The clothing tends to be a little baggy. There's nothing offensive about it, either, it can be boring if you don't like it, though. This particular mangaka's work I found lackluster in many ways so I find it hard to praise the art.
           Two childhood friends with the same huge secret. One is a gravure idol of increasing popularity. One is a rising star of baseball with dreams of being a professional. The problem is, the idol and the baseball player are one in the same, and, only because he looks the same as her, the other is made to switch places whenever the girl needs to be in two places at once. Will they be found out now that high school is over and she's been drafted onto a professional baseball team?
           Uhg, this manga lost me right at the beginning by skipping over the setup in the most confusing way possible. The story itself seems interesting, so why skip over the part where you get to know the two main characters before they are knee deep in a cross dressing act? I honestly can't get past that point, the long winded explanation in the place of actually showing this integral plot point is hard to digest first thing. In fact, I found the

entire manga too be very wordy to the point that I just moved as fast as I could through it. I've read another manga by this mangaka, a manga I physically owned, but found it hard to read through for the exact same reason. Be warned, much more nitpicking follows, as well. There's really no getting to know the characters at all after the beginning, either. You see them switch places and share a few words but they are only ever doing their jobs. Meaning, there's no sense that the two will ever get together or that they are even friends. Why is the male character staying in this relationship at all, sure he likes the girl and wants her to have her dream, but she doesn't seem grateful to him at all. Not that she isn't, but that you don't get to see any kind of internal processes of either characters or of anyone around them. There's no sort of ending either, though I think it wasn't picked up for a second volume or something, but that isn't the author's only problem in this story, it just adds to the piles of frustrations I already had. There's nothing to lead a reader from one chapter to the next. There's no sense of danger or of failure, its basically 'of course she'll do really well playing baseball' and 'he'll nervously pretend right now because he hasn't done so in a few pages' but nothing really plot oriented in how they can mature or improve. Continuing or not, there wasn't enough set up to get me to like the story or the characters that make up it. No real conflict, only gag-like incidents, glimmering a bit of humor that never goes anywhere. Now that I have finished reading this, and I have to write a review, I'm properly mad. It wasted my time. Don't waste yours.



1/5 I don't see even a little bit of appeal here. 

Tom Baker is too good a gif for this...