Ahiru by Himawari Ezuki

I'll sum up this review in one GIF if you don't have the time to read it:

Ahiru by Himawari Ezuki

Art and story (c) Himawari Ezuki

Genre: Shojo
Length: One Volume – 6 Chapters


           The art on this is rather messy and generic; its just bland all around. Large eyed shojo is probably the most prolific type of art in manga, at least its the most visually recognizable to Westerners, but it's style doesn't always mean that a manga is played out,

too. Unfortunately, in this case, it does mean that in the worst way. It is cute, I can't deny that at all, and the characters are all different visually. Even the expressions change a lot and show a character's personality. Still, does not change the fact that it very much feels like you've read this all before, nor does it make up for the hectic placement of the panels on each page. It was so crowded, its kind of hard for the brain to make any sense of flow, which is further skewed by the pace of the story. The “bubble” eye reflections are also huge distractions.
           A group of friends very reluctantly join a ballet club at school, but end up picking a fight with students who go to a ballet school who look down on the club. Can these “ugly ducklings” learn well enough to go head to head?
           Okay, did you read the description? Good, good, now forget it because that's not really how the story goes but I couldn't really scrape together enough plot to write much else. Technically, I suppose, that really is the plot but it doesn't really go anywhere, in fact the “battle” never happens. Instead, the story is disjointed and changes on a dime for no reason, until it has a cliché ending with a future flash forward included. It hardly makes any sense. Its forced and contrived from the get go, I mean joining a club and then trying your hardest so you can compete against some other kids way better than you is probably the oldest story in the book. Well, besides the hate-the-boy-until-it-turns-to-love narrative, but that is also included so you can be sure there is no originality here at all. Even the characters are all plain in personality, the group of friends, especially, they, despite all looking different, sort of just run together. And the two main characters? Seen 'em a thousand times. Then there is the composition, something I don't really comment on much, but in this case it's just adds to the hectic for no reason atmosphere. Like I said in the art section, this manga is too crowded. The ballet information is thrown at you randomly and there is absolutely no passion to the story at all. The romance has no heat to it, it is also forced, and at the end they are just randomly in love? The whole thing is just a waste of time. I didn't really hate it, like I said it is cute, and the humor is slightly amusing. For example, the main character's friends acting all dismissive, but beating her to the action/location and lording it over her is one of the re-occurring jokes that I liked.

Still sparkling, too.

Still, also as I said, the cuteness does not make up for all the other glaringly annoying or just plain generic-ness of the rest of it. What I find most irksome, though, is how much it reminds me of the anime Princess Tutu, and the fact that came out after the anime did, seems like much too much of a coincidence. Capitalizing on something someone else brought attention to? Common practice. Doing it in a completely unoriginal and uninspired way? Leaves a person going ugh. So I'm going ugh. UGH.



1.5/5 Cute, but driven only by tropes and cliches. 

Somehow, these characters look completely different in color.