MIXiM★11

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Mixim 11 is a hard manga to review, because it’s just so generic. The story revolves around three boys who are unpopular with girls, who learn that one of them is actually a prince of the star Polaris and all three were sent to grow up on Earth for safety reasons. Now it’s time to determine which one is the prince and marry him off to one of a select group of “zodiac maidens,” while fending off enemies from a rival star trying to overthrow Polaris’s government. The idea has potential, and could have been pretty good with some more thought put into it, but ... the manga just didn’t seem to be trying.

Structurally, the story is all over the place. The first two dozen chapters or so are a truly awful slice of life, without a single redeeming point, until suddenly, it turns into a passable battle manga. The plot is poorly developed, mostly progressing from fight to fight without a lot of thought put into the underlying threads that connect those fights together. In fact, by the end of the series, the original plotlines seem to have been completely forgotten.

The protagonists aren’t particularly likeable, and the first thirty chapters or so were a chore to read. The story picked up a lot after the main villains were introduced – they didn’t appear as much as i would have liked, but the main characters and the storyline improved after that. The main villain is a strong callback to Anzai’s best-known work, Flame of Recca (he wears the same clothes as Kurei, and has a similar personality to Joker). After having seen characters that seem to be based on Kurei in every post-FoR manga by this author i’ve read, i have to wonder if he’s decided he’ll never create a better character and he’s given up trying. In a similar vein, the main character’s abilities are reminiscent of another Anzai lead, Ginta from MÄR.

The female characters are completely wasted – the ladies in Flame of Recca and MÄR had a lot more to do. Momoko and sometimes Arachne are the only girls in Mixim who really get the opportunity to do anything significant, and even they’re overshadowed by the male characters. The other girls are just window dressing, and frankly the story wouldn’t change much if you took all the female characters out entirely.

As a space nut, i’m either the best or the worst person to write this review, because i can and will judge the scientific aspects of the worldbuilding. Polaris is not the brightest star in the sky as Anzai claims, although that is a common mistake among people who don’t do much stargazing. The brightest star known is Deneb, in the Cygnus constellation, with an absolute magnitude of -8.73. If you’re judging by how bright stars look from Earth (and discount the Sun), then the brightest star is Sirius, with an apparent magnitude of -1.44. Polaris has an apparent magnitude of 1.97 and an absolute magnitude of -3.64, putting it about in the middle of the rankings either way. The villains come from Kochab, which they call the darkest star in the sky. Actually, with an apparent magnitude of 2.08, it’s not much dimmer than Polaris. Its absolute magnitude, -0.83, has more of a difference, but still on the brighter side of the scale. The two of them are the brightest stars in the Little Dipper constellation. It’s impossible to live on the surface of a star, so i assumed that characters being from Polaris or Kochab actually meant that they were from planets orbiting those stars (there is at least one confirmed exoplanet orbiting Kochab), but even when the cast visit those “stars”, the manga sure does treat them as if they were planets. In addition, it doesn’t make much sense that the people of Polaris would have abilities based on and draw strength from the Greek-Babylonian zodiac, since from outside our solar system the stars would form completely different patterns. Personally, i find it hard to believe that the aliens would look indistinguishable from humans – it’s not like this is a live-action program where you need costumes actors can wear – but that’s so common in science fiction that there’s not much point arguing about it. On a more fun note, the first chapter refers to the three leads from Polaris as trinary stars (actually, the English translation says “twin stars”, but we know what they meant), and the star we know as Polaris is actually three stars orbiting each other – a literal trinary star system.

Objectively, this really is a terrible manga. The flaws are impossible to ignore, but i actually did enjoy it after i got past a certain point. Gods help me, i enjoyed it. Admittedly, that was mainly due to the villain Pandora, but the fact remains that as soon as i finished reading it i wanted to go back and read it again. It was a little better the second time around, probably because i knew what to expect. All the flaws – the terrible first thirty chapters, the plot holes, the scientific errors – were all still there. My original reaction to this manga was “Yep, that sure was another Nobuyuki Anzai manga.” It’s very much in his style, but doesn’t stand out even if you only compare it to his other works, so i would only recommend this to serious Anzai fans.