Ultra Maniac

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Okay so the basic story is follows our main charter Ayu Tateishi (the popular and cool student known for her "mature" laid back attitude). Our story really starts with the introduction of Nina-who turns out can use magic and is from a magical kingdom in some other dimension (or something like that)! Ayu ends up finding out when she stumbles into Nina when she is trying to find her "magic computer"....(although Ayu ironically didn't believe in magic in the beginning)
Ayu and Nina become friends and they go though some wacky adventures together. Nina basically becomes Ayu "fairy godmother" although Nina's spells do not always go ... as planned.
Story:
The story is creative and interesting in my opinion, it's the only story I know that actually has a backstory for the whole magical society. Along with explain why some magical people are doing in the "ordinary human world". It knows what it wants to be as a story and it does those elements wells- although this story has a habit of dropping storylines on a dime without any warning or reason (which is one of the things holding it back and the reasons that it gets a 7 in book). I mean one of the story lines that bugged me was the whole "Yuta Kirishima(Ninas former classmate from magical school) liking Nina". When he comes into the story he basically followed Nina from the magical dimension because he missed her- even though he would never admit it. They had know each other for years and when he is called out for liking Nina by Ayu he admits he does like Nina......then that story line is dropped. Like nothing else is really said about it. Yuta never confessed any feelings for Nina and Ayu never tells (which I think could have been an interesting side story for charter development). He even just goes out with this other magical girl whos a model Sayaka Nakamura. (Even though they had been basically been using each other and had showed no attraction to eachother). Also Yuta had followed Nina from a different dimension! You cannot expect me to believe he would just give up on Nina! That whole thing just bugged me.

Art:
It's okay the art style is kinda dated and cutesy. There isn't a lot of action scenes- and a personally think the art style is cute. To be honest some of the charters look the same (like the boys seem to have the same look to them with nothing to tell them apart besides a slightly different hair style).
There's nothing really dramatic or revolutionary about the drawing style.

Charter
Okay to the 2 main characters are Nina and Ayu (so ill just be doing these 2). Although there are more charters.
Nina- is the magical girl from another dimension. She is kind, sweet, innocent, and a little but clumsy. She can also be a bit dense sometimes. She was sent to earth after failing out of magical school- since earth is where all the "fluckys and drop-outs" go. I personally loved her charters as she some particular quirks that made her an overall fun charter.
Ayu- is the "cool and mature" (Not really) popular sports girl in school. Her and Ayu becomes friends. She plays off of Nina's quirks brilliantly in my opinion. Although when it comes to her crush,Tetsushi Kaji , she can be just as airheaded as Nina. Although she is always trying to play it cool she often looses it when it comes to Nina's high-jinx.
Of course there are more charters like Nina's friend Yuta, Ayu's crush Kaji- just to name a few.

It's basically a very light and fluffy novel- although there is nothing wrong with that. Not as intense as like "Harry Potter" wizards and magic but I personally think it's a good read for anyone just wanting some light reading for fun. It didn't do anything revolutionary but it wasn't bad either- I personally enjoyed it.

Ultra Maniac was the second manga I ever read. The things I like about this manga is the character development and the cute storyline and characters. I like how even the secondary characters had attention put on their development and story. While this is a cute manga, it is mostly geared towards the younger audience (which I was when I first started reading it) But now that I have read a lot of different types of manga, I can see that Ultra Maniac is relly not one of the best mangas out there.

I have to admit, re-reading this series after god knows how long, I felt that ‘Ultra Maniac’ was a bit underwhelming.

On the last page of the final volume of 'Ultra Maniac' contains a bio section of the manga-ka, Wataru Yoshizumi, and also a comment section where Yoshizumi said that once this series started, she became less interested in magic and struggled coming up with ideas for the manga. This seems to explain why the plot is so basic. Everything about this series was pretty basic and straight to the point.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a very cute series that I felt was ... handled well for the most part, but there was nothing ground-breaking when it came to the magical components of 'Ultra Maniac'. There were different magical scenarios per chapter that just got boring after a while; It became repetitive. Then certain characters were later on introduced which showed the magic world from a different angle; slightly. The final volume was honestly the most interesting to read because it finally showed the magic world on a broader scale. This was definitely a last minute plot for sure, but I think this series could’ve been cut shorter by introducing this plot earlier on. This series dragged out a little too long with weird love triangles that I don’t think was really needed for this series. Perhaps this series could've been about 3 volumes long.

Throughout the manga, Wataru Yoshizumi made comments here and there about Harry Potter and how she wanted to do something different, other than what Harry Potter presented; regarding magic and it’s world. ‘Ultra Maniac’ came out in 2002, so back then the Harry Potter movies were just starting out and it’s popularity skyrocketed. I get where Yoshizumi was coming from and how she wanted to represent magic in a different way, but evidently she struggled with the execution of it. At the time, she has not read Harry Potter nor seen the movies, so at the very least all of her ideas were original. Magic is not an original concept, but her ideas were there. Yoshizumi’s attempt at writing a magical manga honestly could’ve been a lot worse.

Also, why is this series called ‘Ultra Maniac’ to begin with? I mean, it was a passing comment here and there between characters, but I don’t think the title really fits with the actual story.

All and all, I rated this series 6/10. It was a simple, cute story that younger people can enjoy, but as for me, the re-read value isn’t as high as it is for ‘Marmalade Boy’, which is Wataru Yoshizumi’s magnum opus.