Tokyopop is was a weird company with a habit of releasing everything they could get their filthy paws on. Then after years on decline they went under because of bad management. They had some good stuff and some that was frankly horribly bland and generic crap. Otona ni Nuts(Instant Teen) is one of the latter ones.
Premise: a cute little fifth grader who have a big crush on a barber steals a bunch of nuts from a lady on the street and eats them. Apparently the genius who made them somehow got them mixed up in a basket of freebie nuts. When she wakes up the next day she is an adult and by accident meets the barber-guy who instantly falls in love with her, of course kids are not illogical creatures that are easy to distinguish in this universe. Add her neighbor/best friend who has a crush on her into the mix and you have a totally unoriginal story to look forward to. Genius.
If you haven't caught my drift yet, the story is quite predictable. For a work aimed at kids, who would have thought? Next.
Characters are unlikeable and not acting their age. The main character is swaying on the the dangerous "this could get really dark"-line. And by that I mean romantic relations with an older man. For something with such an innocent premise it sure likes to titillate which is odd since it's a work obviously for young girl. Maybe I just don't get it
The art is pretty basic and often go “extremely shojo” meaning bubbles, flowers and other nasty fluff elements. As per usual with these works the fluff tries to cover up the total lack of backgrounds and it will get tiresome in the long run to just look at characters with a white background. Sometimes there may some shadow-effects, if we are lucky that is. The blandness of the character-designs are not contributing but at this point who really cares. It's perfectly serviceable for the story it accompanies.
Enjoyment equals none. At least not on when trying to take the story serious. Otherwise there will something to make fun of on every page, which will probably be as enjoyable as this will ever be but even this get tiresome since the sheer quantity of things to ridicule will be just too much to juggle. And that is when the premise is not even taken into account.
Unless you really want to waste an hour or two away there is no reason at all to read this. If you had plans to, just forget it ever existed. It's one of the worst thing to come from the manga boom and I promise it's way better to not have had this pathetic experience that is Otona Ni Nuts. Especially if you are an owner of a pair yourself.
