Beauty Pop, vol. 1

Beauty Pop volume 1
Kiyoko Arai
Viz (Shojo Beat), 194 pp.
Available here.

I honestly don't have much to say about this title. Maybe because this was an impulse buy, or maybe because I don't really care about looking "pretty" that much.

Kiri is a hair cutter. She works her magic on girls and makes them look "pretty". But she has rivals, the Scissors Project, with the 3 most popular makeover guys in it. They start a rivalry, compete to make girls prettier....blah blah blah...but wait. This isn't stupid, like you may think from reading the back cover. It's actually okay.

There's a few makeovers in this book, mainly middle school girls who want to be "pretty" to be with a boy. But the one that starts the rivalry between the S.P. and Kiri is Yorozyua, a.k.a "Fat-chan". She's so fat and ugly, and demands that the S.P. make her beautiful. She ends up as Kiri's contestant in the competition. The competition ends before the book ends, yet we don't get to see who wins.

Kiri is the exact opposite of what you'd expect to be a shojo heroine. She's unruly, frazzled, and a bit on the lazy side. The members of the S.P. are what you'd expect high-spirited rivals to be- high spirited, competitive, and with a bit of goofiness. Kiri's friend Taro wants to also become a hair cutter, but I couldn't tell if he was just overly flamboyant or if he was gay.

The art is your standard shojo fare, with big eyes, and a moderate amount of screentone balanced out with some white space. I must say that the art is very simple and clean in this manga, and tells the story well.

The actual publication is all right, it's standard Viz quality. It's got somewhat low-quality paper and has one or two translation notes scattered about.

Art: 3
Characters: 3.5
Quality: 3
Story: 3.5

Overall: 3.25 or a C. It's nothing really special but it's not a run-of-the-mill shojo either. I picked it up purely on impulse because Borders Express was having one of those "buy 4 books, get the 5th free" promotions and the shelves were almost bare. I guess it's aimed at younger teens and tweens, but I guess shojo fans of most ages would enjoy this breath of fresh air. Sorta.