Short review of the third volume of the Ichigo Mashimaro manga: Miu is wacky and a little light fanservice.

Seriously.

If you’ve seen the anime, you’ve seen several of the chapters in this volume: Nobue’s waitress job; everyone stays over Nobue’s and Chika’s – Ana wins Nobue’s attention, until Miu protests with tears and gets to sleep with onee-chan alone; the hysterically funny chapter where Nobue falls asleep and Miu keeps cracking Chika, and the reader, up; they all go to a summer festival. All adorable, all amusing, etc, etc.

Additional unanimated chapters include Miu as a ninja, a dream episode, Miu videotapes Ana in the shower, the story of Cinderella as played by the characters (in which Nobue makes a dashing prince, I have to say), and lots more random Miu madness.

Notice how none of the other characters are mentioned much? Miu, Miu, Miu. With some Miu thrown in for fun. She is *clearly* the protagonist here, but I’m beginning to sound like a broken record.

Since it’s all funny, cute, loli, etc, let me just pick this one moment out as my personal favorite…Miu (duh) is videotaping Ana watching a TV show. The show is in English and Ana hasn’t a clue what’s being said. What is being said is this:

With a container of Shoyu hovering menacingly behind it, a Mayonnaise container points to a Vegetable and demands: “Where do you live? I live in a refrigerator.”

The Vegetable responds, presumably, but we can’t see it: “really? [sic] I live in a refrigerator too. Let’s go home!”

Can it *really* get better than this? I don’t think so. ^_^

Just for the Miu gets to sleep with Nobue chapter, this volume has a fairly high Yuri rating…but for the loli, it’s got a high Service rating too.

Ratings:

Art – 7 (the incidental art is dolly dress up, sports-themed)
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 7

Overall – 7