A Journey Into The Bizarre - My Review of Maria Holic #1

As one of my choices for the 2015 Panels Comic Challenge one of the selections was for a volume of manga, as I pick up manga from the library anyway, I just chose one of the volumes I already had borrowed that week, Maria Holic #1 by Minari Endou.

The premise behind this story could have been gold. Kanako, the main protagonist is allergic to men and has transferred to an all girls high school to try and meet her soul mate (finding out along the way about her dead mother - though this is barely touched upon in this first volume). The first person she meets, she believes to be "the one" immediately, except that they turn out the be a mean, cross-dressing boy.

Sadly the writing and the art work fall far short of the potential this book had. The story is incredibly mish mashed and at some points, I had to go back and re-read a page to make sure I knew what was going on, but sometimes even that didn't help. The artwork as well, I really don't like and I normally love how beautiful manga artwork is.

Reading this made me sad about how the idea seems to have been wasted when it could have been so good. I would have liked to have learnt more about Kanako's mother and that story, as well as seeing how she dealt with Mariya, however I will not be continuing with this series. Maybe something has been lost in the translation, but I can't face reading another volume just to see if it gets better.

I started this book on the 11th of February and finished it on the same day
I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads, though it's more of a 1.5 stars