Manabi Manga

I decided to check the Manabi Straight manga to see how it stands against the anime. Thanks goes to Musume Scanlations for translating the manga. The group managed to translate the first volume so far which roughly corresponds to the first two episodes. The manga gives a more extended version of the student council room renovation though.

After reading the manga, it became apparent that the anime is far more superior and was handled in a much more professional manner than the manga. There are many scenes and nuances in the anime that are just absent from the manga and those scenes managed to deliver the desired message in a much more robust manner while the manga seemed like it was just fooling around. While the manga has its funny moments, the anime comedy scenes are much more powerful and the punch line is delivered like nothing I’ve seen before.

In the Wikipedia entry on Manabi Straight, they mention that the show follows a new and unique direction style with no overall series director. Instead, they use a team of directors for each episode (story, animation, layout, technical). It’s obvious that this novel way of directing was very fruitful because it shows in every episode. The producers took the material in the manga, added a lot of their ideas to it, mixed everything together and presented the whole thing in a slick neat package. Their real test now will be how they decide to end this show.

I watched episodes 6 and 7 on Thursday. Episode 6 was a nice episode about Mikan and Mutsuki’s friendship. That episode was heavy on the fanservice compared to the previous episodes but it wasn’t that bad apart from one tasteless scene. I’ll never understand why the Japanese keep spoiling their shows with these kinds of references.

Episode 7, however, was barking mad and it seems that the lines of the final battle are beginning to emerge; a battle for the existence of their own school.