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Title: Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mode
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is nothing provocative in this series, unless you count a boy climbing into his neighbor’s window offensive Tokyo Mew Mew fans, I say that you only read the first volume and write your own continuation. Unless you like sugary sweet and cheesy endings, that is my recommendation. Sci-fi fans, I hate to say it, but all the environmental elements of the first series are not to be found in the second. However, the villains will remind you of X-Men, if that’s a consolation. Romance fans, this continuation has some interesting and original romance for once! But you’ll probably hate how easily it resolves. |
Wow. Take the word either positively or negatively, but that is my reaction when thinking of “TMM A La Mode”. When I heard the title, it gave me inspiration for writing a comic strip called A La Mode, but after reading the first “TMM” series I wasn’t willing to give this one a try just yet. “TMM” tasted like terrible fast food: good at first, terrible aftertaste. That doesn’t make you want to try fast food again in a hurry. Besides, even when I did actually look for the second volume of this series, I had little luck. Maybe fate was trying to keep me from writing a bad review.
Sorry. I’m rambling. “TMM A La Mode continues a few months after “TMM” ends. Mew Ichigo aka Ichigo Momomiya has gone to join her boyfriend Masaya in England, so the Mew Mews no longer have a leader. Then one day a girl named Berry (I nearly laughed too, don’t be ashamed) wakes up to find the boy next door in her bedroom, having climbed into her window. Other girls would be frightened and mortified, but Berry is just annoyed because Tasuku does this every day. She isn’t even going to the same school as him; she worked hard to get into a private junior high school because the uniform was cute. If any of you girls are screaming at her lack of priorities, I quite agree. Later on she finds a café where a boy named Ryou catches her. The upshot is that the same DNA machine that changed five girls into Mew Mews hits Berry. Later on, when Tasuku convinces her to play hooky and go to an amusement park, a monster attacks. Berry finds that she transforms into Mew Berry. Surprisingly, Tasuku finds this out quite early and he takes it calmly. Ryou employs her and Tasuku at the café where the other Mew Mews work. This time the villains are a bunch of ESP children who call themselves the Saint Rose Crusaders. After having society shun them for what they are, they want to take their revenge on humankind. Their first target is Mew Berry.
I’m not completely complaining; the first volume was actually good and memorable. The villains were ripped straight from Marvel comics, but I didn’t mind because Mia Ikumi makes you care for them so much. Now that the focus is no longer on Ichigo (who returns later in the book), she is no longer dull and contrived. No, the problems started with the second volume. In the second volume the villains decide to hurt the Mew Mews using sublimal messages. (Don’t ask for specifics. The same thing was used in the Josie and the Pussycats movie.) It was a stupid idea, since you can’t exactly erase messages from people’s heads, but I was giving the plot the benefit of the doubt. However, the way Mia Ikumi wrote it, ugh. It was so cheesy that even the villains stopped fighting finally realizing the “error of their ways” (we never find out what happened to them).
This wouldn’t have been so bad if I had seen this cheesiness in the beginning, but there was very little of it. Reading a story with a good beginning and a terrible ending is like a slap to the face after your mom gives you chocolate. I can stand a good climax and a bad resolution, but that is where my tolerance ends. I thought that “TMM A La Mode” was supposed to improve on the flaws that “TMM” had, like the Sailor Moon elements that they copied and not exploiting the sheer potential they could have used. In both “W.I.T.C.H.” and “Sailor Moon” unpredictable things happened and each story developed their own style over time. “TMM A La Mode” only had some originality. The ending gobbled up whatever originality was left. (Tasuku became serious, for crying out loud.) I could have written something better than this!
The art remains the same with the impractical costumes and the unoriginal character designs. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I can’t. Tokyopop preparation is standard with the usual rants and filler stories. This time we get two: a Christmas story about a musician and her mischievous sweetheart and the Mew Mews in kindergarten again. The Christmas story I should’ve liked since I play the same instrument as the protagonist, but I didn’t because it was cheesy and made no sense. Not every story in mahou shoujo has to be about love! Unfortunately, the kindergarten story was just as bad as the Christmas one. It was about the seven Mew Mews (one came from the video game to join the fun) going into the fairytale “Sleeping Beauty” because someone tore out the pages of the prince from their book. In the end, however, they decide not to wake the princess up and insert drawings of the prince. Then the prince and the awakened princess thanked them. How’s that for a moral? It’s ironic since I just finished reading a nonfiction account on the Brothers Grimm and about fairytales, which had a chapter comparing illustrations of “Sleeping Beauty.”
I will tell you what I would have done if I were writing “TMM”. For one thing, I would just eliminate guys for a while except Tasuku. (He was very funny, so he doesn’t count.) I would have explored all the other Mew Mews’ backgrounds, like what Zakuro is doing on her show, maybe Lettuce studying meditation to help balance out schoolwork and her powers, Mint volunteering somewhere, and when Pudding will finally grow up. Furthermore, I’d like to know what happened to Zakuro, Lettuce’s and Mint’s parents in the first place. Why does Mint live with her grandmother? Did her parents abandon her or were they killed? Why does Zakuro only talk to her agent? Where are her parents? And how come Lettuce’s never show up? Are they the reason she’s so studious and insecure? It’s little subplots and little pasts that help add up to a great series. Just read “One Piece” and you’ll understand.
Apparently Miss Ikezawa forgot about all the other characters when she was writing the last chapters. Why didn’t her editor catch this? Was this the point where Ikezawa-sensei had the power to do anything she wanted with the series? (Writers and manga artists should NEVER have this power. As Stephen King and J.K. Rowling prove, you need an editor to catch your mistakes and let you know when you’re sliding down a pit. And as a fiction writer myself, I speak from experience with good friends who also serve as critics.) I even think that if the series had gone on longer it might have gotten better, or maybe not. I would’ve preferred leaving the story on a cliffhanger, much like Naoko Takeuchi’s work “PQ Angels” (Google “Naoko Takeuchi” for more information) than have it end terribly. (To all “TMM” fans, I apologize if you feel that I have ruined your enjoyment of the series; I felt that way too when I heard people criticizing “Captain Planet”. This review is after all based on my opinion, and you don’t have to agree with it. I don’t always agree with Kevin on a series’ quality either.)
- -Review By Jaya Lakshmi- -