Mayo Chiki! Manga Volume 01 Review
まよチキ！

Purchase Mayo Chiki! Volume 01 from:
–> Amazon.com

SPOILERS

Highlights from this volume start with the gynophobia suffering guy SAKAMACHI Kinjirou accidentally walking in on KONOE Subaru, the butler for the school’s principal’s ojousama daughter SUZUTSUKI Kanade, in the bathroom. Kinjirou discovers Subaru wears girl’s panties, but further to that, discovers that Subaru is actually a girl, unbeknownst to anyone else in the school. After being knocked out by Subaru, Kinjirou wakes in the school’s infirmary, handcuffed to the bed, with Kanade there. She has Subaru bound and in a ball gag. Kanade makes an agreement to help Kinjirou overcome his gynophobia in exchange for his silence.

Kanade arranges for Subaru to come by Kinjirou’s home, but it becomes clear that she’s actually eager to be friends despite him having seen her naked and more. Kanade gets them on a date to an arcade, with Subaru wearing girl’s clothing. Kinjirou’s abusive younger sister, Kureha, sees this and assumes that Subaru is a cross dresser and her brother is dating a boy. When the physically strong Kureha loses a fight to Subaru, she becomes attracted to Subaru. Kanade then arranges for a foursome trip to an amusement park, complete with a swimming complex. She then stages a kidnapping of herself and Kureha in order to get Subaru over her fear of knives from an incident when they were kids, and to once again be friends with Subaru instead of ojousama and butler.

The premise of this manga, which originated from the light novel series, combines a few different genres — the butler-ojousama relationship (Hayate the Combat Butler sprang to mind), the reverse trap, the imouto-oniichan relationship, and the harem.  Through this first volume, the manga’s plot is so weak and to me, not that interesting. The main purpose of the manga (and obviously, this was the purpose of the original light novel) is ecchi, ecchi, and more ecchi. As such, the females are often shown in sexually suggestive poses, or with sexually suggestive looks on their faces. Heck, Subaru is even chained and given a ball gag at one point as Kanade reveals more “toys” at her disposal. _

There were some things that stuck out to me in a positive way. Although Kureha appears to have an unhealthy interest in her brother, I liked that she calls him “niisan” rather than the usual “oniichan” that I expected. I did get a laugh when Kureha switched from addressing Kanade as “Suzutsuki-san” to “oneesama”. I also laughed at Subaru’s remark on having guns, stating that any good butler would have a gun or three. That reminded me of a scene from Hayate the Combat Butler where Hayate learns that any good butler has a secret, deadly, finishing move or two.

I did like the date Subaru and Kinjirou went on since it was mostly cute and sweet. I could appreciate the notion of a girl having spent most of her young life disguised as a boy enjoying a day getting to be a girl.

Beyond that, I just didn’t find anything really likeable in the manga’s story.

NEET-sensei’s art is attractive, but that’s not surprising since an ecchi title would demand more attractive character designs and such.

On the Seven Sea’s side of things, the honorifics are there, as are the brother/sister honorifics. That’s a big plus. I’m disappointed that the decision was made to scrap the term “ojousama” since that term is becoming more mainstream amongst us longtime manga fans. After all, titles like Negima! and Hayate the Combat Butler (to name a couple) are have multiple ojousama characters where the term is used. Indeed, when I actually get a chance to meander out to fan boards or discussions, I see them using the term “ojousama” to describe that type of character.

There are four color pages at the beginning of the manga, which is a nice plus to any manga series. Original novel creator Asano-sensei appears to have written a lengthy chat corner featuring Subaru, Kureha, and Kinjirou. I was glad to see that Seven Seas didn’t try to flip this section to a western-styled left-page, right-page reading, wisely choosing to keep it right-page, left-page like the manga. Asano-sensei also has a note, as does character designer and novel illustrator Kikuchi-sensei.

Will I get another volume of this series?  I’m not sure. There is a part of me that’s curious to see if this manga actually goes somewhere, or if it just stays in the ecchi realm (which is what I suspect).