Hoshi no Ponko to Toufuya Reiko - Reviews

This is not a children's manga. Don't be fooled by the innocuous beginning and cutesy mascot character. It turns dark at the flip of a switch. It deals with themes of severe depression, drug addiction, selling one's body, and giddy vigilantism. And raises philosophical questions about the nature of identity and ethics. Everything flowed well together and I found the characters' actions believable and the storyline fresh. That said, the characters aren't exactly the most interesting. I don't really like any of them.

I really, really liked seeing the world through the alien's eyes on the seventh to last page. That single panel, just, mmm, good stuff.

God damn I was not expecting to love this series as much as I do...

Hoshi no Ponko is about an adorable alien coming to Earth and being helped out by two cute kids, who the alien decides to reward... or so you think. This suddenly takes a very dark turn, and frankly a very good turn. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't say any more, but trust me when I say it gets awesome.

For such a short series, the characters are very good and well developed. Obviously not to a huge extent, but the fact that there is any development at all is quite impressive. There was also a pretty interesting mix of characters, which I liked

Despite being only 3 chapters long, this was a really good read. It's certainly not for kids, as the first part would suggest.

Review for November 2016 DMMC

Warning this Review May Contain Spoilers-

I don't think I have ever found it so hard to rate a manga before, but here it is. We have a manga known as 'Hoshi no Ponko to Toufuya Reiko' which follows the story of a family that 'finds' this alien but their discovery turns into a nightmare which I can express any more as that will spoil this 3 chapter story, well if you call it a story.

STORY

As you may of judged by the introduction I wasn't majorly impressed with this manga as I felt like it lacked in this area, the story. It was an interesting premise but I feel like it was over too fast and this just let it down by quite a bit, there didn't seem to be much development leading up to what I assume was the climax and then the ending just messed with my head. However I did like the fact that it did show the true nature of human's in an interesting way that not many manga are able to capture, our downfalls (such as greed and other things).

ART

The art was interesting, I wouldn't that that it was unique or anything but they put some effort into Ponko's true human form (despite it being naked...). But yeah, nothing to really comment on here other than the fact this is probably what saved it from getting a lower score.

CHARACTERS

Now the characters, they were something. So our main girl does have a rough time throughout this manga, and it is clear the motive of her actions later on in the manga from the early scenes. Ponko, was a unique character in a way despite the story being quite pedictable. As far as the other characters go, I can't say I paid much attention to them...oops.

Now you may think this is an extremely short review, that is exactly what is it because this manga confused me so much and I had so much trouble rating it due to the fact that it wasn't necessarily bad but wasn't what I like.

-AngelBeatsYui-

PS: This review is for DMMC November 2016