HIME-CHAN NO RIBON :: HIME-CHAN'S RIBBON

Hime-chan's Ribbon is an adorable shoujo manga by Mizusawa Megumi. It was published by Ribon Mascot Comics between 1991 and 1994, and it's 10 tankoubons long. It ran originally in the shoujo manga anthology Ribon.

The story is that of a girl named Himeko; everyone calls her "Hime-chan" for short. For those of you who are Japanese impaired, "hime" is the word that means princess. This is a name that is semi-ironic, as Hime-chan is a genki and unrepentant tomboy. She is enthusiastic about everything, quite good at sports, and not always so hot in school because she'd rather do fun things over studying. Everyone is her friend because she's friendly, kind, funny, and a fun person in general. But even though she is a complete tomboy, Hime-chan is still a girl, even though people tend to forget that. She has a crush on one of her senpai, but she can never bring herself to do anything but act like her normal ultra-genki self around him. One day she decides to go to his house to give him a charm for good luck; but she loses her nerve and can't do it, so she just walks around the neighborhood instead. She sees an old house that looks interesting, and decides to investigate; but upon crawling under the hedge, she meets up with Kobayashi Daichi, a classmate who's a big troublemaker; he's smart and good-looking, but also rather rude. He asks what she's doing there and tells her she looks like a boy; so she kicks him. At that point her senpai walks around the corner; Hime-chan is so embarrassed to be seen acting so unladylike that she runs off and decides she really doesn't like Kobayashi-kun at all.

One day, though, everything in her life changes. A girl who looks just like her, only with long hair and in a pretty dress, comes to see her, floating outside her bedroom window. It turns out that the girl is Princess Erika, and she's from the Land of Magic. In the Land of Magic, there is a double of everyone in the human world, and Erika is Hime-chan's double. It seems that since Erika is the princess, she has to watch her human counterpart for a year. In return for this invasion of privacy, Erika loans Hime-chan her magical red ribbon, which allows its wearer to transform into another person. But there are conditions to its use; the user has to be looking at his/her reflection while saying the magic rhyme that changes them, and s/he can only be the other person for an hour. If the user doesn't transform back to his/herself in an hour, s/he is stuck as that other person until s/he dies. And if any other human ever finds out about the ribbon, the magic people will have to take away the ribbon and erase everyone's memories about it.

Erika wants to test it by giving it to Hime-chan for a year and seeing if it is useful and a good thing. After she gets over her disbelief, Hime-chan agrees to try it. The ribbon has a side effect as well; while she's wearing it, Hime-chan's little stuffed lion Pokota comes to life. Hime-chan has had Pokota her whole life and immediately they are best friends, as if he'd always been animate. Hime-chan and Erika also form an instant bond and are quite fond of each other. Erika leaves then to go back to the Land of Magic, but she says she'll always be watching.

Hime-chan has an interesting time with the ribbon, but as time goes on she gets herself into trouble with it occasionally. She also keeps on running into Daichi all over the place and soon reconciles herself to the fact that he's a classmate she can't avoid. Eventually they become friends and hang out a lot. There is a rumor in school that the two of them are dating, which attracts a new enemy for Hime-chan; Hibino Hikaru, who is a really bitchy conceited girl who also happens to be the president of the "Kobayashi Daichi Fan Club." She is outraged that Hime-chan dares to even speak to HER Daichi and is always trying to make trouble for Hime-chan. A lot of trouble happens because she always is trying to find out what Hime-chan's secret is; Hime-chan can't afford to let her find out because not only would Pokota become just a stuffed animal again, but she would forget all about Erika and all about Daichi, and Daichi would forget about her; and she doesn't want that to happen, because she's starting to fall in love with him.

ART:
What can I say, I think the art is ADORABLE. Seriously, it is a bit old, and a little simplistic; but it's still really good, IMHO. I really like the way the mangaka draws hands and such; drawing really good hands and feet is something a lot of artists aren't that good at. She also draws the cutest boys, especially Daichi. I think he is so, so cute. I mean, just look at that picture above! Is that cute or what!? Well, people who've seen the anime might be surprised to see that in the manga Daichi has blond hair and Sei's hair is shaded in. Although in the color pictures you can see that Daichi's hair is supposed to be really light brown, and Sei still has like "golden" colored hair; I'm not sure why it's shaded in and Daichi's isn't. But you get used to a non-dark-haired Daichi pretty fast. Anyway, here's a few scans of a few pages from the manga:
Manga volume 8 page scan
Hime-chan's thoughts about Daichi later in the story. Translated into English by me.

PLOT:
It's super cute. It's quite easy to follow, and everything is just very cute. As someone once put it, "All the stories are so NICE!" and that is the truth. Everything is happy, everything gets resolved, and there aren't many loose ends left floating around. It's true that not everyone gets paired off (okay, actually almost nobody gets paired off) but you can sort of guess who various characters are going to end up with. Anyway, yes, everything is fairly nice; there's a little violence at times, but nothing terribly bad; usually just someone hitting someone else. It is less episodic in nature than the anime and Hime-chan doesn't have to use the ribbon EVERY chapter like she does in the anime; but that's standard for magical girl anime, henshin every episode. Also, if you've seen the anime -- Hime-chan does NOT have that insane pile of magical stuff. I always thought it was ridiculous how many magical tools she had acquired by the end of the show (more than sailor Moon! Really!), but it seems that those things were added to the anime; in the manga she only has the ribbon and some size-change pills that are only used like twice.

CHARACTERS:
Well, I really, really, really, REALLY love Daichi. That's all there is to that. I think he is possibly one of the coolest guys in any anime or manga. Really. He's that cool. It's not just that he's cute and smart and good at EVERYTHING... he's also super-nice and best of all, he's really clever. I mean, there are lots of boys in shoujo who are good-looking, smart, and good at everything they do; but Daichi makes other nice guys in other manga look like a bunch of jerks, and I've never seen any guy in any manga who's as good at simply saying the right thing at the right time or outright lying with a straight face as Daichi. As for Hime-chan, she's also really cool; she's a tomboy, but still a girl, and that really comes across. She rarely needs to be "saved" or "rescued" but she tends to get herself in sticky situations where she needs assistance. Pokota is cute and Erika is also super-adorable and lovable. Kamiru and Sei are the kind of guys you want to slap for being a pair of bumbling idiots, but they're forgivable because when the stupid things they do cause trouble, they really do feel bad. Hibino... well, I dislike her greatly, but she's necessary to the plot. But she really is hateful. -_-; Who else? Well, all of the more minor characters are fairly likable as well... really everyone is. It's all so NICE!

DIFFICULTY:
I think this is a superb manga for someone who's learning Japanese. For instance, first-year kanji often don't have furigana; and a lot of times, a kanji will have furigana for several chapters, but then they'll stop putting it on because (supposedly) you've seen it so often that you've learned it. I know that it's often difficult to concentrate on the kanji when the furigana is right there, so this is a really good way to help you focus on learning some of the kanji. All the difficult ones still have kana though, so don't worry. The grammar is generally fairly simple, and the vocabulary is also pretty easy; no technical medical terms and not a lot of weird speech patterns or anything. I intend to make an effort at translation, but I would really recommend this to anyone looking to use manga as a study tool. And if you just want to read... well, I've had two years of college-level Japanese and my vocab and kanji both stink, and I was still able to sit down with this manga, without a dictionary, and simply read through it. I missed a lot, of course, but still, the amount that I understood was pretty impressive. Assuming your Japanese is better than mine (and almost everyone's is), you won't have too many problems.