Zenmai Jikake no Tina :: Wind-Up Tina

Wind-Up Tina is an adorable shoujo manga series that started running in Nakayoshi magazine in 11/99 and is still being published. It's drawn by Ayumi Yui and the tankubon are published by Kodansha Comics (who also publish Nakayoshi's Card Captor Sakura). Wind-Up Tina is the story of a girl named Tina Tia Reel. She lives on Wind-Up Island and everyone who lives there, including herself, have keys in their backs and must be wound up continually to keep going.

Tina is an extremely genki girl, and like many a shoujo heroine she is kind, sweet, pretty, happy, enthusiastic, generous, helpful, and maybe a little naive. She lives in a very cute little house filled with various wind-up objects; her only family seems to be a puffy white hamster-like creature named "Fuwa-Fuwa." Much like a pokemon, it can't talk except to say its name or variations thereof. However, unlike a pokemon, it seems to be otherwise quite bright. It not only does things that Tina asks it to, but it also does intelligent things on its own. It also seems to be the only creature on Wind-Up Island that doesn't have a key in its back.
 

But one day, all that changes! Tina and her three best friends go searching for an ancient magical waterfall that moves around the island; when they find it, they see that is has a beautiful circular rainbow all around it. But then--a boy comes out of the waterfall! They are of course rather surprised to see him. He falls down the waterfall and they run in and save him; they carry him back to Tina's house and put him to bed. He doesn't seem to have a key; Tina thinks that perhaps he lost it in the waterfall. However, he eventually wakes up and leaves the house; when she wakes up to find him gone, she runs outside and sees him playing a lute-like instrument in the dark night.

She tells him that she's relieved that he's all right, and starts asking questions, like "Who are you?" and "Why don't you have a key?" but he cuts her off, saying that he doesn't know anything about himself, other than that he's a traveler, a "tabibito." Then he walks off and leaves her alone with her questions. Tina and her friends eventually locate the mysterious boy again; although nobody on the island seems to know anything about him, Tina meets her enigmatic "Tabibito-san" many times in the course of her adventures all over the island.

There is a ruler on the island; an awe-inspiring and scary individual known as the "Neji Bannin" or Key Guardian. It has the power to give life, by means of keys.  Tina and her friends climb a dark winding staircase which seems to have little physical existence and reach it, sitting on a throne on a floating platform. It refuses to give Tina a key for Tabibito-san, saying that he doesn't need it. Later on, after they've gone, it muses that this boy will change the future of the island. Interesting indeed.

Meanwhile, the island's resident troublemakers, Dr. Henkeraa and his two minions Maruichi and Maruni, are always trying to do evil things, like steal apples or take peeping-tom type pictures of Tina (whom the doctor has a secret crush on, naturally). This causes lots of mayhem and wacky battles with silly monster robot creatures or flying machines. Later on the plot becomes more serious, as a bunch of evil types who don't have keys come and take Tabibito-san away, as well as stealing the keys from most of the island's inhabitants. What's going on?!

With lots of adorable adventures, cute characters, silly situations, interesting problems, and so on, if you like adorable shoujo you'll probably like this.

ART:
What can I say... I think the art of this manga is beautiful! All the characters are extremely cute and some of the clothing is nicely detailed. The backgrounds are often detailed and very pretty. A large amount of nighttime scenes seem to exist; I really like nighttime art with stars and floating lights, so that may be another reason I like the backgrounds. Tabibito-san is incredibly cute, even if his fashion sense is decidedly poor, especially in the color pictures (but as far as manga boys go, he's extremely cute. Even my Japanese sensei said so. It was quite funny). Tina is also adorable and her little friends look very much like cute little toys. If I had only one word to describe this manga it would be "cute." As usual, I have a few scans for your viewing pleasure.

First page; color comic. This is what the normal art looks like, but it's pleasantly colored in.
The imposing Neji Bannin (I just think he/it is very cool looking.)

PLOT:
Well, I can't say it's super-deep or anything, but it's cute and silly and I like it. At times it gets below the surface and I really do find myself sucked into what's going on, what's going to happen next. Maybe I just want to see more cuteness, I don't know. Every time I finish reading this I feel very happy and energized from having experienced something so sweet and adorable and just plain nice. There are parts that are much more serious, too; I'm really starting to wonder where it's headed. Anyway, for the most part the plot is pretty easy to follow.

CHARACTERS:
The characters of Tina are very interesting. Almost all of them have names that mean something else; for instance, Tina has a friend named "Kaeru-hime" (frog princess), a cute child who goes around with a frog hood on at all times. Fuwa-Fuwa, her cuddly companion, has a name that means "light and airy." Tabibito-san is just that, a traveler. It's always fun to try to figure out the names and what they mean. The characters also have their own idiosyncrasies; you get to know them quite well very fast, and they have defined personalities and behaviors which are very specific and individual to them. This makes them interesting, and it's neat to see how many different kinds of people are in the manga. I like all the main characters, except sometimes, the whining of Pump really annoys me (Pump is a nervous, shy creature who rather reminds me of Winnie the Pooh's Piglet, who I could not stand).

DIFFICULTY:
This is actually harder to read than I thought it would be. It certainly doesn't look like it would be very hard to read. Tina is easy enough to understand, and Kaeru-hime and Pump are also fairly normal speakers. However, many characters use idiosyncratic or slightly odd "japanese stereotypical" speech which probably makes sense if you're japanese, but is hard for non-native speakers to understand at times. For instance, Shama talks like a small child, and Neji Bannin speaks in a sonorous, old-fashioned manner. Some people are very polite (use that keigo!), others are extremely rude. I'd say if you have a dictionary and basic language skills, you'll probably be all right, but there are a few parts where you may need to ask for help.

Check out my Tina page if you'd like to know more about this series.