“Ultra Maniac” is a manga originally released in Japan in 2002 and later released in North America in 2005. It received an anime adaptation in 2003. The series centers around a young witch named Sakura Nina and her best friend, Tateishi Ayu, as Nina hones her magical abilities and finds love.
I read the manga years ago after picking it up at a school book sale and loved it. It was a nice balance of story and fun all in one little five volume series. I later learned there was an anime adaptation that I recently watched, which is the focal point of this review.
Right off the bat, the anime comes off as wildly different than its manga counterpart. Without diving too deeply into spoiler territory, the characters are the same, for the most part, but the plot is different.
The central four characters: the aforementioned Nina and Ayu as well as their two friends and love interests, Kaji Tetsushi and Tsujiai Hiroki, remain the same between the two adaptations. Some characters, like Kirishima Yuta, are in both adaptations, but play different roles. In the manga, Yuta joins Nina and her friends at school in the non-magical world. In the manga, he remains in the Magic Kingdom. And then there are other characters, like Nakamura Sayaka and Orihara Maya, who are exclusive to the manga and anime, respectively, but are similar in terms of personality.
But while the characters I came to know and love are, for the most part, the same, the plot was not what I remembered at all. Across twenty-six episodes, we watch as Nina not only grows as a witch in the human world and falls in love, but we also watch as she searches for Holy Stones in a quest to become the princess of the Magic Kingdom. In all fairness, it’s not a terrible plot, especially when you compare it to the manga. It gives the manga a darker twist to a lighthearted story.
Overall, both adaptations have their pros and cons, and both adaptations were great. Between the two though, I would definitely find myself reading the manga over and over again versus watching the anime on repeat. The anime was great, don’t get me wrong, but I really enjoyed the lighthearted story of the manga where nothing really terrible happened to the characters, other than typical teenage drama. No fights for the title of princess of the Magic Kingdom, just teenage drama and a little bit of chaos to make it all interesting.
