Karada Iokawa is short for a 6th grader. Following the death of her parents her estranged brother, Hiro, moved back to Japan from America to take care of her. She wishes for nothing more than to grow up and no longer be a burden on Hiro. Shouko Nogami is Hiro's estranged girlfriend who, by chance, ends up working with him in Japan after he left her in America. She has conflicting feelings for Hiro and his relationship with the loveable Karada. Karada and Shouko end up wishing on sacred
stones which are famous in the small town they live in. The power of the stones causes Karada and Shouko to switch ages. Karada now has the body of an adult while Shouko is a child again. While outwardly they are completely different their minds and experiences have not changed. Karada discovers that she is unprepared for the adult world, even if she looks like one. Shouko wonders whether she can truly redo her life by having the child of a body again. Regretting their decisions they now strive to reverse the wish. In the search for more stones they have to come to terms with their own wishes and desires. Hiro also has to come to terms with what both Karada and Shouko mean to him.
I watched the anime when it came out in 2006 and I really enjoyed it. You can check out my review of that here. It was a somber tale of loss and self awareness. The manga takes a bit of a different course in the story than what the anime did, which in a way was nice. Sometimes having an anime be a direct translation of the manga can be a bit disappointing if you read the manga after watching the anime. But if each diverge too much it can be annoying. The divergence seemed to work with this series. I lauded the anime for the way its story focused on the characters trying to deal with the situation they put themselves in. The manga focuses on them trying to undo the switch and even deals with much of the mythology around the wishing stones. At times though, the it dipped a bit too much out of the realm of reality for my tastes. Half way through an old 'witch' and twin Russian girls were introduced who were hunting for wishing stones. The characters and the entire idea of groups of people searching for these stones really seemed to detract from the story. These side characters background stories though were interesting when fleshed out a bit in the end, yet they still seemed unneeded. One thing that was great was the expanded background of Hiro and his relation to Karada, which I don't remember them really getting into much in the anime. You get a slight peek into the motivating drivers behind Shouko wanting to change as well. Another thing that seemed odd and out of place when compared to the anime was Karada's best friend Amino. In the manga he is the heir to a powerful family in the village. I don’t recall that being the case in the anime, but it may have just been less important. The story its self also seemed to jump a bit...there were parts throughout where it seems like an event was left out and you had to fill in the gaps yourself. It was sometimes annoying but didn't leave too big of an impact. Along with the witch and the twins, there are a few other characters that are introduced that don’t play very important roles in the story and seem to be wasted space more than anything. Plot threads that were started ended up not being developed and left to die. It seems that this manga could have been expanded a bit more with what was created but it may have been better to trim the less than necessary sub plots and characters out and just focus primarily on the main ones.
All in all though the manga wasn’t bad, it has its uses. I prefer the anime over it. It was nice to find out more of the main characters backgrounds, which are important to their motives. It was nice to have the story be different from that in the anime as well. It didn’t make reading the manga a chore. If you liked then anime, check out the manga if for nothing more than to learn more about the characters. But it isn’t bad in the end.
The manga is not available in North America. I don't see that changing any time soon. it is available in French though. The anime is available and you can even stream it on Anime News Network.
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