Genre: Shojo

Rating: T Ages 13+

Price: 10.95 USD 

In the author notes Machiko Sakurai hints to her inspiration for Minima from her love for computer-animated classic "Toy Story". And this is a "toy comes to life" tale, but with an interesting twist that makes Minima a title shojo fans are going to want to check out.

Ame Oikawa is not an atypical staple of the shojo scene. A painfully shy middle-schooler with a giant-sized crush on her classmate Sasaki. The idea that he would find out she like Sasaki is enough to make her go into convulsions.

The book opens up just before a class trip to an amusement park. After Ame gets ditched by her "friends", she decides to buy a second-tier mascot toy, a meerkat named Nicori. She only has the plush toy for a few minutes before its demanding apologies from Ame's classmates for taking off with out her, and outing itself as a living, breathing (and talking talking talking doll).

This is the interesting twist that I enjoyed, as where in "Toy Story" all the toys try to hide their animated reality (animated as in "alive" not as in...you know what I mean...) but Nicori wants everyone to know what's on his stuffed cotton mind. It's only a few pages before Nicola has appeared on the evening news, setting the bashful Ame into complete panic mode.

As a lead, Ame isn't much to get excited about, yet. Quiet and shy, it's characters like this that remind me that I am not the target audience for almost all shojo titles. However the quick introduction of her guardian angel and yang to her her ying, Nicori gives Ame, and the story, the shot in the arm that is needed. Nicori's efforts lead to some damaging situations, and things are going to get harder for Ame before they get easier, but Nicori got problems of his own, that lead to a good cliffhanger and more than a little curiousity as to how the new duo will continue things in Volume 2 of Minima. 

7.5