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Oh Spy Goddess with your gorgeous cover that made me think I would see tons of this beautiful woman doing crazy Goddess stuff. *sigh* I guess I don’t know what I was expecting exactly but I wasn’t expecting to open it up and find a teenage spy in training who just happens to be a reincarnation of an ancient goddess.

I liked this as much as I didn’t. That is probably because it is meant for a younger audience than myself. It would also help if I had actually read the books that this manga is based on. From what I can tell there are two written novels and this appears to be the third installment in the series. I do like that the story started in novel form and then went to manga form without repeating the same material. There’s probably a lot that can be done with interchanging the two forms of storytelling.

Rachel the main character goes from being whiny to strong in the blink of an eye. Half of the story I love her and half I’m wishing someone would sacrifice her already. There is a romantic element to the story unfortunately it’s between friends who are already paired off. As in couple AB and singles C and D are showing signs that they would actually be better paired as AC and BD. I’m sure this is where the story is going and it seems really convenient. Either there is a lot of drama coming up or everything will fall into place far too easily.

The villain of the story Simon Blankenship is pretty pathetic. He’s supposed to be the ancient Mithras. The only thing he’s actually good at is escaping and we never actually see it. The oversized armor with horns isn’t helping him too much either. His own followers don’t even seem to show him much respect; you will actually see them snicker when Rachel makes fun of him.

The thing that annoyed me the most is the fashion. Rachel is a rich girl and the first book of the series is Live and Let Shop. This girl should know how to dress! Her main outfit is comprised of slightly baggy flare jeans, a long dress top worn over a long sleeve shirt. That would be okay but once in Tokyo she buys shiny knee high platform boots and wears them over the jeans…. If the jeans were skinny jeans that would have still looked okay but as it was the pants were bunched around her knees. It was not cute! If she’s 14 then she’s either in her last year of jr. high or she’s a freshmen in high school. Either way fashion is on her mind.  Again because Rachel is rich she would have the best clothes and she would wear them right! The other characters looked pretty good but her outfit really aggravated me.

Now that I’ve gone on and on about the things I didn’t like, it’s time to move on to what I did like.

The art is very nice. The character designs (other than Rachel’s clothes) had great style. I especially love the details in the hair. I love love love Rachel as Etherea. That outfit is wicked and reminds me of something a CLAMP character might wear. Etherea would make a fun cosplay outfit too! The chapter pages were for the most part okay but three and five are really special. Five is my favorite out of those. Rachel looks peaceful and you can almost see the inner goddess.

I liked the misdirection used with some of the minor bad guys. You are so certain about who is going to betray Rachel to Simon and then it turns out to be the one person you thought she should be trusting. I also liked the relationship between Pilar and Rachel. I’m going to be really sad if they grow apart later on in the series.

What really surprised me were the fight scenes. Since you have a comical bad guy and whiney rich girl I did not expect for there to be any good fights. The action isn’t going to blow your mind but it shouldn’t disappoint either.

If you liked Totally Spies I think you can easily count this as a need for your manga collection. If you read the books and liked them you have to get the manga because its part of the story, you don’t want to miss out on what happens next! While I probably wouldn’t recommend it to an adult that didn’t have children I do think that this is good read for teens. While Rachel whines a lot, she is growing up and turning into what will one day be a strong woman. She definitely isn’t a bad role model.

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