Mahoraba

Mahoraba
File:Mahoraba.jpg Cast of Mahoraba
Genre	Comedy
Created by	Akira Kojima
Manga
Written by	Akira Kojima
Published by	Square Enix
Anime
Mahoraba ~Heartful Days
Directed by	Shinichiro Kimura
Studio	J.C.Staff

Mahoraba (まほらば) is a manga series by Akira Kojima, which was later adapted into an anime. It was serialized in Square Enix's Monthly Gangan WING manga magazine between January 2000 and July 2006, spanning a total of 12 tankōbon volumes.

The anime adaptation, entitled Mahoraba ～Heartful days (まほらば～Heartful days), was produced by J.C. Staff, premiered across TV Tokyo on January 10 2005, and ended on June 26 2005, spanning a total of 26 episodes.

Plot

Shiratori Ryushi wants to become a picture book writer, and he moves to an apartment, Narutaki-Sou, in order to go to an art school in Tokyo. Narutaki-Sou is an old Japanese style one-story house which doesn't fit in urban scenery. The complex is owned by his mother's cousin and the manager of the apartment is his second cousin, Aoba Kozue. They met each other when they were children, although Shiratori doesn't remember much of it. Kozue is in the second grade of a high school attached to Aoba Junior College.

There are seven residents of Narutaki-Sou. The first, Chanohata Tamami, lives in room #1 and is is Kozue's childhood friend. Shiratori Ryushi, the main character of the series, resides in room #2. In room #3 resides Momono Megumi, a person who goes her own way in life. Kurosaki Sayoko and her daughter Asami, who is in the first grade of middle school, live in room #5. Finally, in room #6, Haibara Yukio lives with his puppet Johnny.

Narutaki-Sou is filled with characteristic and eccentric people. However, the most eccentric person is Kozue herself. She has a secret of which even she does not know; when she is shocked at something, her personality changes. Not knowing this, Ryushi moves to Narutaki-Sou to realize his dream.

Characters

Japanese names are given in the western order, given name first.

Narutaki Sou residents

Kozue Aoba (蒼葉梢 Aoba Kozue)	Voice by: Satomi Arai	File:Mahoraba Kozue.jpg
Landlady of Narutaki Sou. She attends the same high school as Tamami. She has several different personalities that come out when she is surprised, but returns to her original one after sleeping or passing out. Each of her different personalities has a different hairstyle involving the bells she ties her hair up in and each personality has a different eye color. Kozue's eye color is a bluish green. Ryūshi is her second cousin. She is extremely nice and like all of her personalities, she enjoys umeboshi. At the start of the series, she is sixteen years old and her birthday is on December 22nd.
Saki Akasaka (赤坂早紀 Akasaka Saki)	Voice by: Satomi Arai	File:Mahoraba Saki.jpg
Saki, whose eyes are red, has a very tough attitude and wears her hair with a pony tail in back. Despite this, she actually does care about others, even if she is embarrassed to admit it. She is an extreme lightweight, and unable to tolerate anything but umeshu (in the manga), in the anime she can't even smell liquor without passing out. Her other weakness is fear of butterflies.
Nanako Kanazawa (金沢魚子 Kanazawa Nanako)	Voice by: Satomi Arai	File:Mahoraba Nanako.jpg
Nanako has the personality of a 6 year old. Her hairstyle contains two "antennae". She has yellow eyes. One other noteworthy feature of Nanako is that of all the other personalities that Kozue goes through, Nanako is the only one given an actual age. According to the manga, Saki, Chiyuri, and Natsume all are of unknown age, though it is safe to assume that all of the others have the same age as Kozue.
Chiyuri Midorikawa (緑川千百合 Midorikawa Chiyuri)	Voice by: Satomi Arai	File:Mahoraba Chiyuri.jpg
Chiyuri loves cosplay. She also makes everyone else cosplay against their will, but only if it is against their will. If they don't care or want her to do so, she won't want to. She wears a large pony tail to the side and has green eyes. While she is in this personality, Tamami acts as her assistant, whom Chiyuri refers to as "my partner," while supplying Tamami many embarrassing photo-ops with which to fill her camera. Tamami, in return, calls Chiyuri "my sweetheart". "Correct!" is her catch phrase.
Natsume Konno (紺野棗 Konno Natsume)	Voice by: Satomi Arai	File:Mahoraba Natsume.jpg
Natsume has a very shy personality who initially avoided speaking to anyone at all. She is extremely skilled at sleight of hand and card tricks. Her hairstyle is high pigtails with a layer of hair in the back. She has blue eyes. She has a habit of ending her sentences with "... kamo," meaning either "maybe" or "I think" depending on the context.
Room 1
Tamami Chanohata (茶ノ畑珠実 Chanohata Tamami)	Voice by: Yui Horie	Tamami (left), Momono (right) and Yukio (center back)
Tamami is close friends and classmates with Aoba Kozue. She always has a camera and takes pictures of embarrassing situations and Kozue. She is also an inactive member ("Ghost member") of the occult club, along with Kozue. She is very strong physically, although she appears quite normal. A perpetually smiling evil genius, Tamami is cold, sarcastic, cruel, manipulative, inconsiderate and condescending towards those she deem to be her moral/intellectual inferiors; which in other words mean everybody besides Kozue-Chan (and her other personalities). Of course, Tamami also goes to Seika Tandai Fuzoku High School with Kozue, and she says "desu" at the end of her sentences. Her birthday is November 8 and at the start of the manga and anime, her age is the same as Kozue's.
Room 2
Ryushi Shiratori (白鳥隆士 Shiratori Ryūshi)	Voice by: Ryoko Shiraishi	File:Mahoraba Shiratori.jpg
The male protagonist of the series. Ryushi is an aspiring children's book artist. He moved into Narutaki Sou so he could attend the Sumeragi Design School in Tokyo. Second cousins with Aoba Kozue. He had apparently met Kozue when the two were younger, but he doesn't remember about this at the start of the series. In the beginning, he is eighteen years old and his birthday is September 9.
Room 3
Megumi Momono (桃乃恵 Momono Megumi)	Voice by: Masumi Asano
Megumi attended Washida University for one year, but it turned out to be too expensive so she took a year off. Her hairstyle features an antenna. She is now staying at Narutaki Sou all the time. She is in a long distance relationship with her Middle School boyfriend who is studying cinema overseas. She loves films (particularly poor attempts at horror) and in her room are lots of DVDs. She's also a heavy drinker and likes to party with Johnny in Shiratori's room, much to his dismay. In the manga her character is much more developed as she is portrayed with a darker past, in connection with her brilliant piano skills in which she comments has given her bad memories. In volume 9 of the manga tankubon it is revealed she had attempted suicide when she was younger over the pressure of her parents forcing her to perfect her piano skills. She has razor scars hidden on her wrist as a result. Eventually in the manga, she leaves Narutaki Sou to be with her boyfriend, whom she had told all about the residents. He has proposed marriage to her, which she has accepted. In the anime, she remains at Narutaki Sou, telling her boyfriend to ask her to join him again once he has finished his studies and fulfilled his dreams. At the start of the series, Megumi is twenty years old and her birthday is February 13.
Room 5
Sayoko Kurosaki (黒崎沙夜子 Kurosaki Sayoko)	Voice by: Mioko Fujiwara
Sayoko has a very dark personality and is not very responsible. In the manga, she is initially suicidal, though this aspect of her character was cut out in the transition to the anime. (Also, none of her attempts at suicide are even remotely successful.) Despite this change, however, she's still remains irresponsible in both productions, but wants to make Asami happy and to live with her for a long time. Their room is filled with cardboard boxes, which they use as furniture and bedding, being extremely poor. Her father is a rich sculptor, with whom she became estranged in her youth over her choice of her husband; rather than let her parents choose a fiancé for her, she eloped with the estate's gardener. Her favorite food is Mizuyōkan. Despite her evident uselessness throughout the series, she really cares for Asami. Though her age isn't revealed in the manga, her birthday is October 17.	Sayoko (left) with Asami (right) Sayoko (left) with Asami (right)
Asami Kurosaki (黒崎朝美 Kurosaki Asami)	Voice by: Umi Tenjin
Asami lives in room 5 with her adopted mother while her adopted father passed away when she was younger. She is a Junior High student. She keeps things together in spite of her mother's problems, pulling most of the workload and keeping track of expenses. At the beginning of the series, she is twelve years old and her birthday is June 26.
Room 6
Yukio Haibara (灰原由起夫 Haibara Yukio)	Voice by: Kenyuu Horiuchi
Yukio doesn't speak directly, but rather uses ventriloquism to speak through his puppet, Johnny. In the anime, he is at one point mistaken for Aleister Crowley by Vermillion, to his and Johnny's considerable distress.
Ryuusei Johnny (流星ジョニー)	Voice by: Kenyuu Horiuchi
Yukio Haibara's hand puppet of a brown dog that Yukio always speaks through with ventriloquism. They both act as if the puppet were really the one speaking; "Johnny" often speaks as if Haibara is the extra part.

Sumeragi (Imperial) Design School

* Note - these character's names are nicknames

• Miyabi Shirogane (銀 雅 Shirogane Miyabi) - Shiratori's teacher. Students who are disobedient or forget their homework are treated to "the closet", which is a frightful ordeal that definitely gets her message across. She has similar antic to Tamami such as having her eyes half open and talking very cheerfully until certain moments. At one point both her and Tamami meet and get along quite well.

• Tsubasa Yamabuki (山吹 翼 Yamabuki Tsubasa)/Ero boy/Erofreak * (Hikaru Tokita) - He is a classmate of Shiratori who is always trying to charm high school girls and young women (but has no interest in Middle school or younger girls). He happened to meet Shiratori when he was dressed as a girl due to a prank and fell in love with "her". Without a name to call this newfound love, he nicknamed her "Reiko", not realizing that she was really Shiratori.

• Risona Aizawa (藍沢 理想奈 Aizawa Risona)/Homo-suki * (Riku Moriyama): She is a classmate of Shiratori who wears glasses. Her name is based on the famous bank in Japan"Resona Bank"(Mizuho and Asahi are also named based on a famous Japanese bank.) A devoted fan to manga (especially that of the yaoi and yuri sort), Risona aims to become a dojinshi author. She has a fear of white goats that may eat her manga manuscripts.

• Mizuho Amane (亜麻根 瑞穂 Amane Mizuho)/Nail bat */Megaphone Girl * (Nozomi Masu): She is a classmate of Shiratori who uses her batting skills to punish Tsubasa for his womanizing. Her name is based on the famous bank in Japan"Mizuho Bank"(Risona and Asahi are also named based on a famous Japanese bank.) She would normally use a customized baseball bat with spikes, but "because of the adults' circumstances", her bat was taken away and replaced with a plastic megaphone.

Seika Tandai Fuzoku High School

• Erika Vermillion (エリカ・バーミリオン, Erika Bāmirion) (Shizuka Itou) - She is the head of the occult research lab, of which Tamami, as well as Kozue is technically a member. She is never named and only referred to as "club president (ぶちょう, Buchō)" until the final chapter of the manga. She has a masochistic slant as well, and painfully enjoys Tamami's talent for insults and other unusual tortures.

• Hiro Utsugi (空木尋, Utsugi Hiro) (Sayaka Kinoshita) - Orchestra club president and the conductor. The group which she leads contains only 3 members. She is the younger sister of Sakura. (Side note: Sakura is one of Sayoko's father's maids, and the lady whom Shiratori and Kozue help earlier in the series)

Asami's schoolmates

• Satsuki "Sa-chan" Matsuba (松葉五月, Matsuba Satsuki) (Akeno Watanabe) - She is Asami's classmate and speaks Osaka-ben. She tries to keep control of Mi-chan's haughty attitude, often with heavy texts such as dictionaries or telephone books.

• Michiyo "Mi-chan" Asagi (浅葱三千代, Asagi Michiyo) (Riku Moriyama) - She is Asami's classmate and is rich and slightly snobby, often having a blase attitude and striking old-fashioned poses with her fan. Even if she won't freely admit it, she just wants to be friends with Asami.

Futaba Ginza shops

Because of a slight misunderstanding on the phrase literally "good person", figuratively "boyfriend" (いい人, ii hito), practically every merchant in the Futaba Ginza shopping area thinks Kozue and Ryūshi are going out, with Kozue blissfully unaware of this.

• Asahi "Asabi" Chigusa (千草旭, Chigusa Asahi) - She works for the bakery, which is famous for its taiyaki. Her name is based on the famous bank in Japan"Asahi Bank"(Risona and Mizuho are also named based on a famous Japanese bank.)

• Hwang Yo "Yo-chan" Lee (黄有麗 (ホァンヨウリー), Hoan Yō Rī)- She works for the bakery, but is notorious for going through several, vastly unrelated jobs in quick succession-- most likely because she is known for frequent slip-ups. Before she was a department jewelry store clerk, fortune teller, lifeguard, and various other jobs. She calls herself Hanako Suzuki.

• Grocer / Yaonaga - He runs various prize-games such as for futon warmers and refrigerators. He often tells bad jokes and puns, mostly for his own amusement.

• Bookstore clerk - Bookstore business hours: AM10:00-PM8:00.

Minazuki residence

• Ushimitsu Minazuki (水無月 丑三 Minazuki Ushimitsu, Shinpachi Tsuji) - Sayoko's father and a wealthy sculptor. He has a tendency to be a tad controlling.

• Yu Minazuki (水無月 夕 Minazuki Yū, Kotono Mitsuishi) - Sayoko's mother. She cannot stand sunlight and is as a result much healthier at night. She walks around with a cane, which she sometimes applies to her husband's foot when he is rude.

• Mahiru Minazuki (水無月 まひる Minazuki Mahiru) - Younger sister of Sayoko and, respectively, Asami's aunt, though they are closer to sisters in terms of their relationship. She has been living in Italy since childhood, so she is somewhat awkward at speaking Japanese. She speaks little, and tends to employ a kind of formal monotone to her voice when she does.

• Tachibana (タチバナ) - She is the senior maid of the Minazuki household. She is an extremely skilled maid and is a capable martial artist and especially skilled with darts. Despite her tough appearance, she has a soft spot for things like teddy bears, and owns one who she has named Kuma. She is very conscientious of her height, thinking herself to be too tall.

• Sakura Utsugi (空木桜, Utsugi Sakura)- (Yuka Inokuchi) - She is a maid of the Minazuki household. While her heart is in the right place, she is extremely careless and clumsy, a flaw which often lands her in trouble.

• Chauffeur - The personal chauffeur of the Minazuki household.

Sidestories

File:Mahoraba Umeboshi.jpg

Umeboshi is liked by Ryushi and Kozue and is used often for comedic reasons and as a plot device throughout the series

Children's storybook sidestory

Ryushi Shiratori's children's story that is seen many times throughout the anime involves the story of a prince. The prince, who is a representation of Ryushi himself, discovers a castle with a princess living in it. The princess has a fondness for umeboshi and for various reasons concerning umeboshi, she multiplies into other princesses. These new princesses are the representations of Kozue, Saki, Chiyuri, Nanako and Natsume and the princesses appear in the same episode as each of the new personalities are introduced.

Comic panel sidestory

Often during the anime a vertical comic-style sketch related to the main story is shown. The art style and music are consistently used in this way as various situations are shown for comedic purposes. Each panel is displayed for several seconds until the next panel scrolls into view. Usually there are four panels (4コマ, yon-koma) per situation, reflecting the same yonkoma device that is used in the manga.

Anime

Episodes

1. Welcome to Narutaki-sou (ようこそ鳴滝荘へ)
2. The Landlady's secret (大家さんのひみつ)
3. Important place (たいせつな場所)
4. Carefree (ぬくぬく)
5. Nega-Posi (ネガポジ)
6. Tama check (珠チェック)
7. Hide and Seek (かくれんぼ)
8. Shopping (おかいモノ)
9. Correct-o (これくと)
10. Sketch (スケッチ)
11. Affection (想い…)
12. Summer! Swimsuits! Ocean trip! (夏だ！水着だ！海水浴だ！)
13. Narutaki-sou's treasure (鳴滝荘のタカラモノ)
14. The end of summer (夏の終わりに)
15. ...Maybe (…かも)
16. House visit (千客万来)
17. Color of the Sky (そらのいろ)
18. Meow Meow Meow (にゃーにゃーにゃー)
19. Everyone's day (みんなの一日)
20. School festival (学園祭にて)
21. Parent - Child (親・子)
22. Important... (大事…)
23. The red leaves of fall (紅葉の中で)
24. Bell (すず)
25. Night of Revelation (告げる夜)
26. Mahoraba (まほらば, Heartful Days)

Theme songs

Opening

• Daiji Da・I・Ji (大事▽Da・I・Ji) by Saiki Mia and Shiraishi Ryoko

Ending

• Boku no SPEED de (僕のスピードで) by Chihiro Yonekura

Together with King Records (Starchild label).

Manga

Manga volumes

Name	Date published	ISBN		Name	Date published	ISBN
Mahoraba volume 1	July 2001	ISBN 4-7575-0501-9		Mahoraba volume 7	September 2004	ISBN 4-7575-1278-3
Mahoraba volume 2	January 2002	ISBN 4-7575-0625-2		Mahoraba volume 8	December 2004	ISBN 4-7575-1329-1
Mahoraba volume 3	July 2002	ISBN 4-7575-0750-X		Mahoraba volume 8	December 2004	ISBN 4-7575-1329-1
Mahoraba volume 4	December 2002	ISBN 4-7575-0848-4		Mahoraba volume 9	March 2005	ISBN 4-7575-1415-8
Mahoraba volume 5	September 2003	ISBN 4-7575-1039-X		Mahoraba volume 10	October 2005	ISBN 4-7575-1531-6
Mahoraba volume 5	September 2003	ISBN 4-7575-1040-3		Mahoraba volume 11	April 2006	ISBN 4-7575-1675-4
Mahoraba volume 6	December 2003	ISBN 4-7575-1115-9		Mahoraba volume 12	July 2006	ISBN 4-7575-1728-9

External links

• Template:Jp icon Mahoraba ~Heartful Site: Anime official website
• Template:Jp icon Mahoraba: Manga official site
• Template:Jp icon TV Tokyo Anime X-Press Mahoraba ~ Heartful days
• Template:Jp icon tender blue: Manga fan site