Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts!

I bought this whole series of books for my girlfriend a few months back, and she has read them all in just a month. She could not put them down once she picked them up. She always told me about something called "Instant Teen", but I didn't think anything of it, but once I actually got her the books for her to read on her own, she was REALLY excited to start reading them. I don't really know what the story is about, but I'm sure you can find that out yourself. The main point here is if this is a good buy or not, right? Well, if you are buying it for yourself or for a friend, it doesn't matter, as long as you like to read about teenage girls and all that good stuff, then you'll be hooked. Trust me, if you like manga, then I defintely recommend this book series to you.

Instant Teen is a funny and cute manga. In the first volume, we are introduced to Natsumi Kawashima, a fifth-grader who longs to be older and have a hot body. After eating a packet of strange pink nuts, Natsumi is transformed into an older teen! (about seventeen, I think) The first person to find out is her best friend and neighbor, Asuma Yoneyama. He is shocked to find an older woman sleeping in Natsumi's bed when he comes to pick her up for school! Natsumi and Asuma have some crazy adventures involving the pink nuts. Natsumi is hired to be a model, goes on a party cruise, and even transforms into a baby! I gave this manga four stars because even though it's one of my favorites, the storyline is jumpy and kind of confusing. Also, it's printed in authentic right-to-left Japanese style, which makes it kind of hard to read. Don't worry, a guide on how to read is included on the last page which would normally be the first. The artwork was beautiful and detailed, Haruka Fukushima is an amazing artist! Instant Teen is a great manga for anyone, although I think it's aimed towards girls. Pick it up for a few laughs and some romance!

In the real world, it must be a crime to let a young, sexy woman with a kid brain walk around the town without a guardian. Besides she is a *instant teen* so she doesn't know how dangerous her new world is. Oh my dear! She's still wearing her child clothes which is too short for her shape. What's a ... Relax! It's a sort of slapstick comedy. No one will be harmed. If you are an otaku who would like to analyze something difficult, this is probably NOT for you. (You could analyze some commercialism which is universally observed in monthly magazines, though. I guess the story was once completed in its first 130 pages.) The plot is simple and time-honored. It is very common: You get annoyed when someone treats you as a kid because you look kid because you're a little kid. Naturally, you want to grow up to be a big man or woman to be treated as an adult. Don't you? So does Natumi. What is not common is: She gets some nuts by chance. Yes, they are the magic nuts! Tokyopop's line-up news said "Fans of Fruits Basket and Tokyo Mew Mew are sure to delight in this hilarious manga from award-winning creator Haruka Fukushima." Perhaps Instant Teen is interesting for Tokyo Mew Mew lovers. I agree that. Fruits Bascket is, however, very different from Instant Teen. Furuba has the tragic background. Instant Teen doesn't. (That is ok, at least for me. Of course I like Furuba very much. But I don't always read deep stories.) This is the first volume of four. The second is also avilable now. Vol. 3 is coming soon. It was originally published on Kodansha's monthly shojo manga magazine Nakayoshi whose main target audience is preteen girls. The original title is "Otona ni Nuts". "otona" means "adult"; "ni" is a particle (postposition) similar to "to" of English; "nuts" is a pun of "natte" or "natta", both of them are inflections of verb "naru" which means "be" or "become". So the title is "Please be an adult!" or "I'm an adult now!" This double meaning is a little bit interesting. While Natsumi, the main character, is transformed into a young woman and enjoying it, Asuma, her friend, is even more worrying about her immaturity. He must guard her. He murmurs "She can't do anything without me." (Although he is far from adult, too :-) Sometimes (or always?) they are in an awkward situation and panic. But their adventures are safe and funny like a short round trip in a theme park. Enjoy it! That won't hurt... By the way, you will see another magical nuts in the next volume.

Natsumi Kawashima is a homely 10-year-old who simply can't wait to grow up. Her next store neighbor and guy friend, Asuma Yoneyama, a boy her age, likes to tease her with the way she does things like stuff apples in her shirt and wrap herself in cellophane. Then one day while walking to school she passes a barbershop where a hansome barber is cutting a woman's hair. Natsumi is instantly smitten, but then the kindly barber tells her they don't admit youngsters. Depressed and irritated by Asuma's laughing at the situation, she then sees some women handing out samples of nuts. Natsumi asks for some, wanting to drown her sorrows in food, but the woman tells her they're only for adults. Natsumi snaps and grabs a bunch of packets and runs off with them. At home, she notices the nuts from one bag are pink, and she tries some of those. The next morning she wakes up late for school and rushes out without meeting her parents, and then when she runs into the barber from before finds she's suddenly aged 8 or 9 years overnight and become a lucious, mega-hot super babe. Shoked and confused at first, Natsumi soon finds she likes being a young adult (it's what she wanted, after all), especially when the barber, Toji Yashiki, asks her out on a date. She then comes home, managing to get back to her room unnoticed, and and is worried about what she's going to do, but then suddenly turns back into a kid again. She wonders what happened that evening while munching the nuts, and wakes up the next morning an 18-year-old again! Of course, it's not long before Asuma finds out. Things get even more complicated when Natsumi is kidnapped by the assistants of androgemous scientist Dr. Yunosuke Morinomiya, who invented the nuts that turn Natsumi into her older self. Yunosuke had Natsumi brought over to tell her about what's going on (though the measures to do so were quite drastic indeed. Everytime Natsumi eats the nuts, she'll become an adult for 8 hours. Yunosuke warns Natsumi not to eat anymore nuts, as they're still in the experimental stage and could have unexpected side effects. This means new problems, however, as Toji has already asked adult-type Natsumi on a date on a Sunday ocean cruise... Already, I'm hooked. This manga has cute character designs, (especially Natsumi when she becomes a teenager-yowza!) lots of great humor, and I love all the characters. My favorite scene in this first volume is when the pills cause a side effect and Natsumi turns into a baby! (The only downside is that they get her back to normal almost immeadietly after. I would have liked to have seen more done with this particular plot development. Alas, no.) Anyway, I'm now looking forward to part 2!