Seven of Seven Vol

Our Favorite Seven Babes Are Back!

Our favorite seven babes are back! This time, the Nanas are playing hardball against their most fearsome rival ever - the beautiful and brilliant Tsukie! But there's still the trio to contend with, and Tsukie's not going down without a fight. The cutthroat competition for Yuichi's affections shifts into high gear. and before you know it, it's the day before high school exams! Will the Nanas find a way to get to the same high school as Yuichi? Find out in the suspenseful (and heartwarming) conclusion of Seven of Seven!

The Review

So many Nanas and so little time to study. With an increasing number of distractions, will the Nanas be able to pass their high school entrance exams?

Same can be said for mangaka Kunihiro Azusa. With her infamous laid back attitude, will she be able to finish drawing the final few chapters? Fun, filler and tons of omake in the final volume of ADV's middle school romance comedy Seven of Seven.

Packaging:

Once again ADV does almost everything right. This is in shinsho size! Yup, just like the Akita Shoten version. It is something that I wished they did with all their series (Happy Lesson is not). And once again they keep on using the original cover art. In my book, you cannot go wrong with that. The front cover has each of the Nana's posing next to a piece of the crystal they own. The back has a framed image of Nana, Yuichi and Hitomi at graduation while the other six Nana's hide in a cherry tree!

Logo Check!! (2003 Megs). ADV uses the Japanese logo. All of it even the kanji/kana. Once again, I wish this was done more often.

Like the previous volume, this one has a nice amount of omake. Besides the character intro's, there are a few letters/drawings from Kunihiro's assistants, a drawing from her sister, a mangaka profile drawn by Tomizawa Hitoshi (the creator of Alien 9), a thanks from Yoshizaki Mine (the original character designer/creator, two production diaries for the manga (one in manga form, the other just text), a mini bonus comic and an atogaki. ADV does a good job translating these and I appreciate them giving readers a chance to read about some of the ins and outs of manga production (as strange as it can be).

Artwork:

The art is a mixed bag. The character designs are cute but with seven Nana's things can get a little confusing. After two volumes telling them wow items apart is not as hard as it used to be. I will say that I find that all the characters being short and round is pretty cool. The characters in this series are in middle school and while they can dress up sexy or not they are not all fan service for shonen readers. On the other hand costumes often rip right off these gals so there is at least a little skin in almost every chapter.

Backgrounds are pretty good in this series but they are used ever so often wow gold (which is pretty standard for a shonen title). The layout is hyper. And that really is to be expected. With all of the chaos behind most of the stories perspective is going to be all over the place and the really showed.

Orientation/SFX:

This series is presented right to left in a shinsho sized GN. (just like the original!)

The SFX are all translated with subs. With the layout being really hyper panels wow gold can get crowded but it usually worked out fine. ADV is getting better at their translation of SFX but readers will still find some awkward translations of sounds (a friend confused the SFX translation for an aside because of how it was interpreted.)

Text:

The translation looks okay. Not having read the original I felt this translation flowed well and did not compromise the humor. Honorifics are not used in this series, which is a little disappointing since one of the Nanas, Nana-sama, uses them.

Content: (please note wow items that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)

With high school exams looming, now may not be the time to meet a new rival. But there wow items she is - Kayano Tsukie, the beautiful, smart and sadistic cousin of Kamichika Yuichi. Her motives may be completely twisted, and right now there appears to nothing that can stop her influence over her cousin. Honestly, with her power and talent Nana does not have a chance. but maybe seven of her might. Maybe?!

If the Nana's were to take on Tsukie together they could essentially make it a tournament. Tsukie would have to go through all seven of them in knock-out style format - Tsukie loses, she's out; she wins, she faces the next Nana. And if the girls could stack the contests in their favor by using their unique abilities and personality traits their chances should increase. At least one would think they would. In the end, the original Nana was the victor. Like Tsukie, she has many sides to her and with those traits she was able to do something that only she could do - make a smack that Yuichi would love. And actually, even if the Nana?s are not special they have a lot of heart and are genuinely sweet caring teenage girls that want to have fun and be in love. (Don?t we all.)

That theme would continue for the rest of this final GN. Final exams will be the ultimate test for the Nanas' love. They all want to pass this exam and continue to spend their years with Yuichi, buy wow gear but that might too much to ask for all seven of them. Fate seems to agree, as in route to the test center the gals lose their exam cards. Eventually, when original Nana comes to realize she would not want to go on without the other girls, her personalities come to the conclusion that they need to go back to Nana to give her a chance. So it was decided, they would grant Nana's wish to take the exam, and after some encouragement they will wish Nana luck with Yuichi and her new school. Nana will never forget her sisters. Actually she cannot go anywhere or do anything without them.

If there is anything I have learned about the Nanas so far, it is that they rarely consistently live up to their potential. Their individual personalities are usually their downfall, as their bad traits often overwhelm their good sides. A character like Tsukie, on the other hand, is all Tsukie or a complete person - cunning, talented and twisted Tsukie. When she wants to be sexy she can be (only Sexy Nana acts sexy); when she needs to be smart she is (Smart Nana is by far the smartest Nana); and if she needs to be any combination she can. The latter is where most of the Nanas fail. As parts of the original Nana, they may do not really have the potential to be anything else. The original Nana is the only one that can do that. As a concept this is a great idea. Readers can relate to a story like this because they have different aspects to their personalities. We can possibly start with the original concept this manga is based on being average at best. Once, the creators decided to have Kunihiro and Imagawa go in a different direction, things just started to go wrong almost immediately. A decent start was followed up by a short episodic title that relied on middle-school etchi fan-service instead of romance and Nana's character development. Making matters worse, by the completion of the Seven of Seven readers hardly got to know Yuichi, who was the main motivation for Nana attitudes and actions throughout this series. The concept of living with the aspects of one's personalities is one that I found really intriguing. At times it was really funny; others, were a little confusing. In general there is a sweet tone to this series. First love can be like that and with a middle school aged cast that feeling was appropriate for the setting. The ending was solid as well. I was not surprised by it, but with the way things were progressing I was wondering if it would even have an ending. And for all of those fan-service otaku out there this title has plenty of 9th grade panty-shots and cleavage.
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