By Majiko!
Tokyopop, 208pp.
Rating: Teen

It’s the 23rd century and Neo Takigawa is a teenage girl who just can’t fit in. While her female classmates are prim and proper, Neo cuts her school uniform skirts from below-the-knee to jagged miniskirts. She also breaks school rules and does such scandalous things as singing in public. One of the girls in her class gets fed up and scolds her, demanding that Neo leave the school, but all Neo does is dash off to hide in a storage closet. There, in a box on a shelf, Neo finds a canister that transports her to the early 21st century!

Not only is she transported, but she’s transported backstage to a concert where the band has just canceled. The backup dancers and manager assume she’s some groupie who got past security—a reasonable assumption—and she is promptly thrown out on stage with one of the backup dancers by the manager. He figures that between Neo and the dancer, a boy named Saya Kudou, they’ll at least be able to cover a song or two by the canceled group.

The crowd turns on them. Naturally. The following day, Neo and Saya are taken to see the head of a record company, who tells them that they have three months to stage a concert at a nearby park. If the park fills up, they’ll get a recording contract. Saya really doesn’t want much to do with this in the beginning, but eventually relents.

There are other questions, of course. Why can’t Neo get back in touch with the 23rd century? The technology exists and she, as a student at the National Historical Research Institute, has a little communicator that she carries around with her. Who is the young pop star Nanato, really? Is he Neo’s long-lost friend Kota? Who’s paying for Neo’s apartment and slipping her 300 yen every day?

And can Mikansei No. 1 make me care about any of these? Not in this volume. While Neo’s stupidity is delightful on occasion, most of the time it just grates. Saya is a cardboard cutout—he’s the silent type with an age-related ultimatum from his parents on his dream of becoming a rock star that is coming down to the wire. The other characters, when given any sort of personality, are also dredged up from the stock character bin.

The plot, too, leaves me cold. I normally enjoy time travel stories, but the future detailed here depresses me. Because Neo does things like talk to boys and want to sing in public, she’s ostracized. The opening pages tell me that women of the 23rd century are “modest and gentle.” I can’t even articulate how frustrating and depressing that little dribble of backstory is. That the main character has to fall backwards in time to find acceptance of her dreams and personality is awful. Between this subtext, the cluttered art, and the lackluster storytelling, I have to give Mikansei No. 1 a definite miss.

Volume one of Mikansei No. 1 is available now.

Review copy provided by the publisher.