By Haruka Fukushima
Del Rey, 194 pp.
Rating: 13+

Rui, the main character, has led a not-so-charmed life. Both her parents died when she was young, and the only person that was able to console her at the funeral was a mysterious young boy. The boy told her that her parents were watching over her from the brightest star in the night sky, and gave her a teddy bear named Haru to write letters to when she felt lonely. In the present, Rui lives by herself and delivers newspapers in order to pay the rent while attending junior high. Her childhood friend and next-door neighbor, Taro, has a crush on her, but he is devastated when he learns that Rui has her eye set on Kaoru, a fellow classmate. The situation with Kaoru goes well and things are looking good for Rui until Eisuke, the teaching intern at school, decides to move into Rui’s apartment when his burns up. Hijinks ensue as the two of them try to keep it a secret from everyone at school and in the apartment building.

The author, Haruka Fukushima, has several other series available in English, including Instant Teen: Just Add Nuts, Cherry Juice, and Kedamono Damono. Her stories are mostly aimed at a younger audience (with the exception of Kedamono Damono) and are shallow, but fun. Orange Planet seems to follow the same trend, where most of the plot and characters stick very closely to common shojo plot devices, but there are lots of humorous and surprising situations to make things exciting. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the target audience for this series, but I would have enjoyed it immensely when I was ten or twelve, so I’ll try to look at it from that perspective. Especially since the adult in me cries when things like the student teacher hitting on the seventh grader come up.

Unlike a lot of other shojo series, Rui exists in a world that’s full of her friends. Rui is inundated by a classroom full of girls she hangs out with at school. They provide some rather pleasant background noise that helps lend perspective to things like how popular the various boys are, who Rui’s friends want her to be with, and how close the general school population is to finding out about the situation with Eisuke.

Unfortunately, none of the four main characters has much personality to speak of yet. Rui is a fairly strong-willed girl that still gets pushed around by the boys around her, Eisuke is a suave playboy type, Taro is the typical caring next-door neighbor in love with the heroine, and Kaoru is the mysterious love interest. So mysterious, in fact, that by the end of the book, I still wasn’t sure whether Kaoru actually liked Rui or wanted to date her just because Taro liked her. But all four of the characters are pretty cute, and their various romantic connections do make for an adorable story on the surface.

In the end, there wasn’t much substance to this story, but if you’re the young girl at whom this is aimed, it probably won’t matter much. There’s a cute heroine, cute boys, lots of friends, and lots of romance, and it’s delivered in a pretty innocent (except for the teacher) mix with some energetic art to liven things up.

Volume one of Orange Planet is available now.