Oyayubihime Infinity 6

I think most of what I’m talking about happens in volume 6, but sorry if I’m mixing events from 5 and 6, I read them both really close together and the conclusion sort of stretches between the two.

I’ve mentioned this before, but one thing this series does a great job of is transforming the main character into someone else.  In some shoujo series, the growth of the main character is somewhat stunted, and it’s especially rare in a short series like this to see the main character change her ways so drastically.  I didn’t really like her much at first, and my initial impression sort of held through the entire series, but even I have to admit I like the person she became in the end.

I also liked that Mike’s hand wasn’t revealed until the very end.  I hated that everyone sort of took him for granted the whole time, so I was happy when he was paired up with Maya and things were going well.  I like that his past life has such a direct impact on the past lives of so many of the other characters, too, and I just like his role, period.  He’s a good friend.

Tsubame disappointed me a bit in this volume, though.  He strikes me as the honest type, incapable of deception, so when he… does what he does, doesn’t call back, whatever, it’s hard to take.  I also didn’t like that Kanoko was so casual about it, and just turned around to her destined love to console herself.  The point was driven home eventually that only she cared about the destined loves anymore, that pretty much everyone else was living in the present (with one exception), so that made me feel better.

The plot eventually wound up being everyone with a tattoo taking care of unfinished business from their past life, much like Maya did earlier on.  Kanoko gets a bit hung up on this, but everything works out in the end.  It always does, doesn’t it?  And I have to admit, I’m kind of a sucker for endings like this.

Also, one of the characters winds up being what appears to be a geisha in the present, or at least a very classical dancer, which is pretty awesome.  It’s not something you see very often.

So yes, this wound up being a surprisingly fun read with some of the most dynamic main characters you’ll find in a short series like this. Some of the secondary characters still had me puzzled since they wound up being so one-dimensional (the lit club was one such asset), but overall I liked this one a lot.  This was originally published by Akita Shoten, and I tend to like almost any series I read from that publisher (see also: After School Nightmare, From Eroica With Love, Apothecarius Argentum, Iron Wok Jan, and… uh, Black Jack), so this is yet another feather in that cap, too.  And CMX, too, for that matter, who publishes a ton of choice shoujo series.