By Miyoko Ikeda and Michiyo Kikuta. Released in Japan as “Youkai Navi Runa” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Del Rey.

We’ve been seeing a lot of Nakayoshi titles from Del Rey recently. They had a decent success with Kitchen Princess, and I think felt they could get a similar audience with these stories. Plus the artist on this series had already done well over here with Mamotte! Lollipop. A nice cute magical girl series seems right up there alley.

And it is nice and cute. The series knows its audience, which is to say girls of about 7 to 8 years old. (This is to say, what its audience SHOULD be. The rating on the back of the cover says Ages 13+, for reasons I can’t remotely fathom. Maybe due to the violence, as we do see two characters get bloodied towards the end. I guess they have to note it, but really, it’s losing them their biggest market, which is the 2nd to 3rd graders that Japan is marketing this to.)

The heroine is a 10-year-old spunky ditz, like many Nakayoshi heroines, but still very likeable – the niceness is meant to be her trait, not the ditziness. She worries about her grumpy best friend, who’s been avoiding her lately. She wants to fit in and make friends. And she’s promptly swept up into an interuniversal struggle and told that she’s really a princess with magical powers!

So far this series has more of a Sailor Moon vibe than a Card Captor Sakura one, if only as she’s not immediately given a male counterpart to get angry with and have spunky elementary-school crushes at. At least not yet, as the series introduces a couple of very good candidates for this role in Volume 1. However, it does show our heroine coming into her powers fast and dropping the smackdown on the villains.

In fact, the best part of the volume is the ending. After seeing her best friend kidnapped, and her two animal/human mentors beaten and bloodied, Runa calls upon her magic powers of whoopass and goes to town on the villain. She notes coldly that she won’t forgive him, and the villain is clearly begging for mercy. And then she’s called back from the brink, and reminded, basically, that magical girls don’t kill their enemies with a cold fury. It’s a great moment, making you realize that Runa is meant to only be 10 years old, and may not have the serene maturity many of her kind do. Of course, she recovers and bathes the villain in healing light of pure love. I mean, it is still a magical girl series.

This is pretty good at what it does. It’s not spectacular, and there’s nothing in it that makes me want to pick up the remaining 5-plus volumes. But then, I’m not an 8-year-old girl. For its target audience, this gives young girls exactly what they want. A normal girl who is promptly told she’s a Princess and has a magical brooch that grants her awesome animal-oriented powers to beat up vague bad-guy creatures. Go for it, Runa.