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.

I had noted in my review of Volume 1 of this magical girl series that it had the potential to be darker than you normally see in that genre. Of course, I was merely fooling myself. Not as to Runa’s potentiality for darkness, but fooling myself to think that magical girl series were ever light and fluffy. The sheer number of magical girls dealing with death and horror boggles the mind, with Sailor Moon being only the tip of the iceberg.

Unfortunately, Runa’s morality at having almost killed a bad guy is quickly forgotten in this lighter and fluffier second volume, which proceeds, having introduced its cast of orphan friends in the previous chapters, to have our heroine abandon them all for their own safety and sets off to live elsewhere with her animal guardians. She now knows that she has to find the Jewel of Everlasting Time, which grants unimaginable powers.

And so we travel to nameless portside town, where there’s a magical signature but it’s indistinct, so Runa spends most of the time watching a cute young woman do magic tricks. Amusingly, she also becomes close with a young girl her own age, who bears a striking resemblance to her old friend Sae. I’m not certain how much of this is deliberate – it’s never actually brought up – but it is fairly ironic that Runa finds a new replacement for her best friend so rapidly, and that she share similar looks and personalities.

Not a lot really happens in this volume, to be honest. There’s a legend about mermaids being betrayed by humans that (surprise) turns out to be relevant later. The vaguely evil boy from Volume 1 turns up again, and his own animal guardian takes a large bite out of Runa’s shoulder (again, probably the only thing justifying the T Ages 13+ rating here – this is for kids). The only real suspect turns out to be the villain, although how much of a true villain they will be we won’t know until Volume 3.

So now we wait for Kodansha USA, though to be honest I won’t be suffering over this series going on hiatus they way I am with Negima or Zetsubou. It has flashes of potential, but Volume 2 felt a lot more generic than Volume 1, and it’s hard not to see this as just another generic Nakayoshi shoujo series, like much of Del Rey’s recent shoujo output.

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.