Manga Reviews: Kocchimuite Miiko! aka Hi Miiko!

Fiuuuuuuuh......
Finally.. after more than a month I am able to read Kocchimuite Miiko! 19
Before my departure, I begged my dear friend Susan to buy this manga for me. Thanks Susan!

Reviews:
This manga is one of my favourite manga ever. I was introduced to this manga by friend only about 2 years ago. I'm immedialy falling in love with this series and started to collect them. I am a very picky manga collector. I never collect manga that I don't really like. Every now and then I used to read the books over and over again (Yes you are correct, I brought these babies to Singapore!)

The reason why I like it so much is mainly because of the story. The ideas of the story are very simple, honest and yet touching. They're based on daily live experiences, which most of us experienced during our childhood time. Trust me, when you read this, you’ll often giggle and realize “oh, I’ve been there before”. It teaches and reminds us the pureness of children we once before.

Mrs. Ono Eriko, if you are reading this, I really like your book. I think you've done a fantastic job! Thank you for 'giving birth' to Miiko.

Score: A, Very highly recommended.

Mangaka: Ono Eriko

Plot
This is the sequel for series Miiko Desu! aka Namaku Miiko (Book 1 - 4). Both series tell about the daily live of 5th grade student named Miiko, including her friends, family and of course her love live!

Got his description from Anime News Network
I think this is a short but very accurate description for this manga.

This is a cute simple story about one cute little girl named miiko. The story was tell about her dad, her mom, her perfect and mature little brother named mamoru, her love hate relationship with a cute boy named tappei, her cat (this cat also belong to tappei, they found and decided to adopted together, so it was their cat actually) named miiko--yeah, same name with miiko the lead character, this name given by tappei mom's, indeed sweet.--her selfish but everlasting friend named mari-chan, her motherly friend named yuuko, her rival for competing tappei named miiho, her secret (now not secret anymore) admirer named yoshida, her classmates, her school day, her holiday, her cheer day, her gloomy day, her happiness, her sadness, her love, her pure and innocent life

Characters

Yamada Family

Yamada Miiko
She is the main character. She is the first child of the family. An honest, kind and cheerful little girl. She lets her feeling shows up in the open. Even though she is not top ranked at class or talented in anything peculiar, she is very loyal and care to her friend. She is a bit lazy especially when compared to her brother Mamoru. Almost forget, she eats a lot despite her small figure.
Miiko has 2 guys competing to win her heart. The first one is Eguchi Tapei and second one is Yoshida. Deep in her bottom heart, she likes Tapei, despite they are fighting most of the time.

Yamada Mamoru
Miiko's younger brother. He is one year younger than his sister. He has a very cute and popular girlfriend named Yukaa Chan. He is smart, diligent, sensible and responsible. Everything that Miiko is not. He also bullied by Miiko when relating to food. His love competitor is Shinji.

Yamada Momochan
Miiko's baby sister. Just born in book 19.

Miiko's Parent.
Both of Miiko's parents are working in journalism or something related to that. Her father is working for a sport tabloid (i think) and her mother is a manga editor (how cool is that?). Miiko's mother is pictured to be less patient than her husband.

School Friends

Shimura Mari
One of Miiko's best friend. She likes to draw manga and dreaming to become famous manga author, but up until now, she still facing a lot of criticism for her work.

Ogawa Yuuko (Yuko)
One of Miiko's best friend. She is smart, top ranked girl in class, pretty, calm and responsible. She take cares her 4 siblings when their parents are at work. She has a boyfriend Satou Kenta.

Eguchi Tapei
He is the type of boy who cannot express his feeling. He likes Miiko since the beginning of the book, but finds it hard to express his feeling to her. Instead, he likes to tease her and makes her angry. He gets irritated and jealous every time Miiko is with Yoshida.
Apparently, he's quite popular in school especially among the girls, since his locker is usually full with chocolate given by anonymous girl fans every Valentine day. His biggest admirer is Miho Tanimura.
His parent open a little shop called Lazy Moon. At the beginning, his parents are splitting up, but eventually reunited thanks to Miiko and Tapei.
His best friend is Satou Kenta and he has a cute cat named Miiko.
Tapei is my favorite character.

Satou Kenta
His parents own a bakery name Satou Bakery. He’s often seen in the store helping his parent sell the bread especially at Christmas or another holiday. He is Yuko boyfriend and Tapei best friend. He knows that Tapei likes Miiko but cannot express his feeling, therefore he try to be their match maker. Until now, his efforts bear no fruit.

Yoshida
Yoshida is a mature, smart, top ranked boy at class. He likes Miiko because she is cheerful. Opposite to Tapei, Yoshida doesn’t have a problem expressing his feeling to Miiko. He even asked her on a date before. But unfortunately, Miiko is too ‘polos’ to realize his feeling.

Yoshiki
Yoshiki is the geek at class. He is very talented in art. He makes acrylic dinosaur dolls, setting up a diorama and then shoots them using his handy cam. He likes Miho, he even has her picture inside his wallet. But since he knows that Miho likes Tapei, he lets her go and help her pursue Tapei. He got really annoyed and angry when Tapei rejected Miho valentine’s chocolate.

Tanimura Miho
Miho is the pretty girl at school. She loves Tapei deeply, but unfortunately her feeling is not returned. She always considers Miiko as her love enemy. Although, she usually harsh to Yoshiki (her number one fans) sometimes she can be really kind to him.

Yuuka Chan
She is Mamoru girlfriend. She is kind, smart, pretty, and popular girl. She is very loyal to Mamoru. She makes him homemade chocolate pastries every valentine.
There are also lots of other minor characters that I can not mention one by one. Maybe some other time or you can ask me directly.