From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pretty Face (プリティフェイス, Puriti
Feisu
?) is a Japanese manga
series written and illustrated by Japanese author Yasuhiro Kano. The
story revolves around a high school boy who suffers an accident and
having his face reconstructed in the form of his crush, attempts to
impersonate a girl who his crush mistakes for her twin sister. A
common theme in the series is the loving relationships the
characters share for each other, whether they be between siblings,
friends, or lovers as well as Karma. It was first serialized in
Jump Comic's Weekly Shōnen Jump by Shueisha[1] between
May 2002 and June 2003, finally coming to an end at chapter
fifty-two. For North America Viz Media acquired the rights to release an
English
translation of the series.[2]
Plot
Pretty Face is a romantic comedy that involves a
variety of different characters. The main protagonist is Masashi
Rando, a high school student and karate expert who harbors an unconfessed love
for a fellow student, Rina Kurimi. One day, while returning home
from a karate tournament in Hokkaidō, he is involved in a tragic school bus accident and
burned beyond recognition.
One year later, Masashi awakes from a coma to find that he's been in the care of a
talented (yet slightly deranged) surgeon named Jun Manabe. Masashi
finds out his disfigured face had been reconstructed in the image
of the girl he has a crush on. Not knowing what Masashi originally
looked like, Dr. Manabe used a photo in Masashi's pocket as the
model for his reconstructive surgery.
Afterwards, Masashi finds out that during his year long coma, he
was mistakenly pronounced deceased, his parents moved away, and
even his house was demolished. Once he has realized his old life is
now gone, he breaks down on the sidewalk in front of the empty lot
that was his former household. On his way back to Manabe's clinic,
he runs into Rina by chance, and is mistaken for her missing twin
sister, Yuna. After Rina takes him back to her house and presents
him as Yuna, he lies about having amnesia in order not to arouse any sudden
suspicions. Masashi wants Jun to change his face back to the way it
was but has no picture of himself to help. He does get a picture of
himself eventually but later, after seeing how much pain Rina
experienced during the time her sister was gone, Masashi decides to
impersonate Yuna for the time being until he can find the real Yuna
and bring her back to the Kurimi family.
Characters
Main
characters
- Masashi Rando (乱堂 政, Randō
Masashi
?)
- The main character, he is a karate expert who is very arrogant because not
many can defeat him. After a school bus accident, his face is
reconstructed to that of Rina Kurimi, a fellow student who he also
feels an attraction towards. After waking from his year-long coma,
he is mistaken by Rina for her missing twin sister, Yuna. In the
end, despite much inner turmoil on what to do, Masashi decides to
pose as Yuna until he is able to find the real Yuna.
- At first, he has a lot of trouble acting like a typical female
high school student and his personality as Masashi comes out often
with disastrous results. Even after being in a coma for a year, he
is still incredibly strong which usually raises a lot of questions
because of his small size. Often, as a running gag, he gets nosebleeds when he gets stimulated.
However, as time goes on, he comes to discover a lot of things
about being a female. Due to his vibrant personality and Rina's
cute face, he gets many male suitors in the school (and one
female), something that does not exactly make him happy.
Furthermore, one of his main fears is that he'll become accustomed
to being Yuna for good. When it comes to matters involving Rina
however, he is often very selfless and only thinks about her
happiness.
- Rina Kurimi (栗見 理奈, Kurimi
Rina
?)
- She is the girl Masashi likes and ironically, she liked him
back before the accident, just she never told him. She has a quiet
personality and feels responsible for what happened to her real
twin sister Yuna after she ran away from home. Rina is a very
emotional person and depends a lot on Masashi (as Yuna) for support
and guidance.
- She is a very intelligent person and the smartest in her class,
though she seems to struggle when it comes to cooking. After
Masashi came back as Yuna, Rina has become very scared that her
sister will end up leaving her again and hangs out with her more
often than not because of it.
- Yuna Kurimi (栗見 由奈, Kurimi
Yuna
?)
- Rina's real twin sister and the person Masashi impersonates.
She ended up running away from home in order to fulfill her dream
of becoming a beautician. After she left, she traveled to Otaru and
started working in the Kaze hair salon owned by the Yoshida family.
Additionally, she started living with them for the time being too.
During her time working at the salon, Yuna was described to be a
very hard-worker. She is also very intelligent, much like Rina,
though is smarter than her younger sister. After the salon went out
of business, she said she would go to a professional beautician
school in Sapporo, but later
tells Masashi that she has been attending a beautician school in Tokyo.
- Dr. Jun Manabe (真鍋 順, Manabe
Jun
?)
- The very talented doctor who reconstructed Masashi's face using
a picture of Rina as a reference that he found on his charred body
after the school bus accident. He is excessively perverted and
constantly suggests that Masashi should get a complete sex reassignment surgery to become more
feminine, much to the disgust and wrath of Masashi (which often has
him end up on the receiving end of a very violent and graphic
beating). He helps Masashi throughout the story even after the
surgery and even seems to serve as his mentor.
Supporting
characters
- Yukie Sano (佐野 雪江, Sano
Yukie
?)
- She's the most mature of Rina's friends. Additionally, she is
the only one who has a boyfriend named Reiji Nakama who is older
than her and already attending a university. Much like Masashi, she can get
mad very easily and gets out of control because of it; Masashi is
very scared of her when she's like this. She does have a soft side
however, she is rather creative and enjoys looking at cave rocks to
admire their beauty.
- Keiko Tsukamato (塚本 恵子, Tsukamoto
Keiko
?)
- She's one of Rina's best friends and occasionally commented
that she does not like boys. However, she loves animals and in fact
has a vast collection of stuffed animals and a couple of pets to
show for it. Despite her boyish haircut, she tends to have a very
feminine
personality—doing things that normal girls her age would consider
fun.
- Midori Akai (赤井 美都里, Akai
Midori
?)
- She seems to be the most outgoing of Rina's friends and never
passes up the opportunity to flirt with guys. She tries very much
to get a boyfriend up to being obsessed about it and is somewhat
jealous of others on the fact that she does not have one. She once
commented that she is "kind of afraid of animals."
- Takahiro Kinoshita (木ノ下 貴弘, Kinoshita
Takahiro
?), Shiyūji Tamura (田村修二, Tamura Shiyūji
?) & Takuya Endō (遠藤拓也, Endō Takuya
?)
- Three members of the karate club that were subordinates of
Masashi. When Masashi came back to school as Yuna and destroyed the
members of the karate club, they ended up choosing 'her' as their
unofficial leader - Masashi has no intention of returning to the
club while impersonating Yuna. They often cause trouble for
Masashi, leading him to refer to the trio as "The Three
Stooges".
- Miwa Masuko (升子 美和, Masuko
Miwa
?)
- She is Rina's cousin who comes to be the substitute teacher for
Japanese
at Rina's school. She apparently is very close with the real Yuna,
which causes problems for Masashi. She seems to have a thing about
getting to the bottom of things when it comes to a mystery which
led to her trying to investigate Masashi when she first came back.
Eventually, she is able to become a regular teacher at Seika high
school, where Masashi and the others go to school.
- Nozomi Ueda (植田 望, Ueda
Nozomi
?)
- A first year student who approached Masashi (as Yuna) wanting
her to be her 'big sister'. It is later found out however that she
has a massive crush on her and does everything to be near her. She
sees Yuna as a good role
model for herself and she has admired her for that. She seems
to have a poor opinion about boys, once having commented that they
are, "dirty and ugly creatures." Nozomi's father runs a kendo dojo that Nozomi also trains at and as so she is
ranked as a 2-dan. In addition,
she comes from a very rich family although that is from her
mother's side. Much like Masashi who appears to be a normal high
school girl, Nozomi is a good fighter and can be very intimidating
because of this. She also seems to be very popular among the first
year male students because of her cute looks.
- Natsuo Kobayashi (小林 夏緒, Kobayashi
Natsuo
?)
- She is the grandchild of the monk from the temple the karate
club goes to train at once a year. She was partly trained by
Masashi when he was visiting the temple, though now she's gotten
more skilled. However, when she fights she has the tendency to show
her panties a lot. Apparently, she fell in love with Masashi during
their training together. Eventually she transfers to Masashi's
school even though at first she believes him to be dead like
everyone else. After secretly listening in on a conversation
between Masashi and Manabe, she learns the truth about the whole
situation and becomes a threat for giving away the secret. However,
after seeing Masashi's surprising selflessness, she decides to help
him find Yuna and wholeheartedly expresses her joy at seeing
Masashi alive. Natsuo is the only other person who knows of
Masashi's secret and does tease him a bit with it to get him to
notice her. As such, this leads to a love triangle as Masashi is
somewhat torn between Rina and Natsuo who both are in love with
him.
Other
characters
- Masato Miki (美木 聖人, Miki
Masato
?)
- The student body president at Rina's school and also the most
popular guy, especially among the female population. He has been
described as smart, good at sports, and very well at his work as
the student president. However, he is rather conceited about his
status. Eventually, he takes a liking to Yuna (not knowing it is
Masashi much to his horror).
- Jinnai
- He is a technician who develops products to be used for models. Jinnai is
the only employee of his company Jinnai Modeling Research and
Development Co. Dr. Manabe knows him and Jinnai makes products
that Manabe uses for Masashi's situation.
- Jin Yoshida
- A young man living in Otaru who knows the real Yuna. His family
used to own a hair salon called Kaze (風
?) meaning Wind and at the
time, Yuna lived with them as she worked as one of the assistants
in the salon. Incidentally, Jin ended up falling in love with Yuna
while she stayed with them for a few months. Before he met Yuna, he
had co-founded a gang called The Crimsons with a guy named
Haga. Eventually, he got into some trouble with the police after
stabbing someone in a fight and the salon went out of business
because of it. Later, Jin left the Crimsons to become a beautician,
but Haga saw this as a form of betrayal and thus they are now
enemies.
Manga
| Volume |
Japanese |
English |
| ISBN |
Release Date |
ISBN |
Release Date |
| 1 |
ISBN 4-0887-3361-6 |
October 4, 2002 |
ISBN 1-42151-368-4 |
August 7, 2007 |
| 2 |
ISBN 4-0887-3350-0 |
December 4, 2002 |
ISBN 1-42151-369-2 |
October 2, 2007 |
| 3 |
ISBN 4-0887-3384-5 |
February 4, 2003 |
ISBN 1-42151-370-6 |
December 4, 2007 |
| 4 |
ISBN 4-0887-3423-1 |
May 1, 2003 |
ISBN 1-42151-547-4 |
January 29, 2008 |
| 5 |
ISBN 4-0887-3497-2 |
August 8, 2003 |
ISBN 1-42151-644-6 |
April 1, 2008 |
| 6 |
ISBN 4-0887-3526-9 |
November 4, 2003 |
ISBN 1-42151-645-4 |
June 3, 2008 |
The Pretty Face manga was first serialized in the manga
magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump. The first
bound volume was
released on October 4, 2002 and ended in Japan in November 2003.
There is a fair amount of fan service associated with the story, and
vast amounts of ecchi moments.
The manga series has a rather abrupt ending, finishing with
fifty-two chapters and one extra chapter. It was intended to run
longer, but was canceled due to the low ratings it had in
Weekly Shōnen Jump. The last chapter featured additional
information and alternate endings, as well as some original
storyboard art. In North America, the manga was released by Viz Media between August 7,
2007 and June 3, 2008.
References
External
links
Viz Media
Wikis
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