Miracle Girls


Miracle Girls is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Nami Akimoto. It was adapted into an anime series by Japan Taps in 1993. Tokyopop licensed the manga for English release in North America.

Plot

Tomomi and Mikage Matsunaga are identical twins with special powers. Together, they are able to teleport and communicate telepathically. The athletically challenged Mikage begs Tomomi to switch identities with her for her school's sports day track meet, where she and Tomomi are teamed with Mikage's arch-enemy Yuya Noda, in the relay race. Tomomi, however, finds herself drawn to Yuya. Tomomi's success in the relay causes the captain of the track team, Hideaki Kurashige, to try to recruit Mikage. So, once again the sisters switch identities. However, the science teacher, Shinichiro Kageura, finds out about their psychic powers, and begins to stalk Tomomi. Sensing that Mikage has been behaving strangely, Yuya visits them at home.

Characters

Original Japanese names/Names in Tokyopop's translation
;Tomomi Matsunaga/Toni Morgan
;Mikage Matsunaga/Mika Morgan
;Yūya Noda/Jackson Neil
;Hideaki Kurashige/Chris Kubrick
;Shinichiro Kageura
;Kōhei Yamagishi
;Rumiko Daijōji
;Marie Milgraine Diamas
;Emma Winston
;Mr. X
;Masaki Takamura/Mason Templar
;Risa Sarashina

Media

Manga

The Miracle Girls manga was licensed for English release by Tokyopop, who released the series from 2000-10-17 until 2003-05-13. It was licensed by Editions Star Comics for Italian released, where it was serialised in Amici. The manga has been released in Spanish by Norma Editorial as Gemelas Milagrosas from December 2004 to June 2006.

Anime

It was adapted into an anime series by Japan Taps in 1993. The anime was dubbed into Italian by DENEB Film where it was broadcast on Canale 5 from March 1996 and on Italia 1. In the Philippines, where it was known as Magic Girls, the show was dubbed in Tagalog and broadcast by ABS-CBN. It is also available in Spanish and Korean.
The series uses three pieces of theme music. The opening themes of the whole series are performed by GARDEN, with "KISU no Tochuu de Namida ga" as the opening for episodes 1-29, and "Koi no Mirai" as the opening for episodes 30–51. Dio performs the ending theme for all 51 episodes, "Futari ja Nakya Dame na no".
The Italian dub used its own opening theme.

Video game

A video game adaptation of Miracle Girls was developed by Now Production and released for the Super Famicom by Takara on October 22, 1993. The player can choose to play as either Mikage or Tomomi and use candies as weapons to stun enemies and use them as platforms which the gameplay is similar to Capcom's Little Nemo for the NES, and when the player clears a level, the player challenges the area boss to a mini-game.

Reception

Adam Arnold of Animefringe praised the series, particularly for the detailed an expressive eyes, and the story "light-hearted and fun to read".