The early 2000s had been an attention-grabbing time to be a manga fan. Alongside the big-name sequence had been smaller, extra obscure titles that until you knew somebody who had them, you in all probability wouldn’t have even identified they existed. Many of those titles have been misplaced over time, particularly as soon as Tokyopop had initially shut down. Some licenses weren’t transferred over to different publishing corporations, leading to many sequence fading into the annals of time. A kind of titles was Zodiac P.I.
The story adopted 13-year-old Lili Hoshizawa, a teenage lady who had a love of astrology. She obtained this love from her mom, who went lacking in some unspecified time in the future. Earlier than this, her mom ran a fortune-telling enterprise that Lili took over whereas her father labored as a detective. Not solely had she inherited her mom’s love of the celebs, however she additionally inherited a particular ring.
This Star Ring allowed the wearer to commune with astrological spirits and obtain the horoscope of whomever the wearer needed. All they wanted was a reputation and a birthday. Over the course of its 4 volumes, Lili moonlighted as Detective Spica, a title as soon as utilized by her mom. She is assisted by childhood good friend Hiromi Oikawa, a younger man who studied felony psychology in America and had an allergy to girls.
The sequence was written and illustrated by Natsumi Ando, who additionally labored on the sequence Kitchen Princess. It was initially printed within the shojo journal Nakayoshi from April 2001 to January 2003 earlier than being bought in volumes by Kodansha. In 2003, the primary quantity was distributed by Tokyopop and obtained primarily optimistic critiques on the time. Sadly, when Tokyopop went out of enterprise in 2011, the interpretation went out of print and hasn’t been picked again up since. There was by no means an anime adaptation.
It’s was a captivating mystery-romance with magical lady components. Every of the astrological spirits introduced themselves as small, chibi-esque characters with names that reference the unique legends their star signal originated from. The spirits of Gemini, for instance, are named Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Leda with totally different fathers. Castor died in battle and Pollux begged his father Zeus to carry him again, to which Zeus agreed on the situation that they spend half of their life within the heavens and half on earth. The brothers then grew to become immortalized within the stars because the constellation Gemini.
Zodiac P.I. is out there by Amazon, although at an elevated value on account of being out of print. On the time of writing, the primary two volumes can be found on the secondhand book site Thriftbooks for a reasonably affordable $8 USD. Till somebody picks up the distribution rights, this sequence could also be arduous to come back by until somebody is actively on the lookout for it, but it surely’s an incredible addition to any shojo assortment.
About The Writer
