The Magic of Love!

For the second one-shot by Ayumi Komura, it's Hatsukoi Harinezumi (First Love Hedgehog). Sora Onodera discovers he can use magic one day when he accidentally turns his older brother Riku into a hedgehog. Sora learns that his parents and brother can also use magic, and that he acquired the transformation spell because he's experiencing his first love. Now the only way to put Riku back to normal is to acquire the magic to undo the transformation, which has the condition that he must first get the girl he likes to tell him she likes him back.

As mentioned last time, the color illustrations above are from the previews posted on Margaret's website, first two weeks before the one-shot was published (the girl), and then the day the one-shot was published (the boy). But who is this girl and why doesn't she actually appear in the one-shot? Luckily, Ayumi Komura answered this question in an attached interview. This was what she said:

The storyboard I had originally drawn had a boy as the main character, but when I was drawing the preview illustration, I thought it'd be better to have a girl as the main character since it would appear in Margaret, so I changed it. In the end, while I was drawing it, I thought it might be cuter if the main character was a boy, so I went back to my original decision. I like how he's a cute type of boy I usually don't draw. And this cute sibling love between the older and younger brother is also pretty nice. But well, the cutest one is the hedgehog!!

So there you have it. There's only one one-shot left to do, Amber, which (like the others) we mentioned before on our Twitter account. And also as you may have already heard, Ayumi Komura's new series to debut on December 5 is called Full Dozer. This seems to be a play on "bulldozer", but we'll just have to wait and see what the series is like once it starts serialization. The premise, which involves a love triangle with a childhood friend, might indicate that Komura is trying to go with a manga that's more accessible, although knowing Komura, its bound to be anything but run-of-the-mill. So please check it out when we start on it next year and see if its to your liking.

Hatsukoi Harinezumi one-shot: Mediafire, Dropbox