MISC. MANGA, *Guru Guru Pon-Chan

From Satomi Ikezawa, creator of the manga Othello, is this quirky comedy about a dog given the chance to become human.

Ponta is a cute labrador puppy who lives with a family in Japan. Their grandfather Koizumi is not only the head of the local school, but he’s also a closet scientist. He develops something he calles the Guru Guru Bone. It’s a synthetic non-digestable bone that is supposed to cause a dog to start speaking human language once they put it in their mouth or lick it. Koizumi tries to test it on Ponta, bun instead the effect it has on her is that it turns her into a human girl! She starts running around totally naked, and then runs into the neighbor’s yard. Their neighbor is Mirai, the handsomest boy in school. He sees this crazy naked little girl in his yard and doesn’t know what to think, but saves her from nearly getting hit by a car. Ponta runs away when she accidently pukes on Mirai, and then turns back to her dog form though as transformation is only temporary.

Nine months pass after that, and Ponta is now a few years older(in dog years). She sees Mirai again, and gets a hold of the Guru Guru Bone which was in his room for the last few months. She turns into a human again, but this time she’s a cute blonde teenager. She grabs one of Mirai’s shirts and runs home. Ponta’s family is suprised to see a mute half-naked girl running around, but then the transformation wears off again, and they learn the truth about their grandfather’s experiment.

From this point, one thing leads to another, and Ponta is now enrolled in Koizumi’s school, which his granddaughter Yuka who has a secret crush on Mirai. But what none of them know is that Ponta has a crush on Mirai too. He soon figures out about Ponta’s transformations, but still treats her like a little sister. This leads to a conflict where Ponta realizes that Yuka is jealous of her spending time with Mirai, so Ponta tries to loose the Guru Guru Bone. But that doesn’t last long, as she’s back in school in human form later on, and becomes the girl that the new transfer student gets a thing for.

This is a charming manga. It’s mostly from the p.o.v. of the dog though, but still very well illustrated, and has a bizarre but hysterical sense of humor. Certainly worth a look for dog lovers, or any shojo junkies.