I feel bad that I went into Tokyo Mew Mew expecting total mediocrity. I always go into things expecting good unless its widely regarded as trash like Brothers Conflict or Vampire Knight. Some of my Anilist friends were reading it and said it was completely mediocre and that it was best to read something like this after something super good. I had burnout from Your Majesty Please Spare Me This Time. And honestly complete and total averageness was what I got from Tokyo Mew Mew. While Ichigo Momomiya is out on a date with her crush she somehow gets caught up in an experiment where her DNA is merged with that of an endangered species of cat. She learns that the same thing happened to four other girls and they are all chosen for the Mew Mew Project where they have to use their newfound animal based powers to fight aliens who control the animals of the world making them attack humans. It would be great if Ichigo spent more time fighting enemies with her friends. I found the chapters that introduced the other girls to be the strongest. I found the other girls to be entertaining silly and a bit different from the magical girl teams Ive seen in my limited experience. We have Mint who Tokyopop describes as a superrich totally sarcastic hipster Im sorry I just found that hilarious so I had to include that. Lettuce is shy and quiet but shes also clumsy and is shown to have used the darker side of her powers. Pudding is very silly and hyperactive with the very niche talent of circus performances. Shes easily the most forgiving and has a short attention span. Zakuro is also very quiet and she has the least personality of all of them which comes down to her having very very few lines. Shes a loner by nature and is comically serious at times. Id love to see more of these girls and I wish they got the same amount of exploration that the Sailor Moon girls eventually got. I had the issue that the manga didnt care about Usagis friends and put more of an emphasis on her and her romance with Mamoru in the beginning. Tokyo Mew Mew had the same issue but unlike Sailor Moon it never outgrew that issue. Id love to see more of Mint Lettuce Pudding and Zakuro. However they were all shafted in favor of the most boring romance in human history. Masaya Ichigos crush has the personality of a stick or a rock or even a blank piece of paper. He has nothing going for him. The manga tries to explain why he ended up that way but it was very random since we never saw any hints of his backstory or personal life in the earlier parts of the manga. It felt like a random Oh everyone hates Masaya and thinks hes boring. Ive gotta explain why hes boring instead of actual natural character growth and a logical explanation. Tokyo Mew Mew also fails to explain why Ichigo and Masaya even like each other. The two will talk about how much they love each other but we dont know why or what they even see in each other. The two characters have so little chemistry they make Kaname and Yuki from Vampire Knight look like the most interesting couple in the world. They deliver passionate love confessions and they even get married in the end. Im not sure if it was a real wedding or not because these are actual 1213 year olds. I hated how much time they spent on Masaya because he was boring and I hated him. Ichigo has three potential love interests: Masaya Quiche one of the villains and Ryou one of the heads of the Mew Mew Project. Quiche sucked as a person but I found him to be fascinating to watch. If Ichigo had to end up with anyone I would have preferred Ryou since he actually had a personality. A part of me also wanted the other girls to have a shot with romance since I found them to be more engaging than Ichigo and all of their potential relationships seemed more interesting than Ichigo and Masaya. Id rather see something about Mints obvious crush on Zakuro than Ichigo and Masaya. I also was shipping Ryou and Lettuce. Ichigo is just your average lead magical girl. Shes similar to Usagi with Sailor Moon in terms of personality. Shes cheerful and a bit of a crybaby and shes the most responsible of the main girls. She was fine but she felt like the least interesting of the girls to me. I wanted to see more of the other characters. The antagonists were a bit flat except for Deep Blue and Quiche. Pie did get a bit of development towards the end. Speaking of the ending it was very rushed. It didnt really phase me since most of the magical girl series Ive read have been rushed. However so much happened. We got our main villain reveal the girls collecting two aqua mews to stop pollution its very strange Ichigo revealing herself as a Mew Mew to Masaya a wedding double crossing and all sorts of things in the last few chapters. I wish they had spent more time on these important plot revelations instead of Ichigo worrying about missing her date with Mr. Blandy McBlandBland. The art was cute if a bit chaotic. It was fun seeing that older shoujo art. The girls all looked very cute and all the girls had distinct designs. I didnt hate Tokyo Mew Mew. It had a lot of potential and a great ensemble cast. However I felt like the romance and the main leads dragged it down a bit for me. I think Im noticing a trend with canonical magical girl romances and I dont like it. Id say theres an equal amount of good and bad making it an average read. While I prefer Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth I wouldnt discourage diehard magical girl fans from reading this.