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Title:  Go Go Heaven!! #1

Author:  Keiko Yamada

Publisher:  CMX

ISBN:  9781401211684

May Contain Spoilers

Shirayuki has a little problem.  She’s dead!  After being hit by a truck, the grandson of the King of Hell, Prince, grants her a boon.  She’s given 49 days to clear up any loose ends before she has to give up her life again.  If she had known the pesky demon would be dogging her every footstep, maybe she would have thought twice before taking him up on his offer!

After enjoying Keiko Yamada’s Versus so much, I was really looking forward to reading another of her titles.  Too bad Go Go Heaven! left me completely under whelmed.  This is a slap-stick comedy with very few dramatic elements to hold the reader’s interest.  (Maybe my bias against comedies is showing again.) Or maybe if it had actually been funny…

Shirayuki is a student at St Christina’s School for Girls.  She’s picked on at school and utterly friendless.  One morning, on her way to mass, she’s hit by a truck and left, dead, in a gutter, the rain pelting her battered body.  In hell for her judgement, she meets King Yama’s grandson who is on the job for the first day.  He falls instantly in love with Shirayuki, and revives her for 49 days.  However, grandpa isn’t so thrilled with the decision, and he sends Prince and three servants to the human world to take responsibility for the mischief he’s caused.

Shirayuki spends the rest of the book fighting off Prince’s advances.  He installs himself as the Director of St Christina’s and replaces the normal staff with his servants.  This causes complete chaos at the school, as Blue, Green, and Page are all handsome guys at an all girls school.  Prince declares that Shirayuki is the queen of the school, and now she’s got even more trouble with the other girls than before she died!!

It’s not bad enough that the annoying Prince is making her school life a nightmare, he’s also moved into the dollhouse her father made for her!  Now he and his cohorts are constantly around, driving her simply mad!  Worse yet, Prince has decided that at the end of her 49 days, he’s not going to hand her over to heaven.  No, way!  He’s taking her back to hell with him!

I find it difficult to believe that this series ran for thirteen volumes!  It was all I could do to finish one. I had a really hard time relating to any of the characters, though if pressed, Prince would have to be my favorite.  He looks like he’s about ten, acts like a spoiled brat, and can’t understand why Shirayuki isn’t falling head over heels for him. Other than insisting that Prince wasn’t the demon for her, Shirayuki didn’t have much of a personality.  There were a few sweet moments as Prince caught her off guard and started to win her over, but they were few and too far in between.

I didn’t like the art, either.  The pages were so cluttered, it was hard to tell what was going on.  Panels of every size are crammed on the pages, but instead of emphasizing the action, they make it almost totally incomprehensible.  I enjoy variety to page layouts, but this was ridiculous; the pages looked like jumbled collages instead of a well planned story board.

Grade:  C

Rated for Teen