Leaked Experience here! H.C. has been working on the rewritten version of her Saint Tail analysis (she was insistent that she didn't want to start on the revision until after the retranslation project was fully wrapped up, so she was only able to start around last month), but in the meantime, both of us are still huge magical girl and phantom thief fans, so recent events got us to take a look at Stellar Witch LIP☆S by Kagami Hana and Ichi Kotoko, another phantom thief/magical girl manga in the Saint Tail/Jeanne lineage but from as recent as 2019 (!!).
We don't plan on posting a detailed review at the moment, but it was definitely very enjoyable as an addition to the magical girl catalog, especially those who like the Tokyo Mew Mew style of team building. It also is a good mix of being consciously aware of its predecessors (Cat's Eye, Saint Tail, Jeanne, etc.) while having original ideas of its own. If there's any major criticism to be had, H.C. felt that 20 chapters weren't quite enough to flesh out everything it clearly wanted to and wistfully feels it could have made a great anime adaptation that could expand on it further. (We're both aware of how brutally competitive the manga serialization field is, so we don't hold it against the series.)
But the part that really made H.C. double over laughing was this:
(spoilers for both LIP☆S and Saint Tail below)
In a chapter titled "My True Self" (本当のわたし)? Using "come [be caught] quietly" (おとなしく捕かまれ) in a play on the word's vague borderline between capturing and protectiveness? With the motif of "I wanted to know more about you"? Even using the exact same art composition angles?
Saint Tail's ending is so famous among Japanese long-time shoujo manga fans that we're sure it's meant as a direct invocation of its predecessor rather than trying to rip it off or anything, but H.C. just couldn't help laughing over how incredibly unsubtle it was. "It's like we just spedrun the entirety of Saint Tail's second half in one chapter!"
(If you really want to poke further, the entire subplot between Miku, Ryusei, and Ray does have a bit of Tachikawa sensibility, but that might be closer to Mink than it is Saint Tail, so it's too much of a digression at this point.)
Anyway, good series. It's also available in English right now -- we can't comment too much on the translation since we were working with the Japanese version, but the previews look very good, so people who are into any of the relevant genres should definitely check it out~ Both of us are a little sad about how often people will say there's a drought of classic-style magical girl series while things like this will go completely under the radar (we're probably going to have an article about that on the site sometime this year), so while we understand it's a bit hard to commit to Kodansha USA releases when they're not on any manga streaming service, we do think this one's worth at least a look. 👍
[Image description: a versus graphic of Star Scarlet/Miku Hoshino from Stellar Witch LIPS and Kaitou KID/Kaito Kuroba from Magic Kaito. Star Scarlet is blonde with a black crop top and a red skirt and a starry brooch pinned to her chest. Kaitou KID has dark brown hair and is wearing a white suit with a blue shirt and pink tie, a white top hat, gloves, and a monocle with a charm dangling from it with a clover on it. He’s adjusting his monocle and grinning at the viewer. /End description]
Star Scarlet (Stellar Witch LIPS) vs. Kaitou KID/Kaito Kuroba (Magic Kaito)
