Zodiac P.I.

starting in late 2001. The series is published in Japan by Kodansha, and it is published in English by Tokyopop.

Plot

The main character of the manga, the "Zodiac P.I." of the title, is a 14-year-old girl named Lili Hoshizawa (星沢リリ "Hoshizawa Lili"), who uses horoscopes and astrology to solve crimes, accompanied and assisted by her male childhood friend Hiromi after he returns from ten years spent in America for college. Lili uses the Star Ring to tell fortunes and, at times, to transform into the disguise of "Detective Spica", in which no one recognizes her, except Hiro,(such transformations are a common staple of Magical Girl manga.) The ring was left to Lili by her mother, who used it previously to transform into Detective Spica; one of Lili's long-term goals is to discover what happened to her missing mother. Using this ring, Lili has to try and solve many cases including the first published one, about Chihiro, a murdered girl in her class.

Her other cases take her around to different places from a piano school, to a fortune telling TV studio, to a wedding. She solves cases with Hiromi's help.

To solve crimes, she will figure out the birth date of the victims and then their signs such as Leo, Virgo, etc. Next, using the power of the ring, she will call upon the spirit of that person's sign. Then she'll ask for the horoscope of the victim on a specific date that is connected to the crime. Along with the horoscope, the spirit will give her a clue so she can solve the crime.

Main Characters

Lili Hoshizawa- Really Private Investigator Spica. Actually, she just a substitute of her mother, the "real Spica ". An energetic Aries girl who loves cracking cases. She has a precious ring from her mother that holds the 12 zodiac spirits who give main hints to Lili's cases. She is good with horoscopes and even tells her classmates's horoscopes at school! When she was in kindergarten her best friend was Hiromi Oikawa, who reunites with her when he moves back to Japan from America. Lili's favorite thing to do is go into many disguises and solve cases, and try to stop the mysterious Sirius who thinks she's better than Spica. Her best subject is P.E., considering she is a bit of an underachiever. Lili often comes off as a little clumsy, awkward, and extremely extroverted.

Hiromi Oikawa- He's really smart, even a genius, and was Lili's childhood friend in kindergarten until he moved to America for studying criminal psychology. He's allergic to girls, caused by Lili when she didn't respond to Hiromi's love letter he wrote to her, and gets rashes everywhere when touched by a girl. She leaves the letter in one of her notebooks and finds it ten years later so Hiromi has to go through the emberassing experience of telling her it was him who wrote the love letter to her. Lili explains she didn't know how to read the letter as they were only in kindergarten and Hiromi was so advanced. He was nicknamed "Hiro" in kindergarten by Lili. He has a crush on Lili. It is often shown by his acting bitter and sarcastic to her. Many people in the manga notice this and point this out, but Lili never realizes this. During one case, Lili becomes trapped in a burning church and Hiromi kisses her to help her stop coughing from the smoke. After he rescues her, they notice that his allergy has not acted up. Since then, Lili is shown being able to touch Hiromi without him having a reaction. At the end of the series, they are still partners and are in love.

Sirius- A mysterious private investigator just like Spica. In the final volume of the manga series, she is revealed to be Lili's long-lost mother. She gave Lili a test in the second volume that could've harmed Hiromi (though she later revealed that she never intended to harm him and even set up safety precautions). Sirius did this because she had been the hypnotised by a man named Zeus. Zeus hypnotised her because he was under the false impression that Sirius (Lili's mother) had kidnapped his old sweetheart, causing the girlfriend to fall into a comatose state. Lili manages to free her mother by taking off a ring that caused the hypnosis and at the end of the series, it is shown that her mother took over Lili's fortune telling business (while Lili becomes Spica full-time).

Inspector Hoshizawa- Lili's dad. He's a police officer and always ends up in Lili's cases somehow. He never realizes that Spica is actually his own daughter. He was also searching for Lili's missing mother. He's also an Aquarius.

Megumi - Hiromi's sister. She attends an all-girl school and is fairly vain about her looks. In the first volume she is introduced in, Lili and Hiromi sneak into her school to investigate a series of kidnappings. Megumi herself is kidnapped later, but rescued. She later gets a fortune telling for her tutor from Lili and tells her about how Hiromi got sick from waiting for Lili in the rain after he left her the love note.

Zeus - Zeus is a fortune teller who appears in the final volume of the series. He is polite to Lili at first, but then poisons and locks up her father. After Hiromi rescues Inspector Hoshizawa, Zeus takes Hiro captive and demands the star ring from Lili. He is talented at using gems to hypnotize people, which is how he kept Lili's mother (under the alias of Sirius) in his power. He hates Spica, as he believes that she (Lili's mother) kidnapped his girlfriend and hurt her. Lili later reveals that his girlfriend feared that Zeus desired the star ring more than her love and asked Spica to have him decide between his girlfriend or the star ring. When Zeus hesitated, she was devastated and fell unconscious. After learning this, Zeus looses his desire for the star ring and lets Lili, Hiromi, and Lili's mother leave.

Astral Spirits

Demeter- Is the Astral Spirit of the Virgo. She is sensitive and delicate. She also nags a lot, which sometimes make Lili crazy. It was also shown in the Star Talk that she is a worrywart in which she overreacts and always made a lot of impossible imagination of the future. When outside the Star Ring she usually holds the Crystal of Truth in her hands.

Antares- Is the Astral Spirit of the Scorpio. She hasn't forvigen Lili ever since Lili said that her Flamenco Dance looked like an Octopus Dance. She is a vengeful person but also very calm and cool. When outside the Star Ring she usually holds the Crystal of Truth is on a rod she carries.

Regulus- Is the Astral Spirit of the Leo. He also open with his opinions and will comply with Lili's wishes if she is nice after one time when she possibly bashed him on the head for seeing her panties and saying it was not a very sexy choice, in which to Lili it's sexual harrasment. It was shown in the Star Talk that he gets frustrated easily after he was not able to get a card. When outside the Star Ring he usually sits on the Crystal of Truth while it is floating.

Format

The manga was serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi in Japan, and has been published in America in the format of four graphic novels (which are unflipped, meaning they are meant to be read in the original Japanese right-left format instead of the usual English left-right pattern), each of which has several chapters. The chapters themselves are printed in the usual (for manga) black and white.

There were color art pages (common in manga serials) featured in the manga's original release in Japan; these pages are also featured in the American graphic novel release of the series, but not in the original color.

Most of the chapters, while sequential and technically continuing several main plots and subplots (or to be more accurate, character development arcs and the central sometimes-background plots involving the mysterious character Sirius and the disappearance of Riri's mother), are what are also known as "stand alones", meaning the main plot (or mystery, in this case) of each episode is not specifically connected with any of the other episodes, and can be read and understood without having previously read the series. A couple of the mysteries are two-part episodes, but the rest are mostly self-contained.

The Graphic Novels

All of the graphic novels (also referred to as TPB or trade paperback collections, and called "tankōbon" in Japan) for the series feature several chapters of the serial and notes from the creator in the side-bars, including information on astrology and character profiles. They also include brief manga-format side stories based on the Star Ring's zodiac spirits, and one of the books also includes a brief semi-stand alone story about how Riri and Hiromi met and solved their first case together as children in kindergarten.

Volumes 2-4 in the U.S. also include a brief plot synopsis and even briefer character bios, to avoid confusing first-time readers who have picked up the later volumes before reading the earlier ones. This practice is becoming especially common in the U.S. manga publishing industry, also featuring in such titles as Viz Media's Ranma 1/2 and Tokyopop's Fruits Basket collections.

The first (out of four) volume of the series was first published in Japan by Kodansha on November 6, 2001, and in English translation (using the dialect of American English) by Tokyopop on July 8, 2003. The English translations of volumes 2-4 were released by Tokyopop on September 9, 2003, November 4, 2003, and December 9, 2003, respectively. Each of the American volumes was priced at an MSRP of $9.99 USD. The page count for each English-language volume, save for volume 3 (which has 208 pages), is the same, at 184.

External links

* [http://www.tokyopop.com/S-1155/ Zodiac P.I. at Tokyopop]
* [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=2386 Zodiac P.I.] information at [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com Anime News Network] .
* [http://magicalspica.kawaiimanga.com Zodiac P.I. Fansite]