Twinkle Twinkle Idol Star Shrine Intro Page

Twinkle² Idol Star Main

Introduction
Front & Back Covers
Characters

Volume 1 / B&W Scans
Volume 2 / B&W Scans

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Last update: Oct 21, 1998

This first page is an information page on the manga and the characters. Unfortunately, my information is limited... and I'm slow in posting it.
Meet Marimo Himenogi and Ayumi Fujimura, a young Japanese couple just like any other couple, right? You might think so if you met them on the street looking like this, but in fact, most people in Japan know them under very different circumstances...
You see, Marimo is a young girl who wants to become a singing star. In order to enter a singing contest, she talks her boyfriend, Ayumi Fujimura, into posing as her female singing partner. He's not too thrilled about it at first, but she begs, and then dresses him up to prove to him that he could actually pass as a girl. A very attractive one, in fact. He finally agrees, and thus, Twinkle is born!
The only problem? They win the contest! They have a recording contract! They're on their way to stardom! But of course, this means Ayumi has to keep pretending to be a girl! Talk about an obstacle to your love life!

Here we see what Marimo and Ayumi look like to most of Japan. Being an idol singer means more for Ayumi than wearing a dress... Twinkle's costumes are usually exceptionally cute and fluffy, with ruffles, lace, gauze, ribbons, bows, short skirts... if anyone finds out Ayumi's a guy, it'll be a disaster! He promises to continue the charade for one year in order to not ruin Marimo's fledgeling career. Twinkle's popularity grows... and Ayumi has to fend off male groupies, deal with swimsuit photo shoots, suffer through encounters with industry people with roaming hands, and in between find time to be with Marimo as her boyfriend and not her female partner.
The series filled 10 tankoban that were published between 1991 and 1993 by Shonen Sunday Comics. The auther is Hikaru Tôyama, and the ISBN numbers are listed on page two (where all the front and back cover scans are). I'm working on scanning the chapter title pages and providing rough translations of the chapter titles and some idea of what each chapter is about... but as I've said, my Japanese is poor. I have a BIG dictionary though, and several smaller ones. Still, I'll probably be working on this page into next fall, since it's not my primary concern.
There was a point in the past when a fan group was publishing translated copies of this manga. I wish I'd bought them when I saw them. I attempted to contact the person behind those translations but did not get a reply. My main reason for putting up this site is that there wasn't any information on the web about Twinkle² Idol Star that I could find. Just about anybody can put up another Sailor Moon or Ranma 1/2 or Evangelion page. I'm doing this so that people can know a little bit about a more obscure, but fun, manga. I wish others would do the same... it's fun, for example to check out the Mint na Bokura (We Are Mint) page, which is another (currently being published) manga involving a boy disguising himself as a girl (although Mint is a shoujo rather than shonen comic, it's much less episodic, much more of a soap-opera, with all of the romantic entanglements that go along with that). I have a few other obscure manga that I wish someone would put up pages for... Mr. Clice, for example (to name yet another gender bender manga).
And while we're on the subject... thanks to Dov Sherman for putting up the Futaba Kun-Change web page. Yet another gender-bender manga that deserves a little more attention... and it sounds like it's going to be getting it!