Change123 reviewed
Change123, a literal translation from its Japanese name, ใกใใใ123 Chenji Hi-Fu-Mi, is pretty interesting is a semi perverted, comical way.
The story surrounds our main character’s life in Junior High school, that’s Grades 7 to 9, and how he met his girl friend during this period of his life. Now don’t think this is another ‘His and her circumstances’ type of story, it is considered ‘action’ for a reason.
Characters description
Kosukegawa
Our main character, an average, weak Japanese male. His life is intertwined with watching *Kamen Raiders, a typical 1970s to current Live action Japanese super hero movie. He have two formidable qualities that draws HiFuMi and Motoko towards him, first by protecting a knocked out Motoko before being introduced to Hifumi, and later on by helping Motoko in a merging of ZeroHiFuMi.
Overall, Kosukegawa is a nice person, he would merely think about ‘perverted’ thoughts, and he is so gullible that if it wasn’t for Hifumi, he would have died in chapter 1.
*To non-Asian educated readers, imagine a character dressed like Spiderman, but the outer skeleton resembles a grasshopper instead of a spider. Each Kamen Rider characters have their own special finisher moves and have advanced equipments and rides. Each series have a different Kamen Rider and there are usually some links to the former series or parallel it.
Gettou Motoko
Our leading female character, shy and pleasant, never gets mad at anything. Her mother passed away when she was young and three men took her in and raised her as their daughter. Her three fathers are the masters in each of their of field.
Father 1, a Karate expert who killed a tiger with his bare hands
Father 2, an ammunition expert, master swordsmen and a master tactician.
Father 3, the Grand master of an Ancient branch of Jujitsu.
Due to their training, Motoko developed three distinct personalities, therefore giving birth to Hifumi.
Motoko’s character design have a special flaw, and this is common in all four of her characteristics, she can never get angry. You might ask, where did all the anger go? Well, it formed into another personality, Zero.
Hifumi
Hifumi is three different characters, formed inside the body of Motoko.
Hibiki
The Karate girl
, she is the out going side of Motoko, and she is amazing at fighting using Karate techniques. She is kind of a hot head, and doesn’t plan ahead before her actions, nor does she know the proper way to control her strength (ie kissing Kosukegawa, which ended up banging her cheek bone into Kosukegawa’s).
She is the personality that usually shows up when Motoko is in a crisis before switching over to cool headed Fujiko for analysis.
To identify Hibiki in the manga, she is the girl with the neck length (don’t they all have the same hair length?) who is always in a ‘ready to rumble’ pose.
Fujiko
Amazing tactician and ammunition specialists. She is educated in sword fights, speed and all forms of ammunition. She can analyze any type of fire arms by seeing a glimpse of the fire arm or hearing the sound it made. During a fight, her most used ability is the ability to analyze her enemies. After analysis, she can then quickly find the weak point in each of her targets and suggests the ideal and quickest method to defeat the target.
Fujiko can be identified by a cool headed character, whose primary pose is ‘Ready to kill’. Her hair style changes a bit with the left side of her hair style tucked in behind her left ear.
Mikiri
Jujitsu expert, her specialty is combat against physically stronger opponent. She is playful and always enjoy fighting. Mikiri is so love with fighting that she went to the school’s Jujitsu club and became the grand master there, kosukegawa had her put on a mask so she won’t be recognized by other students. Her motto is roughly translated to ‘We trained hard in Jujitsu is not just to win in a match against other Jujitsu trainers, but to win against all other trainers’. This actually got one of Kosukegawa’s friends a very heavy beating in Volume 7 because he believed in this phase, he is one of the Jujitsu club members.
Mikiri can be identify by a childish personality, breast popping out of her top, and her hair tied to a 2 inches pony tail, sticking out of the top.
Hifumi over all are in love with Kosukegawa, each one of them took him out on a date and would all show up to protect him with their life if necessary.
Each personality of Motoko is appealing to different male subgroup, as the primary target audiences of this manga is male from about 14 and up, the artists attempted to capture different male tastes.
Motoko is your typical school girl, Hibiki is sporty, Fujiko is classy, and Mikiri is cute.
Zero
Remember that flaw in Motoko I talked about? Here is the answer, a berserker version of Motoko. Yep, Zero is the berserk version, where the personalities of Hifumi and Motoko is combined into one. Basically, she has the best qualities, in terms of doing damages, of each of Motoko’s personalities. She is cold blooded like Fujiko, strong like Mikiri, and actionable like Hibiki. To make matters worst, she is clouded with hatred from the death of Motoko’s mother. And wouldn’t hesitate twice to kill any living thing that is in front of her.
Ginga
A small child from an island in the middle of the pacific. -.-” Ginga is a skilled hunter of the native tribe, and to make matters worst, Ginga’s presence is to locate the current holder of the tribe’s defender, rumored to be in Japan. Ginga may look like a boy, with absolutely no coverage on her top, but she is actually a girl. To be exact, her full name is most likely Ginga Kosukegawa.
She is the decendant of Kosukegawa’s war hero grand father, who, until the discovery of Ginga’s heritage, is rumored to have died on the battlefield.
Izuru
By appearance, you would think that she is another ‘normal’ girl, but Izuru is the tribe defender for Ginga’s tribe. She currently holds the most honorable title in the tribe and have ‘sneaked’ back to Japan to study as a normal school girl. She shares the same interest in Kamen Riders as Kosukegawa does, and therefore proof to be a worthy opponent for Motoko, in both physical strength and attractiveness.
Fighting style of Izuru is simply ‘quick’, her goal is to limit the pain her opponent suffers and therefore have direct blows to her opponent’s head.
Botan
She is the athletic fighting type, tallest girl in the school and commonly referred to as ‘terminator’ by her school mates. Her goal is to be the best fighter possible, but notices the differences between a naturally gifted fighter (Izuru) and non-naturally gifted fighter (herself)
There are dozen more characters, but most of them are minor supporting characters.
Lastly, here is a scan from the volume 6, the transformation from Motoko to Hifumi, source anime.xunlei.com
Another picture of Mikiri and Izuru from Volume 7
