+Anima Volume 1 by Natsumi Mukai

+Anima are humans with animal traits, and as far as some humans are concerned either an animal soul or no soul at all. So when a baby with black wings falls from the sky, the two women who find him think it is a baby angel, and name him Cooro.

Years later, a circus comes to town, with an act called "The Mermaid Princess". But unbeknownst to the villagers who come to see it, the Mermaid is really a fish +Anima named Husky. Husky was bought by the circus many years ago, but while Husky works for the ringmaster/owner, he's rude and demanding, wanting to be paid for demanding and asking for real pearls, not fake ones, to wear in his tank.

He'd really prefer not to be working for the circus at all, so when Cooro shows up, determined to rescue him, Husky isn't about to object, even if he finds Cooro to be too cheerful and happy for his tastes. But as the two of them travel, they find themselves coming across other +Anima, like Senri the Bear and a young girl named Nana, who is a bat.

As they meet and fight with one another, they are each searching for the same thing, a home without prejudice, where people treat each other well, no matter what they look like or how unusual they are. But can they ever find such a place? Or will they just have to keep wandering and searching?

The Quest for acceptance. It's not all that unusual, and many people feel that they are freaks for one reason or another. Even just a mental difference can be looked down on. But here, the characters tend to look normal until they unleash their powers. To fit in, they have to deny what they really are.

While this manga series is very popular in Japan for its fantasy underpinnings, and has some good ideas, I found many of the characters being entirely cliché, like Cooro, who is just a typical Anime hero, and Husky being the antihero type, although in this case, he also has a hatred of women, because he's so pretty he usually gets mistaken for one. The other two characters are more of a cipher at this point, we don't know much about Senri (Because he's very tightlipped) or Nana, because we meet her in the last installment of the story, right before the end.

But it seems like this series is a sentai-series in the making. We have the cheerful leader (Cooro) who is always hungry, the snarky second in command (Husky) who disagrees with the leader a lot of the time, the Big, strong silent type (Senri) and the token spunky girl, Nana. In the end, I can only say "So-so" for now, though later volumes may make me change my mind. I just hope something interesting happens.