Ultra Maniac isn't "ultra" by any means, nor is it really maniacal. What it is though, is a pretty decent shoujo series that grows on you like a malignant tumor, without the resulting fatal outcome.
Summary: Ayu meets a girl named Nina right around the time she starts her second year of middle school (8th grade for us Americans). Little does she know that Nina is a witch, a magic . Nina is a dropout from the Magic Kingdom (I swear every time they said this, I heard the Super Mario Bros. theme...) sent to the human world for some study abroad...and some other purposes as well. Over the course of a year, Nina and Ayu experience most of what normal 14 year old girls do: crushes, parties, first loves, fights, and lots of magic. And lots of transformations. While the transformations in Ultra Maniac are of the magical kind, ask anyone who's been in school about the sorts of transformations that 14 year old girls go through. Go on. The review will still be here when you're done.
Animation
Character Design: Since this is a shoujo series, expect one thing and one thing only: KAWAIIIIIIIIIII~~~~. All of the characters are just plain cute. Well, in Ayu's case, omg. Auburn hair and gray eyes? Rawr. Now if she was only about ten years older...
Ahem. All of the character designs are meant to be attractive. The artists make sure that they don't always wear the same clothing out of uniform, so no complaints there. The guys look pretty nice too, nice guys with smiles and pleasant demeanor. You're not going to find any seriously unattractive characters except maybe cameraboy, who doesn't really show up a whole lot anyways. The only thing that's wrong with some of the character design is stick-limb-syndrome. As with many other shows, these poor girls have toothpicks for bones. At times, all of the characters seem to be a little vertically stretched, but it's most noticeable with the girls.
One item of the animation that a lot of people may not enjoy is the SD faces. Lots of deformed faces for moods, lots of blue foreheads and squiggly lines and >_> and >_< and...yeah. Those things amuse me so I don't downgrade based on them, but this show almost took them to the point where I got sick of it. Almost!
Op/Ed: Well, the opening is pretty much a glamour show for the girls. The poor guys get a cameo or two and that's it, but you're treated to Nina and Ayu in a bunch of cute outfits which gets old after about the third time through. The end is a little darker, but the image of the two girls asleep is cute enough to watch repeatedly.
Artwork: Pretty good stuff. The art for the Magic Kingdom (LUIGI? MARIO?) is pretty cool looking. The school backgrounds are good, but re-used rather a lot.
Sound
Op/Ed: Both songs grow on you like the rest of the series. At first, I didn't care too much for them, but after a while, they caught on a bit. They're good enough to listen to most of the time, but not good enough to run out and procure the single. The opening is a nice upbeat pop track, while the ending is a little slower. I'm kind of surprised the singer could get the final couple of lines out for the ending without swallowing her own tongue. I may want to meet her.
Ahem.
Music: Some day, there will be a series that makes truly good use of inset music. This is not that series. Background music is the same as with most series - a few tracks that get repeated over and over to set moods and then there's a brief inset of the theme song during the last episode. GET CREATIVE, PEOPLE.
Voices: Having a dual-audio version of this, it defaulted to English. It took me no more than 5 minutes to swap it to Japanese audio for the rest of the series. Shudder. All the Japanese voice actors do a good job. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible and grating. Nina particularly stood the chance of becoming a squealing cutesy voice, but thankfully, that tendency was averted.
Story
Plot: Well, the plot is banal, but it IS a shoujo series. Don't expect much. Most of the show is just random hijinks with smatterings of plot development until the last third, at which point romantic interests get dealt with and the overplot gets completely revealed and resolved. I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the ending is "awwwww!" and that the payoff is decent enough. If you can't see it coming from the first few episodes, I have no words to describe the depths of your utter lack of clue.
Writing: Here is where I bitch. Did the writers really have to put the SAME DAMN TRANSFORMATION SCENE into every single episode? Or the "using magic" scene? If you discount the first couple of episodes where it's cool and then add up the time from each other episode...there is almost literally an entire episode's worth of re-used transformation/magic scenes in this show. I don't count this as an animation flaw - this is something that should be stomped on at the script level. There is no reason to yoink a minute or so out of each episode to show this girl transforming.
Another issue is just the stupidity of some of the characters. I know it's not a particularly cerebral series, but come on, some of it felt very forced. If the characters had used their brains...oh well.
Character
Interest: The majority of the interest in the girls is their cuteness. They're funny and it's a feel-good series, but there's not much else to it. Even the major bad-girl character in the series is pretty pathetic. The guys are nice guys, and even when one of them is revealed to be not-so-nice, he's still nice. What...the...? Basically, what I'm trying to impart here is that all the characters are basically the same - all nice, good kids.
I do have to bitch about the bad-girl character. I hate seeing stupid evil characters. She had no style, no intelligence, and no redeeming characteristics. She was merely a bitch and her involvement at the end evoked nothing but a sigh and a hope for karmic retribution from me. It's a light fluffy anime so the antagonist has to be light and fluffy as well...but that makes the antagonist weak and uninteresting. Difficult line to walk.
The side characters were pretty weak in this series, unfortunately. While the teacher romance was mildly amusing, it's hardly referenced. Cameraboy is around a lot at first, then it seems like he's been forgotten till near the end. Rio the cat is probably the most interesting and amusing secondary character.
Growth: Not really any growth, per se. The characters don't fundamentally change over the course of the series, except for one completely unsurprising event at the end. While romantic resolutions do take place, they are hardly addressed afterwards. Light and fluffy, ...light and fluffy.
Value and Enjoyment: Well, minus the stupid transformations, I'd say that the show is a good value. It'd be a nice show to watch with a significant other just for some light fluffy "awww!" time. That is, if you don't start giggling every time they say "Magic Kingdom" (where's my fire flower?) and completely ruin the mood.
I did enjoy the series in the end, though the payoff was only so-so and it took me nearly half the series to get to the point where I really wanted to watch it. Once it gets moving, it's enough to keep you interested till the end.
Conclusion: Be patient with this show and it'll be good to you. I don't recommend it to anyone except the shoujo fans out there, though. This is not a cross-genre wallbreaker. It's just a decent happy fluffy show. If you want something deep and compelling, look elsewhere. If you need to feel good and smile, Ultra Maniac will fit the bill.