It's still about manga. Really. ...Sort of.
The plot, what little of it there is, follows a group of women drawn to look like teenagers (if not younger) who are trying to put together a monthly manga magazine. Most of the episodes focus on an aspect of the editor's job in the manga buisness, including things that I hadn't really thought of before, like making sure you have the right typesetting and font for a particular piece or etiquette when supervising a gravure photo shoot (make sure you're not in the reflection of the mirror in the picture).
There are a decent amount of characters, but the runtime is too short to have them be much more than one-note. Hana is the bumbling, energetic leader, Tsugumi likes food, Ringo has a sharp tounge and is implied the be an otaku, and Aki is the straight man to all of Hana's crazy ideas. We get a little more out of Aki in what is probably my favorite episode, when the group goes to Comiket to advertise the magazine, but the reveal isn't mentioned again. We also briefly see some of the mangaka who work on the magazine, but the mainstay is Shinobu-sensei, whose main character trait is that she can't take care of herself without her assistant. And so it goes.
I wouldn't have any problems with the lacking characters if the show had continued to focus on the "behind the scenes" of the manga industry, but after the halfway point it starts to feel like it's tried of its own setup. A trip episode, justified by the plausible excuse of seeing famous places in person as reference, feels more like an excuse to show how "cute" the girls are, complete with a hot springs scene. After the first issue comes out, there's an episode about maids for no apparent reason. And I started noticing the pantsu shots (which could've been there all along, but they're easy to spot in the last few episodes).
I have nothing against fanservice, but when the show went almost exclusively in that direction, there wasn't a lot for me to enjoy. Making things a bit worse, at the very end there's a big timeskip where they're already an established magazine, eliminating the possible conversation they could've had about sales or keeping up production. I guess that wasn't considered as "moe" as maid cafes.
Mangirl is pretty harmless as far as short anime go, but there are full series (Bakuman) and OVAs (Animation Runner Kuromi) that cover the same information in a more interesting and less pandering way. If you're into the manga industry aspect, you're better off skipping this and watching one of those instead. However, if you're looking for a light "girls do cute things" with some fanservice and tidbits about the manga industry thrown in, then this isn't a bad way to kill forty minutes.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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