Finlandia: Santa Yousei Gakkou

Finlandia is a light-hearted and sweet story of a Japanese girl gone mad about Christmas and Santa Claus. The story is only short and the length of two volumes gives it just enough time to get to know the characters a little from the outside. It's a little different with being set in Finland, a country not so well known especially in the manga industry. The Christmas theme adds a little personality, but that's about all it has to it. The story overall is pretty simple, the characters are shallow and the only things to enjoy about it is the humor, which can probably only be understood by Finnish people themselves. The art is also pretty mediocre and there's nothing much memorable or different about this. The extra story, Vinculum, that was published with the first volume, is more interesting than the main story.

Therefore I can't really recommend this story to anyone else expect Finnish people and those who are interested in our culture or Christmas in general. It's fairly enjoyable to those, but not really for anyone else. I'll probably enjoy reading it through next Christmas too, but it's not something I'd get out while laying on a warm summers day.