Kitajima Maya has a 'pathological obsession' as one character put it, with acting. Poor, doggedly-stubborn Kitajima loves anything theater; movies, series, operas, anything you can watch and has actors: you get the picture.

Poor (ofcourse, she's poor!) and lives with her mother (she lives with her mother!? How come she's not dead yet so Kitajima can move into her late-grandmother-whom-she-didn't-know-existed-until-her-inheritance's estate! Sheesh! People who try to be creative!) who works and lives in a store and has to support seemingly almost mentally-handicapped Kitajima.

And then the key scene, like in Romeo and Juliet when Tybalt watches Romeo watching Juliet...

*Building suspense...*

Is when a bat-shit crazy old hag from the underworld sees Kitajima, Maya acting for some kids and scares Kitajima with her bat-shit-crazy-old-hag-from-the-underworld look and sends the kids screaming and crying home starting a nationwide witch-hunt in Japan. Edit {take out ya dummies} the screaming kids and witch-hunt and you got yourself the opening of Glass Mask.

To be honest, I liked the characters. I can't complain much about them because as far as original goes; they were original. There was some decomposing of the characters around and after volume 25 but not enough for me to say that they were unoriginal because they were. I gotta say that they were tasteful, the characters ofcourse, even though Kitajima seems to have Disassociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) which isn't picked up on (I don't know why). Add the illustrations and you've got yourselves a semi-thumbs-up which brings me to...

The illustrations {in the beginning} were an annoying amount of slaps on the back to the illustrator for great work. You can smell (not see) the amount of sweat, blood, time (and maybe some grease in there too) spent on making them. At a time when you couldn't copy paste everything and change the author's name and call something original.

*Sighs*

But yes, as time passes the art becomes more and more modern; a.k.a. more and more vague and the characters become only a shadow of their original detail.

*Sighs again*

Enjoyment? Not top marks. No glued eyes on the screen but it WAS pretty enjoyable though I wouldn't say it was addictive but it was nice to have a balanced story to read (see, I'm writing like Kitajima lives): not too attention-grabbing but not drool-worthy.

Overall, even though it's has been a whole lifetime since it began, it's still ongoing [surely it will end sometime, it's not like Detective Conan, right?!] and still attracting more not-senior-citizens audiences as well as senior citizens readers [NO discrimination between the readers (the more the merrier, hey?)] and still earning points; it still has a good plot, tasteful characters and not-Jjang-story-like illustrations.

Overall, a good read.