L'Oreal Voluminous Miss Manga Mascara: Swatches + Review!

 After rummaging through the photos I've taken over the past couple of months for my blog (but obviously never posting) I came across this set for the L'Oreal Voluminous Miss Manga mascara. And, since I just featured this mascara in my most recent empties video, I figured it was about darn time to get to writing a proper blog review for it; if I wait any longer I'm pretty sure I'll forget too much to be able to write about it at all! Anyone else have that problem or is my memory just that horrendous?

Ugh/anywho/moving on.

First off, I need to get this off of my chest (at least to those of you who don't watch my YouTube videos/didn't watch the first impression video I did on this mascara): "manga" is not pronounced "MAYn-guh" like they obnoxiously proclaim in the commercials; it's pronounced "mAHn-gah". You can trust me because I speak a decent amount of Japanese. You can thank me and school all of your friends later.

Secondly, onto the actual product: I'M SO EFFING TORN UP ABOUT IT. I like it, but I don't. I was nice, but not the best. I might buy it again, but I might not. Basically I'm saying that this review will probably do you no favors in terms of figuring out whether or not you want to purchase it for yourself and I'm so sorry. Regardless I figure I should give it a shot!

I feel like my mixed feelings on the Miss Manga mascara come from the wishy-washy performance of the mascara itself. The super flexible/bendy wand was a bit difficult to get used to and, even when you do figure out how to use it efficiently, I didn't feel like it did anything to help (or hurt) the application of the actual mascara. Seemed a little gimmicky in the long run? That initial trickiness also didn't help the fact that the Miss Manga mascara is a bit on the wet side which, for me, means a bit of a mess on the surrounding eyelid/under eye area. 

Goodness, it really sounds like I hated this stuff doesn't it? Well I can assure you that there were definitely good aspects to it as well. It provides a lot of volume to the lashes as well as some nice length, though I know a lot of people that don't like the way it can look clumpy. If you knew a little bit about manga though then you'd understand that that's actually the look L'Oreal was going for (I mentioned it in the "Best & Worst" video I featured it in but if you want to see some stereotypical [and gorgeous] manga lashes just type "Nana Komatsu manga" into Google)! The Miss Manga mascara also did a great job at holding the curl of my lashes and, while the formula wasn't the waterproof version, I had no problems with it running even though my eyes are anything but dry.

So there you have it folks… confliction in its most pure form. 

There were definite ups and downs with the Miss Manga mascara and I just don't think I can come to a final conclusion on my overall feels. The two biggest downfalls were that it had the tendency to flake (not a daily thing but probably twice a week) into my eye throughout the day and that was excruciating. My tube also dried up after only a little over a month of use so that was pretty disappointing as well. I think the one thing that really keeps me attached to this mascara is my never-ending (I'm talking 13+ years here) love for manga as well as the newly available waterproof version; call me tempted to try that out, that's for sure! 

Have you tried the L'Oreal Voluminous Miss Manga Mascara?

Love it (I know quite a few of my instagram followers do!)? Hate it?

What's your current favorite mascara?

Do share!!

xoxo - Cassie