Mahoraba (まほらば, "Splendid Place") is a Japanese manga series by Akira Kojima.

It was serialized in Square Enix' Monthly Gangan WING manga magazine between January 2000 and July 2006, spanning a total of 12 tankōbon volumes.

Shiratori Ryushi wants to become a children's picture book writer, and he moves to an apartment, Narutaki-Sou (Narutaki Villa), in order to go to an art school in Tokyo.

Narutaki-Sou is an old Japanese style one-story house which doesn't fit in urban scenery.

Near the end of the manga, it is revealed that the cause of her different personalities is her sad past where she lost everyone that she loved, starting with the death of her great grandfather and her later abandonment by her parents.

It is further revealed that her other personalities were influenced by the 10-year-old Ryūshi who showed her his drawings and taught her that people can be anything in their imagination.

In the anime, however, her personalities came about due to the grief she felt over indirectly causing the death of her parents (she had won a trip to Hawaii in a lottery, but gave it to her parents as she had school and was unable to go herself - when they died in an accident, she blamed herself and developed her other personalities).

She is an extreme lightweight, and unable to tolerate anything but umeshu (in the manga), in the anime she can't even smell liquor without passing out.

Nanako has the personality of an energetic six-year-old girl, and as such is very curious and playful, although she is usually better behaved after she becomes "Shiny".

A perpetually smiling evil genius, Tamami is cold, sarcastic, cruel, manipulative, inconsiderate and condescending towards those she deem to be her moral/intellectual inferiors; which in other words mean everybody besides Kozue-Chan and her other personalities.

Tamami goes to Seika Tandai Fuzoku High School with Kozue, and has a habit of saying "desu" at the end of her sentences.

She stays at Narutaki Sou all the time and is in a long distance relationship with her middle school boyfriend who is studying cinema overseas.

In the anime, she remains at Sou Narutaki, telling her boyfriend to ask her to join her again once he has finished his studies and fulfilled his dreams.

Her father is a rich and talented sculptor, with whom she became estranged in her youth over her choice of her husband; rather than let her parents choose a fiancé for her, she eloped with the estate's gardener.

In the anime, he is at one point mistaken for Aleister Crowley by Vermilion, to his and Johnny's considerable distress.

In the manga, Haibara speaks using his own voice only once when he expresses his hope that Shiratori can heal Kozue.

It is revealed near the end of the manga that Johnny was "born" when Haibara was at a loss as to how to get the sad and lonely Kozue to talk to him after her parents left her.

Comic panel sidestory Often during the anime a vertical comic-style sketch related to the main story is shown.