Glass Mask is a long-running shōjo manga by Suzue Miuchi, serialised in Hana to Yume from January 1976, and collected in 42 tankōbon volumes as of 2006. The story has also been adopted into anime several times, including TV series in 1984 and 2005 and an OVA. As of 2006, the collected volumes had 50 milion copies in Japan, making it the second best-selling shōjo manga ever. The title refers poetically to the mask of faces that actors wear - while expressing emotions that are not their own, the mask they wear (their acting) is as fragile as glass. If the actors are distracted, their mask will "break" and show on stage the actors' true feelings.
While many chapters have been published in Hana to Yume subsequent to the collected manga volumes, Miuchi is, for reasons of her own, redrawing chapters and initiating changes to the storyline. The most recently published volume features a cell phone, something which did not exist at the beginning of the series' run and may be evidence of a desire by the manga artist to modernize certain aspects of the series. The newest TV series from 2005 is also modernized, featuring new fashions and hairstyles (i.e.: Ayumi's elaborate hairstyle has been noticeably simplified), computers and the Internet, all of these not existing until recent years. Certain elements of the prior storyline in the Hana to Yume chapters have also led to fan speculation that Miuchi may have decided to change the storyline entirely by disregarding these chapters and rewriting them to suit the new direction she wishes to take the series in.
Certain stylistic elements of Glass Mask are quite similar to those of sports manga and anime such as Attack No. 1 and Ace o Nerae!, such as the heroine's complete and total devotion to her craft, a struggle to persevere in the face of crippling self-doubts and lack of support from family and peers, and training programs that are often quite grueling and brutal. During one rehearsal, Tsukikage is unhappy with Maya for not reaching the emotional peak needed to perform the scene and slaps her repeatedly until she gets it right. The rivalry between Maya and Ayumi mirrors that between Hiromi and Reika in Ace o Nerae!, or Kozue and Yoshimura in Attack No. 1.
A live action version adapted the first 38 volumes of the series in 1997, and continued in 1998 as "Garasu no Kamen 2." Both productions starred Yumi Adachi as Maya Kitajima.
