Do you like shojo adventure stories? Are you up to date on Yona of the Dawn and seeking something else in a similar vein? This series is easily your best bet.
PRINCE FREYA (Itsuwari no Fureiya), by Keiko Ishihara. First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2020.
PLOT:
Ever since her mother fell ill, Freya has depended upon the kindness of the village for their survival. They do this not only out of the kindness of their hearts, but also because Freya's eldest adoptive brother Aaron is a personal knight to Prince Edvard, and as such one of the few people keeping the invading forces of the kingdom of Sigurd at bay.
Then everything goes drastically wrong. Freya learns that the prince is dying of poison, and with his dying words he tasks her with taking his place. She manages to save Aaron from enemy forces, only to lose him shortly thereafter. Now she and her other adoptive brother, Alek, must grapple with their grief and guilt all while Freya learns how to act like a prince.
STORY:
The last time I talked about a Keiko Ishihara manga, it was the short Taisho-era drama The Heiress and the Chauffeur. In that review, I called out how well Ishihara was able to fuse the look and tone of Taisho-era girls' fiction with modern shojo sensibilities and looks. With Prince Freya, she's working with a much older and vague fantasy setting, but she still manages to accomplish much the same with an even more ambitious premise, one with echoes going all the way back to Princess Knight.
I'll admit I wasn't entirely sold on Freya at first. She's sheltered and sensitive to the point of weepiness, and in lesser hands she could turn into the sort of wibbly, passive jellyfish heroine that I dislike. While Freya never loses her sensitivity, she also gets to demonstrate some bravado and resolve as the story progresses. Even then, she has to struggle not just with impersonating a person she never knew whose station couldn't be any farther removed from her own but also crippling grief over a beloved brother (and ever so briefly, quasi-love interest) and the dawning comprehension that she will never be able to go back to her mother and her simple village life.
I'm just saying, she's got a lot to cry about.
That's not all that Prince Freya has to offer, though. There's also Alek, who is almost as much of a protagonist as Freya herself. He was already suffering from a massive inferiority complex around Aaron, but the sudden loss of his brother coupled with being one of the few people who knows the truth about Freya and Edvard adds a load of survivor's guilt to his emotional burden. He wants nothing more than to commiserate with Freya over their loss, but her sudden elevation combined with a lot of aristocratic snobbery within the knights makes it increasingly hard for him to get close to Freya. This isn't helped by Julius, the head of the knights who is at once one of Freya's best advisors but also something of a playboy who clearly sees Alek as competition. That's not even getting into the other two knights we meet, along with all the obvious political intrigue within and outside of the court. Put all together, it makes for a really sound foundation for what is shaping up to be an excellent shojo adventure.
ART:
Once again, I'm impressed with Ishihara's art. Her character designs are nothing special, but they emote well and she takes care with the details on things like the armor. At the very least, having all these guys around Freya allows her to show off a decent variety of male characters designs. Her panels stride the line between practicality and prettiness - just enough layering and screentones to keep things interesting but done with enough restraint to keep the pages readable.
RATING:
This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 10 volumes available. 8 volumes have been released and are currently in print.
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