Review: FOUR-EYED PRINCE

I don't know if it's reassuring or not that Kodansha has always been peddling shojo manga about taming Asshole-kuns to Americans, even when they were Del Ray Manga.

FOUR-EYED PRINCE (Megane Oji), by Wataru Mizukami.  First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Sachiko thought it was bad enough when her confession to the stoic class prince Akihiro was rejected.  Then she had to move in with her long-absent mother after her grandmother had to go to a nursing home, and during that time her mother married Akihiro's father.  Now her crush is her step-brother and the two of them have to find a way to live together harmoniously.  That's no small challenge considering that Sachiko's crush is still going strong in spite of Akihiro's regular attempts to needle her, embarass her, and deny any connection to her as much as humanly possible.

STORY:

I have to remind myself every time I cover a shojo manga like this is that it's meant to be nothing more than a fantasy and a diversion, but even I have a hard time anyone could find Four-Eyed Prince diverting.  This isn't some Hot Gimmick-level trainwreck where you can't look away, this is just the story of an asshole teen boy and the step-sister who loves him anyway for reasons I cannot comprehend.

I'm inclined to go easy on Sachiko.  Much about this situation is forced upon her, and she has to make the best of it if she wants to have a place to live and something like a family.  For the most part she doesn't let Akihiro's attitude get to her, let his comments slide off her like water on a duck's back. In true shojo heroine fashion, she manages to wear him down somewhat not just through persistence but through her vocal admiration of all of his good qualities.  She's still all hot for him even after he publicly acknowledges her as his step-sister, though, and that never stops being weird.

Akihiro himself is a real piece of work.  Most people wouldn't go so far as to construct personas to use at both school and their (dubiously legal) bar job just to keep the "sluts" (his word, not mine) at bay.  Of course, all this nastiness is just a front for his abandonment issues, as it doesn't take long for him to reveal that his dad left to dodge his Yazuka debts and that he wants to be able to be independent and not rely on anyone for support of any sort.  From there he settles into the more typical hot-and-cold routine you expect from these sort of shojo love interests, but there's always a cruel, calculated edge to it that feels bad.

Things escalate quickly, ranging from 'cutest sibling' contests to a hot springs trip where they end up trading partners with a normal teen couple.  Mostly it's all just an excuse for two things:

1. For Akihito to continue to berate and tease Sachiko, including using other girls to make her jealous (because she's not shy about her continued intentions towards him).

2. For other dudes to make aggressive moves on Sachiko so Akihito can save her.

It's clearly intended to be trashy good fun, but between Akihito's bitter undertones and Sachiko's dedication to banging her step-brother spoil any fun that can be mustered from the story.  That's not even getting into the side-story "Mean Boy," where a studious young girl ends up working as a part-time maid for the imperious rich boy at her school.  As the title would suggest, he acts like a total dick to her until she blackmails him with the knowledge of his neglectful businessman father.  He counters with a full-on makeover and the two proceed to flirt and snipe in equal measure on quasi-dates until they kiss in sincerity.  This one is even more explicitly an escapist fantasy, but I just don't understand why that fantasy has to come hand in hand with the most insufferable teen boys.

ART:

I was kind of surprised to learn that this manga ran in Nakayoshi, as the thin hair, spindly bodies, and proportionately enormous saucer eyes on everyone here looks closer to what Arina Tanemura and her many contemporaries were doing at more child-oriented shojo magazines like Ribon or Ciao.  It's a curious artistic choice to make at a time when this character design style was falling out of fashion and one that makes it look more childish than the content might suggest.  To Mizukami's credit, this is about as excessive as their art gets.  Their paneling is fairly straightforward and they don't bog down their pages with an excess of screentones and pattern outside of Sachiko's imagination.

RATING:

Four-Eyed Prince is just a bespectacled dud, leaning heavily on the taboo nature of its central couple and its leading man's attitude problems to carry it through.  It's not terribly romantic nor is it terribly fun.  It's just terrible.

This series was published by Del Ray Manga.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  3 volumes were released and are currently out of print.