Review: A TALE OF AN UNKNOWN COUNTRY

It's quite rare to see a shojo maid manga.  Maids tend to be there to assist the heroine, not be the focus of the story.  I guess that's technically true for this one as well...look, let me explain below.

A TALE OF AN UNKNOWN COUNTRY (Shirinai Kuni no Monogatari), by Natsuna Kawase.  First published in 2001 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Rosemarie is the princess of a small but impoverished kingdom of Ardela, where even the royal family has to work part-time selling goods to tourists at their castle to get by.  To improve their lot, Rosemarie is to be married to Prince Reynol of the far more advanced kingdom of Yurinela.  Rosemarie has heard nothing but bad things about this prince, so to find out more she poses as "Marie" the maid and joins Reynol's household.  As the two grow closer, Rosemarie starts to worry that she can't reveal her true feelings without offending him and ruining everything.

STORY:

The idea of a princess hiding as a servant is the stuff of fairy tales, so there's no reason you couldn't make it work as part of a shojo romance.  The problem with A Tale of An Unknown Country is that it resolves its central conflict (and thus the romantic tension) far, far too soon.

Rosemarie and Reynol don't really work as a couple because Kawase doesn't give herself enough time to really dig into their characters.  Their dynamic is one that should be ripe for romantic conflict, with Rosemarie being spunky and forthcoming while Reynol is rude and cagey.  It only takes a single spell of sickness for her to break down his emotional walls and win his love and he guesses Rosemarie's true identity almost immediately, so the entire plot of the series is seemingly done within a couple of chapters.  Normally I'm all for not dragging out romances for volumes at a time, but resolving things so quickly doesn't give the mangaka any time to really refine upon these characters.  Without that work, there's no emotional reward for the reader when the two of them do get together.

Kawase tries throwing other random royals between them to keep the tension going, but it doesn't work because she can't let any sort of conflict linger.  The rivals make a bit of a fuss, but their issues are resolved by chapter's end as Rosemarie and Reynol reaffirm their feelings.  It gets repetitious extremely fast, and it makes the whole book feel like it's operating on double speed.

ART:

For a romance that's trying to feel like a modern day fairy tale, there's not much that's magical about A Tale of an Unknown Country.  Kawase's artstyle reminds me a lot of early Fruits Basket: simple, spindly character designs with rather plain features.  Only the odd background serves to give any sense of splendor about all these palaces, and even then they feel positively interchangeable because there's no clear sense of setting or time frame.  She relies a lot on screentones for shading and emotional moments, possibly to compensate for the fact that her characters aren't terribly good at emoting.  It's a book that looks as vague as its title.

RATING:

A Tale of An Unknown Country refuses to let anything linger for long, which completely undercuts its ability to get any sort of long-term plot going or build any sort of emotion.  Combined with its mediocre art, it fails to make any sort of impression.  CMX had a knack for picking hidden gems, but I guess they couldn't pick winners all the time.

This manga was published by CMX.  This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available.  2 volumes were released and are currently out of print.