J-Novel Club spent this year churning out another steady stream of iseskai light novels and manga. Most of the time their titles don't capture my attention (with the exception of 'every time a new volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm comes out'), and it's sad that because of that I almost missed out on this title.
THE ENGAGEMENT OF MARIELLE CLARAC (Marielle Clarac no Konyaku), based on the light novel series by Haruka Momo , character designs by Maro, and art by Alaskapan. First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2021.
PLOT:
Marielle Clarac is the mousy daughter of a low-ranking nobleman, one who recently became engaged to the stern, serious Lord Simeon. Marielle couldn't be more thrilled, as she is secretly a best-selling romance novel who uses the intrigues of the nobility as inspiration for her books. She can imagine all sorts of dramatic scenarios, but not even her vivid imagination could imagine that her fiancee might know (and love) more about her than she knows.
STORY:
The Engagement of Marielle Clarac doesn't feel like your typical light novel adaptation, and not just because there isn't the slightest trace of fantasy or isekai to be found here. This doesn't even feel much like your typical shojo manga. It feels more like some frothy, light-hearted romance novel anthology, in the best way possible.
Bless Marielle. She's kind of a disaster, considering how much she lets her imagination run away with her and how little she registers the bullying she receives beyond future story fodder. That being said, it's hard not to love her a little. If anything, I found myself wishing she loved herself a little more. While she's confident in her skills as an author, she's clearly internalized the constant commentary about her plainness and her obligation to marry well. Her insistence that Lord Simeon is marrying her out of obligation and that he could never sincerely love her is the big misunderstanding that drives a lot of the shenanigans in this series, and the series never really stops to think long enough about how sad that truly is.
Speaking of Simeon, he soon proves himself to be more than just a pretty stick-in-the-mud. It turns out that he knows more about Marielle than he lets on, and if anything he's come to love her eccentricities. Well...maybe not the fujoshi streak she shares with her best friend Julianne, but everything else is fine with him. It's almost funny how many of the powerful men around him keep lecturing him to just be honest with her, and the way it works out is legitimately sweet. Now these two can stand together more equally as partners, ready to take on whatever mysteries and intrigues come their way.
ART:
I'm not familiar with the light novels this series is based on, but from what I can tell the manga art is not all that radically different from the light novel illustrations. Both trade in a pleasant if unremarkable brand of shojo character design, where the men are handsome and pointy-chinned and the ladies are wide-eyed and precious. I will say that Alaskapan brings a lot of energy to their art here, which pays huge dividends in selling the reader on the intensity of Marielle's imagination and moods. They are just as adept at the moments of high drama as they are at the comedy and it helps bring the story to life.
This story is set in no particular sort of place or time, where the women wear dresses closer to those from the 1700s and the men wear uniforms and formal wear that falls somewhere between 'vaguely 19th century" and "Takurazuka costume." Alaskapan takes care to make them all suitably fancy without being distracting. The only distracting thing visually was how the darker screentones tended to show up as a strange checkerboard (and I'm hoping that's more of an issue with how Comixology's digital reader displays them).
RATING:
This series is published by J-Novel Club. This series is ongoing with 4 volumes available. 3 volumes are available digitally and can be found on most major digital retailers.
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