Holiday Review #9: ASSASSIN & CINDERELLA

 Of course, there were plenty of spicy romance manga to go around as well.

Doesn't necessarily mean they were all good ones, though.

ASSASSIN & CINDERELLA (Asashin & Shinderera), by Yuzo Natsuno.  First published in 2022 and first published in North America in 2025.

PLOT:

Neneko (aka "Ri") was supposed to be spying on the notorious, cold-hearted assassin Mi and reporting all that she could gather back to her agency.  Unfortunately "Mi" (aka Omi) has known from the start that his adorable new girlfriend was actually a spy.  To literally save her life, Omi makes Neneko an offer she can't refuse: she can continue to pose as a spy...so long as she marries him.  How is she ever going to get any spying done with a deadly new fiance who can't keep his eyes (or hands) off of her?

STORY:

Assassin & Cinderella wants to be a dark and sexy romance in the vein of Yazuka Lover and other similar manga.  The problem is that it's too lovesick to be dark, it's too chaste and one-sided to be sexy, and the lead couple frankly kind of suck.

As far as both heroines and spies go, Neneko is completely hopeless.  She's the sort of spy who takes a whole year to consider doing such things as "search the personal belongings of my target."  She's got all the spine of a cephalopod and she's so naïve and inexperienced at romance that even a slightly suggestive word out of Omi's mouth turns her into a stammering, blushing puddle.  Every time she takes even the slightest initiative, Omi is there to sweep her off her feet or distract her so that she's always left powerless and swooning.  She might as well be a body pillow for all she achieves.  By the end of the book I wondered if she was purposefully sent on an impossible mission by whatever vague organization she's meant to be working for in the hopes that Omi would simply take care of their least useful asset.

Meanwhile, the reader is constantly told how dangerous Omi is meant to be but Yuzo Natsuno simply cannot communicate that to her audience.  Oh, we definitely see the bloody aftermath of his work from time to time, but neither Neneko nor the reader ever actually sees him in action.  Furthermore, when he's off the clock he's about as ruthless as a rose petal.  His attitude with his fellow assassins is downright casual, and he positively dotes upon Neneko.  The most he ever does is grope Neneko a little while saying sensual yet vaguely aggressive things, and even then his hands never dip below the waist.

I thought the whole appeal of this sort of romantic fantasy was that the guy is legitimately dangerous, that he is literally just as capable of hurting the heroine as he is of ravishing her and it's this constant tension that is part of the vicarious thrill.  Natsuno presumed that the vibes of danger were enough to get by, particularly if she nerfed her heroine to compensate, and she could not be more wrong.

ART:

Assassin & Cinderella is a study in visual excess.  Neneko and Omi might as well be different species, as his chiseled body, mussed hair, and fine but confident linework stands in stark contrast to the short, hatchy linework and curious pull between cutesy and sexy with Neneko's design.  For example, her bangs curl and fold in such a way as to evoke the folded ears of a puppy or a Scottish Fold, further reinforcing how cute and helpless she's meant to be.  Yet she has the plump thighs, basketball boobs, and flexible spine of a fanservice character, despite the fact that closest she ever gets to fanservice is regularly getting groped from behind and some clingy costumes that just reinforce how poorly those boobs and thighs fit on her otherwise delicate frame.

The sad thing is that Natsuno is not a completely untalented mangaka.  There are some pages that are stylishly put together and some poses that would be legitimately sensual if she let things escalate beyond cuddling or if Omi didn't have creepy, spidery yaoi hands.  It'd be even better if she didn't lean so much on chibi reaction shots for comedy or didn't constantly try to fill the frame with Neneko's limp, noodley hair.  It's just that there's no focus to be found her, be it in design or mood.

RATING:

Assassin & Cinderella is a tease and a mess.  It knows what it wants to be but it lacks the characters, mood, and style it needs to pull it off.  It's not sexy, it's not romantic, it's not dangerous, it's just a waste of your time.

This manga is published by Square Enix Books.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 5 volumes available.  2 volumes have been released and are currently in print.

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