vignette00's manga / #multiple couples(36)

"Prince Charming" is not going to be to everyone's taste, but if it's to your taste, like it is to mine, then whooo boy are you in for a treat. Start with a main character (Asahina) who loves sex and is indifferent about teaching but then is about to lose his job bc of his sex hobbies, add in a feisty student (Yuasa) who has a boy's curiosity for Asahina and a man's possessive interest in being with Asahina, throw in Akemi Takaido's trademark humor and characterization with Yuasa's meddling friends Nagai and Kagami, and then add a vigorous and delightful dose of two almost love triangles that collapses into a love square, and you have Prince Charming. What's wonderful about this series is that the plot climaxes never quite come where you think they will. Yes, all the characters in this series are less than sexually monogamous, and yes, Asahina and Yuasa's primary motivations are to have their cakes and eat them too, but refreshingly, sex in this manga is neither the focus nor the answer. Instead, it's more focused on the tangle of relationships: Yuasa's constantly evolving friendship with Nagai, Asahina and Kagami trading teacher and student roles as they navigate sexual attraction and looking after Yuasa, Asahina and Yuasa trying to work out exactly how much commitment and investment they need from each other to feel satisfied. Takaido's characters are filled with contradictory desires, but instead of picking between them, they often try to take all of them at the same time, and instead of rescuing them from their messes, Takaido lets them wallow. Asahina should know better than to sleep with Yuasa -- he doesn't. Yuasa should know his friends and articulate his desires better -- he doesn't. Kagami should just let things well enough alone when it doesn't involve him -- he doesn't. And Nagai should either be hands-off and cool or passionate, not both -- but of course he is both. Which makes for a story that feels like it's full of false starts and promiscuous, distasteful characters, but I find them incredibly realistic and, more importantly, charming. Because the other thing about the people in Prince Charming is that they're never cruel or vengeful. In the middle of an ever tangling love square in volume 2, Kagami and Yuasa put themselves in harm's way for friendship more than for love, and there's a sense in volume 3 that the collapsing of Kagami's leg in the love triangle is more because he can't stand to keep betraying Yuasa's friendship than because he doesn't love Asahina. Kagami's last line in the main story is pretty telling ("I have so many kind people to take care of me!") because the atmosphere of Prince Charming is a happy, caring one. Asahina isn't the best teacher, but he wants the best for all three of his students. No one wants to be the bad guy, even when they're sleeping around. It sounds crazy and against everything bl manga usually stands for. But it works, and miracles of miracles, all four characters make it through to the end of three volumes as, reluctant or otherwise, friends. Probably the only thing that doesn't work for me here is the way Nagai's storyline is bundled up, with a graduated senpai and a blackmailer. The epilogue tries to shed light on the relationship, but only serves to confuse the themes without actually connecting them to the main story. Still, he's a strong enough player in the first two volumes, and is the wry, cool-headed character that the quartet needs, so I can't complain too much. A note that the scanlation job here, after the first volume, consists of someone taking pictures of the book. It's hard to read, faint text, and double pages.

Main character Shun has grown up with twins Eiji and Hide as if they were all brothers. A misunderstanding makes Eiji believe Shun is in love with Hide, when in fact Shun has been pining for Eiji since middle school. When they all get accepted into the same college and end up sharing an apartment, the misunderstanding comes to a head. it's a classic Yamamoto Kotetsuko comic, so there's a saccharine, cute ending with everyone happily paired away. Hide turns out to be hopelessly naive, with an equally shy and innocent love interest, and Eiji turns out to be more of the perverted old man of the two twins. It's cute and sweet enough, just not much more than that.

Four stars for the understated relationship developments that, despite their tried and true nature, still felt real, two stars for the actual writing, which seemed not wholly fleshed out, so we get an average of three. It's not that the stories feel incomplete, but rather that they feel like they're all the first or second chapter of their own longer volume. We get a glimpse of the first couple's dynamic in the second couple's story, when one of them is trying to convince the other not to graduate, and we get a "holding your breath" sense with the second couple, who give this whole volume its name!! yet never seem to get more explanation than "they meet, find that they complete each other, continue to have sex after graduation." So, the rhythms of Fujiatani's storytelling make plenty of emotional sense, but the whole volume makes me feel dissatisfied, like I'm reading the first draft of a longer story.