Princess Prince

I randomly remembered while I was flipping through Call Me Princess how much I enjoyed the Tomoko Taniguchi stories that I read. I’m a big fan of girly shoujo, so I thought it might be good to pick up some of the other series that I hadn’t read. This and Miss Me were the results of this decision.

I was not disappointed. Princess Prince is actually a really good, if somewhat flawed, girly shoujo story. It features gender swapping like Popcorn Romance did, and more than one instance of gender confusion. Much to my surprise, it’s actually a collection of short stories, with one being unrelated and the other three being about the Princess Lori/Prince Matthew main story. That story was actually really engrossing and had all the embarassing shoujo elements that I wanted (they’re from the kingdom of gemstone and part the plot revolves around special stone that unknown evil is trying to get… oh, and there’s a prophecy). The story forgot to tie up some loose ends and resolve some things (Princess Lori and Jenny’s fate was left hanging), but it was good otherwise.

Yeah though, real embarassing. The unrelated story was perhaps set in the kingdom of tears or something. But they do feel sort of classic, which is nice, and they are EXACTLY what I was looking for when I bought them. If you want some sappy classic girly shoujo, this is it, but just remember that the stories aren’t exactly… er, flawless.