Failed Princesses

kandamizuki Mar 6, 2022

7

Something about changing a girl's entire personality and style to match your ideals and only THEN falling in love with her doesn't sit right with me tbh.  Though if that's something you can look past, then this might be worth checking out. 

Curiousmadra Jan 7, 2020

3

Gorgeous animation from this shoujo ai but goddammit the constant changing looks on the characters drove me up the walls!!!!!!!!!

apoc9 Feb 10, 2021

4

The story initially follows gyaru Fujishiro Nanaka, who is all about looks and being pretty. She seems very shallow in the beginning. She doesn’t like the otaku classmate Kurokawa Kaede and calls her ugly. She is very irritated by the fact she is her opposite in doing nothing to bring out her feminine qualities. However, this changes, when Kaede sees Nanaka getting dumped by her boyfriend, after she finds out he has another girl and keeps her only as a backup. Kaede ends up in consoling Nanaka, who starts to be very friendly in return, despite Kaede being bit reluctant. Kaede herself has complex about her looks, even if she isn’t ugly really. Just lacks polish like a diamond in the rough. Thus, story of life transformation begins for both. The series starts with focus on those two characters and then gradually expands to include more into the group. It’s very focused on balancing between friendship and love. While the girls are internally leaning towards feeling on wanting to be something more than friends, they hold themselves back at the level of friendship. The series so far doesn’t go beyond hugging. There is element of unrequited love from one of the friends. It’s emotional, but it lacks any sense of sexual tension, when it comes to those moments of closeness it suffers bit in terms of intensity. From visual perspective the series goes as far to transform looks of two main protagonists, which may be confusing for some. I find it interesting, because it isn’t so common for character such as Nanaka to change in this manner [1]. Art and visuals are nice, with focus on cuteness. Some people compare this series to Girl Friends manga, but for some reason I think Girl Friends is better. It’s ok, but I’m so far not super thrilled about the series after reading several volumes. Japanese language difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores) It doesn’t have furigana. I would say, it’s mostly average difficulty. This review was written after reading 4 volumes of the manga (all existing at the time). Spoilers [1] I have in mind Nanaka’s change of hairstyle, because she already looks good and there isn’t need for her to change it. On the other hand, Kaede starting to use makeup and replacing glasses with contacts is common transformation trope for girls.