Akari enters the world of the Kabuki theater, and learns a little about love in the process.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Kanoko Sakurakoji
Translation/Adaptation: Mai Ihara
What They Say
Akari is totally clueless about kabuki–and boys–but she’s eager to learn about both. Her first encounter with Ryusei doesn’t go very well, but with the help of a cat named Mr. Ken, the two teenagers quickly become prince AND princess of kabuki. Love was never so dramatic!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Akari considers herself completely average, and lives her life outside of the spotlight. One day she quite literally runs into Ryusei, one of her male classmates, injuring him in the process. Discovering that he’s a young up-and-coming Kabuki theater actor, she chooses to become his assistant in order to atone for the harm she’s caused. What she soon realizes is that, behind his gruff exterior, Ryusei has a gentler side. He soon comes to rely on Akari, and Akari finds herself falling for him more and more each day. As their love blossoms, however, they’re dealt a harsh blow – because of Ryusei’s family obligations and position as the heir to a line of Kabuki actors, Akari isn’t considered a suitable mate.
Backstage Prince is frustrating in that it avoids some of the most common tropes of shoujo manga while falling face-first into several more. There’s the seed of something very interesting as the manga begins; judging from the author’s margin notes, she has a genuine interest in (if not an abundance of knowledge about) Kabuki theater, and the little tidbits and facts that squeak out from within the pages from time-to-time are interesting and help to set up a good atmosphere for the story. There’s a strong impression that the life Ryusei leads is unlike that of the average person, and so the conflict that arises between his desires and his duties seems more believable than it is melodramatic (though there certainly is plenty of melodrama). Unfortunately, much of the story’s potential is squandered due to several storytelling missteps.
I never thought I’d hear myself say this in regards to a shoujo manga, but one of the major problems that this first volume demonstrates is that the central romance moves too quickly to be believable. I dislike artificially-constructed relationship hurdles as much as the next person, but in this case the narrative strays too dramatically towards the other extreme and allows Akari and Ryusei to enter into a relationship with little drama or turmoil. The fact that they seem to grow so close to each-other so quickly isn’t reinforced by any plot-related elements; Ryusei simply lets on that Akari is the only girl he’s ever been interested in, and that’s that. For several chapters, the manga tells the story of a couple of characters, about whom we know very little, playing at romance, and it’s very difficult to invest much emotional energy in their relationship.
There are also some indicators that Akari’s and Ryusei’s relationship is developing into one of codependency. Ryusei seemingly can’t perform well unless he slips backstage to see Akari several times during a performance; his need to be with her is so intense at times that his actions seem to border on the obsessive. Akari, for her part, has numerous internal monologues that question her own self-worth and worthiness to be in Ryusei’s life. Low self-esteem is, from my experience, a common trait to be found among teens who make up the target audience of this manga, and the heroine’s feelings certainly reflect that. Unfortunately, it’s a condition that’s presented without any sort of nuance; the extent of Akari’s characterization provided by the texts is the fact that both she and her friends believe that she’s completely average, and thus her weepy exclaimations of feeling unworthy to be with Ryusei seem like laments from the mouth of a cardboard stand-up, rather than sympathetic markers of her genuine human insecurities. I personally believe that this is simply another consequence of moving the characters along in their relationship too quickly, rather than fleshing them out as singular entities first.
The story does shake things up later on, when another potential suitor – one who doesn’t have the same family obligations as Ryusei – is introduced. The move is predictable and the potential storyline is left mostly untouched for the time being, but the fact that the central relationship may be tested in some way does give me hope that the story may take a more interesting, dramatic turn later on.
It’s my opinion that shoujo manga is more known for its stories rather than its artwork; appropriately, the character art in this volume is passable but not particularly distinctive. There were several pages that I felt were too crammed full of panels, to the point where many of them were too “busy” to be read clearly. Add to that the fact that many of the pages are also screen-toned to death, and it becomes more work to parse the pages than it really should be.
In Summary
Despite some positive attributes that appear here and there, much of this opening volume is very forgettable. I find that several aspects of the primary relationship are a little bit problematic if examined beyond the most superficial way. If future volumes of Backstage Prince feature more character development for the two leads and manage to test their relationship in more realistic, less obvious ways, this could turn out to be an enjoyable, if unremarkable, story. The author clearly has her heart in the right place, and her interest in Kabuki definitely adds a nice flavor to what might otherwise be a woefully mediocre manga.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: C+
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: VizManga.com
Release Date: March 6th, 2007 (Print)
MSRP: $8.99 Print / $3.99 Digital