Boku wa Ohimesama ni Narenai

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I found this piece of a gem in a manga app. And i'm glad I did.

Boku wa Ohimesama ni Narenai is one of those manga you'll forget after a short while but the time you had reading it was filled with joy. I'm actually a bit surprised why this manga isn't as popular on this site because it definitely deserves to be.

Here's why.

There's funny characters, amazing facial expressions, and a lot of ridiculous dialogue. The cast is incredibly stupid as they pretty much misunderstand everything that they hear but the things they do because of those misunderstandings always makes me smile. The art on the ... other hand is also great. Once you read a few chapters, you'll find it surprising how such simple artwork can bring out the best of a laugh. The facial expressions, in particular, is what i'm talking about. Those faces are just...extremely funny. Never gets repetitive.

I guess the only problem I might have with this manga is that it ends rather suddenly. It honestly leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

With that said, you definitely should read Boku wa Ohimesama ni Narenai. Just beware of that ending. If you like a funny cast of characters, simple but good artwork, and ridiculous comedy then this right here fits the bill.

i kinda go back and forth on this manga's quality. as you read in the synopsis, it's about a girl who dresses like a boy and the various shenanigans this causes for her and others. while it's accurate, it's almost a bit lacking. it seems strange to say this, but i'd call this manga rather shakespearean in its story telling. not in the sense of "eminently quotable and legendary piece of art", but in the sense of "this story runs solely on misunderstandings which compound themselves into increasingly worse situations because the characters are incapable of being honest". like romeo and juliet, hamlet, or many ... other of his works, the main narrative thrust of a lot of shakespearean plays involved a failure (whether intentionally or unintentionally) to communicate. like those plays, bokuhime uses these misunderstandings as fodder for both comedy and drama.

the reason i related this to shakespeare was because of similar feelings i had while reading both works. my main feeling, to put it bluntly, was frustration. so much of the drama could have been prevented with honesty, and i feel like the social aftermath of shindou's gender confession could've even been as (if not more) interesting than the story we actually got. many times i was almost yelling at the characters to finally be honest about who they were and/or what they were thinking, because the moments where they did so were easily the most interesting. however, those were too few and far between.

although i spent a lot of time dumping on this manga, i will say that i didn't hate reading it. the comedy was pretty decent, the art was fine, and the characters were generally entertaining. i don't know that i would read through it again, but if you're bored and just want to read a silly manga about a crossdressing girl, you could do a whole lot worse.

Someone who writes like this...how do I say it? It feels a bit insecure.

Now this might be a complete personal and biased attack but that's just part and parcel of it being my review. Writing in so many different characters with different relationships doesn't make me be more enthralled with your world and people around it. Instead I kind of just find every character to be shallow since all the interactions are one off, and once a character is introduced they are reduced to a few pet traits mainly because there's too many characters to go through. If you wanted to world build buddy, ... maybe slice of life comedy romance isn't it. Maybe write high fantasy or sci-fi.

It screams lack of confidence since the author is worried that the main pairing and story would be too plain and he wouldn't be able to keep a reader's attention for so long since there's not enough material for him to think about. He'd be right. I mean, this is why oneshots are so common and also easier to write. It's easier to write a 9 different one-shots than it is to sustain a 9 volume long-standing series.

When you keep on writing in more and more side characters, you can sustain a series for longer. You can kind of avoid the main storyline or issue and create more trivial side characters to lengthen a story, and that's basically what this guy did. A simple 3-5 chapter story got lengthened to a 32 chapter run.