What’s it about? Yoi has been nicknamed The Prince thanks to her above-average height, lower-pitched voice, and facial features that skew more “handsome” than “pretty.” While she’s uncomfortable with this label and the attention it gets her, she’s too awkward and too kind to speak up for herself. But her school life changes when she runs into Ichimura, a popular and mysterious boy also nicknamed Prince. Though he seems more punk than princely, he’s the first person to see past Yoi’s reputation and express an interest in the beautiful girl beneath the crown.
Folks, I’m of two minds about this one. On the one hand, I think it’s valuable to tell a story about how the rigid expectations of femininity can restrict access to the concept of girlhood itself: Yoi has been un-womaned in the eyes of her peers because she’s failed to meet the ridiculously narrow standards of what a beautiful girl “should” look like. She’s been effectively misgendered her whole life and shoved into a masculine role she doesn’t identify with, due to physical characteristics like her height and voice that she can’t control. The storytelling makes it clear how much this upsets her (getting stabbed in the head with the “male” symbol and making a noise of anguish when Ichimura asks “you’re a dude?” is pretty strong imagery!), but also highlights how difficult it is to push back and get people to see her as she truly is.
Gendered expectations are so unforgiving that we have a cis protagonist with honest to goodness dysphoria. Maybe I’m coming at this from a genderqueer perspective that the work itself wasn’t trying to capture, but it’s a character conflict that I sincerely think is worth exploring. After all the shy sadness this premiere sets up, it would be lovely to see Yoi repair her tattered self-esteem, feel the validation of being recognized as the gender she identifies with, and get to experience the girlhood she’s been locked out of for such arbitrary but socially-ingrained reasons.
On the other hand…
The Afictionado 