Four-Eyed Prince: Volume 1

Four-Eyed Prince Volume 1 cover image is courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.

Rating “T” for “Ages 13+”

Sachiko Ōhashi is in love with a fellow high school student, the quiet boy with a cool demeanor named Akihiko Masuda.  Sachiko calls him the “Four-Eyed Prince” because he wears eye glasses, but this prince rebuffs Sachiko’s amorous advances.  When she is forced to move in with her mother, Ryōko Kozato, because of her father’s recent death, Sachiko is in for a rude surprise.  Akihiko is now her stepbrother.

In Four-Eyed Prince, Vol. 1, Sachiko has to adjust to living with the boy she loves – a boy who is now her stepbrother.  The surprises never stop.  First, she discovers that Akihiko is hiding something behind his nerdy glasses.  Then, she learns about his unusual (for a teen) job, and she starts to wonder how many identities or personalities her new stepbrother has.

[This volume includes the bonus story, “Mean Boy” by Wataru Mizukami.]

THE LOWDOWN:  There is nothing thematically, symbolically, or stylistically in Four-Eyed Prince that sets it apart from other shojo manga (comics for teen girls) situated in high school and involving the romance between a bickering boy and girl who fight all the time, but are going to fall in love anyway.  Even the art is as prettily drawn as the art found in top shojo young romances.

But I like Four-Eyed Prince.  Comics are about pictures/drawings, and when I look at the drawings here, either observing panels as single illustrations or reading them as a sequential narrative, I want more.  And I think many others will, as well.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE:  Fans of high school romantic shojo will want Four-Eyed Prince.

B+