Rated “M” for “Mature Audiences 18+”

Prince Charming, Vol. 1 introduces the main players in Akemi Takaido’s three-volume series about high school friends/lovers.  This yaoi manga (comics created by women for women and which feature explicit sex between young males) focuses on a love triangle of high school boys:  Yuasa, Kagami, and Nagai and their relationship with one of their teachers, a young man named Asahina.

In this first volume, high school student Yuasa Hotoshi discovers an incriminating videotape of his teacher, Asahina Mitsuru, having sex in a “love hotel.”  This explicit evidence of Asahina’s degenerate behavior could cost him his job as a teacher.  Yuasa promises to help Asahina hunt down the master tape and to keep this all a secret… if Asahina will become his lover.

Prince Charming’s narrative seems to have a steady rotation that moves from being a comedy to a drama.  Sometimes, it’s about young men who spend their time carousing – picking up lovers here and there, as easily as they pick up an alcoholic beverage and food at a local shop, and that could be considered the comedy.  Other times, it’s an edgy drama about a teacher allowing himself to be blackmailed into sleeping with a cunning student.  Akemi Takaido’s art nicely captures the neon-lit nightlife in a Film-Noir sort of way.  Readers who enjoy fiction set in the modern hook-up culture may like Prince Charming.

C+