The Lizard Prince

Well what we have here has to be my second favorite thing out of the big box of awesomeness that was sent to me by the guys over at CMX, some shojo goodness, “The Lizard Prince”!

“The Lizard Prince” is a shojo series by Asuka Izumi that as I said is being released in the US by CMX Manga. Our story begins with our main female protagonist Princess Canary learning of an arranged marriage between herself and Prince Heath who is infamous as a gambler, a drinker and a philanderer. As a result she is far from keen about this and as it happens, neither is Heath who as a man’s man wants to keep his philandering, drinking and gambling ways, an understandable motivation. Therefore he decides to send the talking lizard which happens to hang around with him to meet Canary in his body.

However, as the old quote goes “The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley” (not that it was a good plan in the first place though) so the talking lizard ending up falling in love with the Princess himself and is unable to break off the marriage, instead arranging to meet the Princess again, who has also fallen in love with the lizard, in the guise of Heath. As you could guess, Heath is a bit miffed at the lizard and decides that if he wants to get something done, he needs to do it himself, and so he goes to meet Canary with the lizard following. Canary quickly realizes that the Heath she was talking to now is not the Heath that she had fallen in love with (a.k.a. not an asshole) and demands the truth from Heath. It ends up that Canary kisses the lizard, thus revealing that he is in fact Prince Sienna, the elder brother of Heath, who was placed under a curse many years ago after his brother killed a lizard. The curse was lifted by true love’s kiss, returning him back to his human form and Sienna starts courting Canary instead of Heath.

This is where “The Lizard Prince” was originally intended to end, as a one-shot, however it seems that after winning an award for it, it was decided that the story would be continued. So it turns out that although the curse had been lifted, Sienna could transform back into a lizard at will, though returning to normal is completely random. The plot after this follows the developing relationship between the two, taking us through the various trials that they face as a couple.

The word “charming” describes “The Lizard Prince” perfectly, I was completely drawn into the story and the relationship between Canary and Sienna really struck a chord with me. Whilst some of the parts of the plot may sound a bit stereotypical and the first chapter borrows heavily from the classic tale “The Frog Prince”, it never feels contrived or forced at any point and the characters are endearing. However that is not to say it doesn’t have it’s flaws, for example the author has made the rather annoying decision to name all her characters after colours, but at least as a result of this there aren’t any “Sasuke”s or “Zero”s in this series.

One thing that the author is fond of, it seems, is role reversal. Canary is strong-willed and is also physically strong whereas Sienna is less assertive and has a soft heart which at times gets him into difficulties, this is echoed though other couples that the two encounter which proves to be a relief from the typical romance story where the man is always the dominant partner in the relationship.

One thing that does let it down a bit is the very much weaker bonus story that is included at the end of the first volume, which Azumi herself acknowledges it as being unpolished, which is understandable as it was one of her first works. But this really is just one flaw in an otherwise excellent book.

This really is a thoroughly enjoyable series that I would have to recommend to any shojo fan, especially if you happen to prefer the light-hearted side of the genre, because there isn’t much drama so far in the first volume. So don’t be going into it expecting anything hard-hitting because this is really just one of those series that will leave you with a nice warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

“The Lizard Prince” is being released by CMX Manga, Volume 2 comes out on the 16th of March.