Johan
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
While I found the art absolutely breath-taking and the story quite interesting for the most part, there's a couple of things that left me (more than) disappointed, enough to make me give this manga only two stars.
First of all, the most relevant to the average reader I guess: there just isn't enough information about the historical and political landscape. Yes, perhaps I should have thought twice before picking an historical drama set on a place and time period I know nothing about, but I still would expect a bit more information (infodump if you want) about it, to sort of "catch up" with it. As it is, the story is interesting and you can sort of follow what happens and the "characters" but it gets a bit tiring because of russian naming conventions and titles.
Second: While probably accurate to how royalty behave, the reveal at the end of the manga was frankly disappointing, boring, it just fell flat and made me think "they had to suffer all of that just for this reason?" It just wasn't very satisfying on a narrative plane.
Lastly, and my biggest complain: What's up with calling this an erotic manga when the only "erotic" content is compromised of multiple rape scenes of a character that is a minor for the most part??? That's just fucked up in so many ways I can't even process what went through the mind of the author and the publishing house for them to greenlight this as erotic?? And then they had the gall to go and make the girl that was raped forgive her rapist?? (And it was even sort of implied that she liked him?? Insane)
I say grab this manga only if you have previous knowledge about the historical and political landscape and are okay with rape apologist narratives because this one sure reek of it.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!
While I found the art absolutely breath-taking and the story quite interesting for the most part, there's a couple of things that left me (more than) disappointed, enough to make me give this manga only two stars.
First of all, the most relevant to the average reader I guess: there just isn't enough information about the historical and political landscape. Yes, perhaps I should have thought twice before picking an historical drama set on a place and time period I know nothing about, but I still would expect a bit more information (infodump if you want) about it, to sort of "catch up" with it. As it is, the story is interesting and you can sort of follow what happens and the "characters" but it gets a bit tiring because of russian naming conventions and titles.
Second: While probably accurate to how royalty behave, the reveal at the end of the manga was frankly disappointing, boring, it just fell flat and made me think "they had to suffer all of that just for this reason?" It just wasn't very satisfying on a narrative plane.
Lastly, and my biggest complain: What's up with calling this an erotic manga when the only "erotic" content is compromised of multiple rape scenes of a character that is a minor for the most part??? That's just fucked up in so many ways I can't even process what went through the mind of the author and the publishing house for them to greenlight this as erotic?? And then they had the gall to go and make the girl that was raped forgive her rapist?? (And it was even sort of implied that she liked him?? Insane)
I say grab this manga only if you have previous knowledge about the historical and political landscape and are okay with rape apologist narratives because this one sure reek of it.