Mushikaburi-hime
Bibliophile Princess

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After I was disappointed in the decline of quality I decided to read the official releases (up to chapter 32). Sadly, the disappointment turned into frustration while catching up.

The characters were shoujo-esque cute with their own twist and made this enjoyable for the first some chapters. The story was focused on the romance between MC and FMC with a political conflict going on. While not too deep of a story, it was sufficient to entertain. But all that went to nothing when the first arc ended. Now the manga has no direction and the characters behave weirdly and inadequate when considered the way they were ... before. There was no happening to bring forth these changes and it made me feel detached with the whole cast. It is pretty much a cliche shoujo with lame characters and no proper story. Only ML was kept consistent but it was not enough to keep the same dynamics and slight uniqueness going.

About 8 chapters later and still every random schmuck is after FL for no reason, some heavily pursuing her and getting too close for comfort- but she is made to entertain them (enjoys it even?) and doesn't mind getting manhandled by every dude other than her "love interest".. It's not even a "historical romance drama" anymore, it is just some shallow and cringy shoujo trash, sad.

Everything happening anymore is just there to enable another male cast member (or a freshly introduced one) to get close to/feel up/simp for the female lead while she just poker face "endures" it- chapters 37 and 38 are embarrassing...

There also was not a single cute/sweet moment involving the male lead in the past like 10 chapters. After the reveal that both their feelings are mutual it just gets tossed to the side and the huge wave of dudes trying to touchy-feely the princess and her just bathing in it pretty much commences.

Quality is still (heavily-)declining with every upcoming chapter for now. Can't recommend this in good conscience. I was a huge fan but I guess it has to get milked as much as possible as there is an anime adaption coming. Maybe it will work better as an anime, not having to drag cringy arcs on for 5-10 chapters at a time..

TLDR: Very enjoyable first chapters that made me wanna read more but once I reached the second volume, I found myself skipping through most of the pages. Romance feels very forced and unnatural. Also very political which might be interesting for some people. Sadly, I only enjoyed one or two characters of the main cast. Art is very beautiful and typical for a shoujo manga.

More in detail

Plot:
The plot was a bit too messy for me. Maybe because I went in expecting something a bit more... tragedy-like. At least that's what the text on the back of my volumes hinted at, so perhaps that's why I'm ... so disappointed now. There are lots of attempts to build a universe within the manga and I think it worked pretty well. The plot felt pretty boring to me, but maybe that's because I'm not that interested in the politics of a fictional world.

Art:
Very, very, very beautiful and delicate. It fits the manga really well and the covers are beyond stunning. You can tell how much care and love the author used to draw this manga.

Characters:
I really loved the female MC and her family, as well as some servants, but most of them were very forgettable and not very enjoyable. I especially don't like the main love interest, which is kinda unfortunate in a love story. They'll probably get more backstory as the chapters go on but I honestly am not interested in finding out more about most of them.

Enjoyment:
Enjoyed the beginning a lot, then quickly lost interest and motivation to keep reading. I think I just expected the wrong thing, thus not enjoying the more political parts. And again, the romance didn't feel very believable to me which is one of the most important things in a romance manga. Also the comedy elements in the manga were pretty cliché, sadly.