One Thousand and One Nights is inspired by the namesake tale, and retains the format of telling stories within a story. One major change to the “main”, overarching story would by that, you’ve guessed it, the position of a princess is overtaken by a man, giving it a yaoi-ish vibes. Fortunately, it doesn’t go much sexual so rather than being very explicit – which usually doesn’t end up well for the quality of the work, One Thousand and One Nights stays on the fanservice and teasing level.
This format is why I found it a bit difficult to rate – because the inside stories, while themselves varying in quality, mostly weren’t bad. However, the main storyline didn’t interest me much. The character of a sultan was unsympathetic right from the start (though understandably so), but has stayed uninteresting to the end, with the little progress feeling undeserved as the story blamed his situation and others for the sultan’s fault. This ended up causing fluctuation in enjoyment, depending on which part the story currently focused on. The story within a story format also started being a bit confusing with later volumes, as not just tales, but also historical events (though not entirely historically accurate) and even contemporary, modern age stories were woven in.
This paired with final volume that seemed like it’s taken out of a completely different series with its sudden shift in the plot made me lean more towards the rating of 5 rather than 6. After all, adding up the 6/10 of the inside stories and 4/10 of the main story does have a simple mathematical answer.
