Princess Knight is a shoujo manga written by Osamu Tezuka in 1953. It is also one of the earliest shoujo manga in existence. It (probably) inspired many classics like Revolutionary Girl Utena, Rose of Versailles, and many more. I will be reviewing Vertical's release, which is 2 volumes.
Art: Love old Disney cartoons? Then you'll probably love the artwork. Unfortunately, I don't like it at all. The male characters often feature exaggerated facial proportions, while the female characters feature much of the same. None of the characters are particularly attractive, ignoring the young female lead.To go more in depth: The characters usually have rather long noses, floppy feet. Pretty much everything about them is silly. The backgrounds aren't very impressive either. Most of the time the floors look like cushions and the backgrounds are usually not very extravagant. Having such small panels could possibly be an excuse for the lackluster backgrounds.
Story: Nothing too impressive, but I'll try to elaborate. Most chapters follow a set formula of: Bad guy has plan> Plan starts> Plan backfires> next chapter. I can't really elaborate much since there's not so much I can possibly say about it. It would be nothing more than generic by today's standards.
Characters: Everyone is pretty much a cardboard-cutout besides the young female prince. She's interesting because she's forced to lead a life playing both genders, but all she wants is to be female. The villains(for the first half) try to expose the fact that she's a women, and they eventually succeed.
The villains are pretty much standard dumb-asses. There's also a prince and he's apparently handsome.
Enjoyment: You'll probably enjoy this as long as you don't take the story seriously. Because it's certainly not a well written piece. I would suggest only reading this if you're interested in the history of shoujo manga, or huge disney fans.
Recommendations:
-Revolutionary Girl Utena
-Rose of Versailles
-Fushigi na Melmo
