Japanese Title: Flower Flower

 

Genre: Yuri Romance

Length: 2 volumes (discontinued)

 

Positives:

• Art is quite nice with a variety of angles to keep the visuals fresh.
• The characters improve in quality during volume two, until…

Negatives:

• …the manga is cancelled. Cut short at two volumes.
• The princess is an unlikeable brat most of the time.
• The setup is nonsensical.
• The weak prince becomes tiring before long.

(contains mild nudity)

Having read several glowing user reviews on Flower Flower, I expected to find a hidden gem cruelly cut short by the corporate overlord. However, what I found was a manga that surprised me in how long it lasted; I would have cancelled at one volume.

Princess Nina arrives in a foreign country for her arranged marriage with a prince, but upon seeing that he’s a cross-dresser, she chooses the younger prince Shu instead…except he is actually a she, also cross-dressing, just in the opposite direction as her older brother. And so begins the antics between an estranged princess and her husband/wife.

Flower Flower’s biggest problem enters on the first page – Nina. She is an unlikeable brat with her constant spiteful actions to rebel against her arrangement. I have no love for arranged marriages, so I should be cheering for her, but she doesn’t actually fight for her freedom or dignity, instead committing petty acts like hitting Shu out of spite, the one guy/girl on her side in the kingdom. I guess it’s supposed to be funny or endearing, though I don’t see how. Shu, of course, takes this all lying down, being the wimp that she is.

We do see mild improvement in her character and the overall narrative in volume two, but it isn’t much and wasn’t enough to save the project, for it was cancelled soon after. I get the impression that the writer did not know how to start characters as bad/weak while still likeable. The trick is to show all the bad with good motivations underneath (in this case, a mean princess, who is standing up for her freedom) and have at least one characteristic that people can latch onto, say, make her smart or witty. Truth is, Nina isn’t mean enough (proper mean, not petty mean) nor have an interesting characteristic to root for.

With no continuation to Flower Flower, I find no reason for anyone to begin this manga.

Art – Medium

Clean art with a good variety of compositions and angles.

Story – Low

A story cut short just as it started to improve. The first volume is rubbish.

Recommendation: Avoid it. Being incomplete, I can’t recommend Flower Flower, nor for what is there to begin with.

(Find out more about the manga recommendation system here.)