Genre: Romance, Drama
Author: Meca Tanaka
Publisher: Viz (US) / Hakusensha (JP)
Serialized In: LaLa
Release Date: January 6, 2015
Review copy provided by the publisher.
I kind of have a thing about short manga series: I don’t really like to invest in them unless I’ve heard they’re particularly good. Despite being short and easier to collect, I’d rather skip a short mediocre series in favor of picking up another volume of a longer-running series. Occasionally though there are shorter series that catch my eye, and Meca Tanaka’s Meteor Prince was one of them. Despite the done before premise and the generic shoujo cover, Meteor Prince has more substance than I expected.
Hako is unlucky and always has been. Despite being well-liked and friendly, he has had a string of lifelong bad luck that never seems to leave her. So when a nude boy — an alien nude boy at that — falls out of the sky and declares Hako his mating partner, it’s just another day on the unlucky train for Hako. The boy, named Io, is adamant about Hako being his partner and wastes no time in trying to consummate their non-relationship. Hako then also wastes no time in giving Io a quick lesson on the concept falling in love and the importance of consent, and it’s then that Io decides to try falling in love with Hako the old-fashioned way.
Over at Manga Bookshelf last week, Michelle Smith hit on exactly why this first volume of Meteor Prince felt so appealingly familiar to me: “If you miss the breed of shoujo that CMX used to release, you really ought to check out Meteor Prince.” Much of CMX’s shoujo had a “B-grade” feel to them — not meant as a slight at all — and a certain warmth and consistency that still made them worth checking out despite not being positioned as shoujo blockbusters. (In fact, the defunct CMX did release one of Tanaka’s older series, Omukae Desu.) Meteor Prince has the warmth that some of its CMX cousins had; things never feel quite too heavy, but the author explores topics like consent and dealing with a partners past traumas and hangups in a heart-warming way.
While Hako has somewhat idealized concept of love, the reader never gets the sense that she’s particularly shy or bashful about her attraction to Io; it’s more that she just wants to go about getting to know one another the “right” way. It’s also easy to see why Hako and Io would like each other too, as both are fairly good people with open hearts. Io in particular has an innocent boyish quality to him. Some of that stems from him being from another culture and planet, but the quickness in which he decides to consider Hako’s consent and love is noteworthy. Still, even with Io certain that he’s “destined” for Hako, the chemistry between them doesn’t feel forced. Essentially, Meteor Prince feel like two kids falling in love.
The series is especially short one as the next volume is the last, but the obvious questions remain: Will they fall in love? Is Hako really Io’s destined partner? I imagine this story probably wraps up predictably enough, but Io and Hako are just so darn cute that I’m completely game to finish this series. It’s a sweet shoujo twist on “random soon to be love interest falling out of the sky” and I’m glad Viz picked this one up.