うるわしの宵の月 1

Love Interest Is Kind of Annoying

Useful for getting more used to some alternate forms of casual speech, particularly in the way the boy character talks since he seems to use some Kansai speech. For instance, stem+なよ used as a positive command rather than a negative "don't". わ used instead of よ in some cases. The text is pretty sparse so it's a quick read.

The art is pretty. The story I don't grok with. The idea of “prince girl actually wants to be treated like a princess” is very status quo-sy, but could have been done all right. However, her gender nonconformity comes off more as like a fetish for her love interest, even though the narrative tries to make him out to be a good guy who is just direct with his feelings. He continually makes her uncomfortable by overstepping her boundaries and then apologizes for it (such as getting into bed with her when she says no), with the narrative assuring us that she sort of wanted it anyway so it's okay. The nail in the coffin for me though was when he was talking with his guy friends and asking why other people aren't interested in her romantically/sexually, since her "looks like a guy but is a girl" is just so appealing to him that he can't help but want to observe her and also imagine having sex with her. I believe the story is trying to say that he has good intentions but bad phrasing, and that his interest in her is genuine, but it's hard for me to believe when the main thing that interests him about her is her gender nonconformity, and this is repeated again and again.

It feels like the story is going out of its way to invalidate her opinion, too, since she said she didn't believe in fate and was actively trying to avoid this guy for most of the volume. But obviously, they're going to get together, so that means fate is real and that her opinions about it and the types of relationships she thinks she wants don't matter since other people know better. At that point I just felt sorry for her.