Princess Resurrection Nightmare

Princess Resurrection Nightmare is listed as a sequel, but that’s not really a good description. When things come to a close, it becomes clear that it is technically a sequel, but in a pretty convoluted way. This manga begins with the cast of the main series waking up without any memories of who they are or of their relationships to one another. They gain what memories they need as they go, but a full recovery of memories doesn’t occur until the end of the manga. Thus, for all intents and purposes all character development and relationship development has been reset to what it was atthe beginning of the original manga. Furthermore, the battle for the throne is seemingly ongoing so the overarching plot has been reset as well. Thus, I think it’s probably better to think of this as an alternate story or side story, though neither of those fit quite right either. Still, this is definitely a series you should only read after having read the main series and thus this review will heavily use comparisons to the main series. The cast was one of the highlights of the main series but unfortunately, the cast of this sequel just isn’t as good. They’re the same characters for the most part so it’s not like they’re terrible, but the writing is noticeably worse. Hime doesn’t pull off her regal air as well as in the main series. Riza and Reiri don’t pull off their frenemies relationship as well as in the main series. Hiro is even more useless and unlike the main series, doesn’t grow at all into becoming useful. And Sherwood got replaced by someone who isn’t anywhere near as fun or likable. Another area the writing is weak is the overarching plot, which this time is ultimately complete nonsense. The plot in the main story had issues as well and left a lot unresolved, but it was nowhere near as bad as this. It’s overtly convoluted and ties things together in an incredibly forced way. And the ending made it all feel completely pointless, resulting in it being incredibly unsatisfying. As with the main series, this too is mostly composed of unrelated episodes of Hime and company dealing with supernatural incidents. The writing on the mini-episodes was fine, but they still didn’t work as well as in the main series. They just aren’t able to capture the atmosphere as well. I think this largely comes down to the art. The art is better in some ways and worse in some ways, but for the story that the manga is trying to tell overall I’d say it’s worse. It looks more sanitized and cleaner, which doesn’t really work well with the somewhat horrific and mysterious atmosphere it’s going for. tl;dr: A sequel that’s more of the same but not as good.