Oujisama no Yume Utsutsu

“I don’t want to wake up.” Fairy Tales, we all know them. Some of us secretly pine for them and hope for our very own "prince charming." Of course, I'm talking about the girls in this case. No offense to the dudes who secretly pine for a damsels in distress and want one for their own to treat as a princess. Wait, do those guys still exist? Ha, I kid. We’ve all heard of the all mighty fairy tale's kiss. The one moment in the story that makes little girls eyes everywhere sparkle and hold their breath to hear or see confirmation that everything did indeedturn out as they wished and the princess was woken up by true loves first kiss. That everything worked out perfectly and everyone is happy. As we get older our feeling towards fairy tales and prince's change, but not always in the way we hope. But we'll always remember what made us fall in love with them to begin with; True love at it's finest and simplest. But, What if it wasn’t a princess but a prince who got cursed into deep sleep? What if the one meant to save him wasn’t a princess but a witch? What if he didn’t want to be saved? On the surface it’s just a fairy tale story. So simple you can practically hear the "happily ever after" writing itself at the end. But the underlying message in this manga is what made me smile at the little kid inside me who agreed with the prince, wholeheartedly. Growing up is hard to do... Here we have Prince Lulnavul who through a curse is asleep for four years and no one has yet been able to wake him. His father, The King, growing impatient and desperate announces that whomever wakes our dear prince from his slumber will get a reward of their choosing. It’s worth a shot, so what if ninety nine other people have tried and failed. None of them were Sayla, our very own witch. I didn’t expect it to be such a nice fairy-tale. And that makes me feel bad even now, just because most stories lately lack a certain ingredient to make you all warm and fuzzy inside. That’s why I’ve been going back to old anime and manga recently. Sleeping Prince drew me in with the topic of dreams (that's a lie it was the word Prince in the title that drew me in). Dreams have always been puzzling for me. The idea of being awake even while we sleep has an appeal. To create a world of our liking, molding and shaping it to our desires..sounds alluring. Would we eventually want to stay in that world we created, even knowing it’s, sadly, not real? Not having to come back to reality sometimes has an appeal to it, specially on bad days. Prince Lulnavul voiced some of the things I’ve though about and I’m sure you have to, at some point. Through a simple curse his life changed completely. And with the help of a friendly neighboring witch the curse can finally be broken. The question is, can they break it in time? Not to say that the manga filled in every detail and was perfect, it wasn’t perfect but it was a smooth ride of a read. For it being a short manga, the characters are warm and slip into their roles effortlessly. Actually, the character development is great for a one-shot. Them being strong willed and easy going at the same time makes it easy to follow the story and to go on the journey with them, though a short one. The art was very eloquent and pretty in showing us the royal setting. I also thought the younger versions of the characters were very well drawn. Along with their clothes and features were nice on the eyes. A fairy tale with a twist. Who says all witches are bad? “You know, grownups only have dreams that they know come true.”