The Hentai Prince and Stony Cat

tl;dr: A manga with an amusing cast and surprisingly solid writing, though pretty bad pacing. This manga is an adaptation of a light novel that also received an anime, wherein the manga adapts exactly the same amount of content as and stops at exactly the same place as the anime. However, I would have to say the anime is a better adaptation than the manga. Thus, if one would have to choose between one or the other, I would highly recommend going with the anime. I also don’t really think there’s much of a point in reading the manga after you’ve seen the anime either. The storyis centered around a boy named Yokodera who is a massive pervert and the various connections he forms with others as a result of a cat statue, or rather a series of cat statues, that can grant wishes. The general structure of the plot involves one or more people making a wish on a cat statue, things going badly, and then Yokodera working to try to reverse the wishes. There some variety to how these wishes work. The first statue for example is limited in that it seems to only have the power to take things such as personality traits away from one person and give them to someone else, the reversing of which requires the person that received the trait to wish for it to be taken back. Thus, reversing this requires Yokodera to try to convince the girl that received his façade personality trait to no longer wish to have one and to be more true to herself. As one would expect, this results in the narrative going in depth into her background and motivations behind making a wish and character development in order to want to reverse it. The plot itself was pretty interesting for the first arc wherein the mechanics to wishing actually felt like they mattered and things were pretty grounded. As the story progresses the following cat statues are a lot more flexible in that they seem to have the power to whatever they want without any requirements and grant completely absurd wishes like turning a school into little Italy without anyone questioning why or sending people back in time. It’s much rougher and random, and thus in terms of the wishes and lore it’s a lot less interesting. But the core of the plot generally remains trying to reverse one or more wishes with this serving as a vehicle for character stories, so that’s not too much of an issue. The character stories are pretty solid. There’s a good variety to them and they can be far more serious than it may seem based on the premise and the title. The three most important characters are Yokodera and the sisters Tsukiko and Tsukushi. There’s a good amount of light romance as you would expect between Yokodera and the two girls, especially Tsukiko, but just as important is the bond between the two sisters in that they are both orphans living alone and that’s left both of them with some long standing issues they need to work through. The writing on this is pretty solid, especially the last arc which had some strong emotional beats and went in ways I really didn’t expect. There are two other characters that also have arcs, Azusa and Ema. Azusa’s was centered around opening her true self up to others and was written pretty well. Her relationship development with Yokodera is also really solid. Ema’s on the other hand was much more nebulous and didn’t come across as well and her relationship development wasn’t that great either, so her arc largely didn’t come across all that well. Yokodera himself in standard harem protagonist fashion doesn’t really ever have an arc focused on him, and though he does get character development, it’s character development with the purpose of growing to be able to help the heroines with whatever issues they’re facing rather than to overcome his own issues. To that end, his character arc very much fulfilled it’s purpose, though ultimately I don’t think it mattered all that much. It is at this point that I will note that the pacing of the plot is pretty bad. It rushes through certain things and thus certain things are somewhat confusing and certain beats don’t land as well. The ending especially is a total mess that goes through things way too quickly. The anime handles things much better, which is the main reason that I think the anime is better and why I would suggest watching that instead of reading this manga if you have the option to do so. Also, while I may have made it sound like this is pretty serious manga, that’s probably me overcompensating for the title and premise which makes it sound like the complete opposite. While it does have more depth that one would expect, it is ultimately a pretty lighthearted manga with a heavy focus on comedy. The comedy is carried by the cast who can be incredibly fun together. Yokodera is a pervert with no shame that does completely ridiculous things constantly but is also really dense on certain matters. Tsukiko is a girl who literally can not express emotions, though she has very strong ones, which results in a very bizarre dynamic. Tsukushi is an incredibly overpowered airhead siscon that can be fooled incredibly easily into believing anything. And Azusa is a tsundere for whom the dere part actually stands out really strongly and who’s pride often results in her generally being the butt of the jokes rather than a pointless aggressor. Just the light hearted and comedic portions is enough to make the cast likable, which makes it a lot easier to be invested in the more serious parts. The comedy too I don’t think comes across as well as in the anime, though I think it was pretty solid in the manga too nevertheless. The art has a nice style and is reasonably high quality. Character designs aren’t that interesting but work well enough for the setting. There weren’t that many panels that made great use of the art and designs though. Also, the manga is full of Oscar Wilde quotes and cat facts if you’re into that. The spin off Nya is just a series of short amusing side stories. There’s no substance whatsoever, but they’re humorous enough.