The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

The White Rose and the Black Lion

What's It About? 

Lady Elesia has long idolized the Robin Hood-like figure known only as the Black Lion, so much so that she asked her father to teach her swordplay, archery, and how to ride a horse despite those being unladylike pursuits. When her father vanishes and a corrupt churchman claims her family lands and tries to make Elesia his mistress, she takes her skills and goes to the last place her father was seen, the Duke of Bristol's castle, where she disguises herself as a boy named Willy to try and find her father. But when the man who wants her for his own shows up, will Elesia manage to maintain her ruse, or will the handsome duke prove to be an unexpected ally?

The White Rose and the Black Lion is written and illustrated by Rikako Tsuji. It was released digitally by SB Creative in March and retails for $5.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It you've been browsing the romance manga offerings on Kindle lately, you may have noticed a slew of recent releases labeled “romance comics” that look awfully like the manga editions of Harlequin novels. There's a good reason for that: Rikako Tsuji, the creator of this volume, and a few other Harlequin adaptors have been penning their own original manga based on the same basic set of tropes that Harlequins use. Takako Hashimoto, another creator in the field, referred to these original works as “fanfiction” in the afterword to Love Letters Against the Deep Blue Sea, and while that's not true in the sense that we use the word (or even in the doujinshi sense, since these are all published by a real live publisher), it's as good an explanation as any, because both this volume and the Hashimoto really do read like series romance.

As a note, “series romance” refers to Harlequins or any similar imprint; “romance” means titles published without that sort of heading, and typically series romances are a lot less raunchy than plain old romance novels, which are closer to TL manga in terms of content. That means that The White Rose and the Black Lion has minimal nudity and nothing more explicit than kissing on the page, and that in turn says that if you like gooey shoujo romances, these may just be right up your ally, especially since this one is complete in one volume. The story has a lot of the basics that make shoujo romances so much fun, too: Elesia is a strong heroine who is invested in standing up for herself and doing what she has to in order to get the job done, and if that means cutting off all of her hair and masquerading as a boy to save herself, she's not going to balk. Leonard, the young and handsome Duke of Bristol, naturally figures out what's going on relatively quickly and takes awkward steps to keep her (and her secret) safe, and while all that's going on, they're naturally falling for each other. The storytelling isn't perfect – there are some scenes that feel truncated and illogical skips in the narrative, but it does come together to create a perfectly acceptable whole, kind of like the literary equivalent of eating pie for breakfast: not the most informed decision, but one that's kind of hard to regret.

Tsuji's art is very much of the period she began her career in – the early 1990s – and three-quarter profiles are definitely not her strong suit, but the backgrounds have a lovely sense of place and time and the clothes are luscious and impressively accurate. There are a couple of misspellings in the translation, but it overall reads very nicely, and honestly, it's so much like a western series romance that I spent hours checking and double-checking that it isn't one. It's a fun bit of escapism and really proves that tropes have no boundaries, so if you're a romance reader, series or otherwise, both this and the Hashimoto book are worth checking out.

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Faye Hopper

Rating:

The White Rose and the Black Lion is part of a series called ‘Romance Comics’. These are manga that emulate the narrative conventions of Harlequin Romance Novels. And as that, it is extremely successful Of course, it does not offer much else and indulges in all the outmoded tropes endemic to that genre. But even so, it is perfectly pleasant, and it goes down easy. White Rose is also quite short. At about 130 pages, its plot supplies only the barest essentials of character and scene-setting and wraps all its small parts in a nice, neat bow. This makes it competent but difficult to really invest yourself in. If the book explored Leonard's dissatisfaction with classism and the church's oppression a little more, or if Eleisa's bucking against stifling patriarchy and the injustices committed against her father were given more time, it might be different. But the book instead is content to go about its typical, predictable plot with only the smallest jabs at emotional insight or socially relevant themeing. Top it off with how its romance is composed of the most standard, tried-and-true components (like how Eleisa and Leonard's love was destined, as they met each other once when they were younger and exchanged a ring) and you have a book that, while exactly what it intends to be, never reaches past that goal to be something truly impactful.

The ‘gender disguise’ trope is also one that has never sat well with me as trans person. Despite its ubiquity and the historical import of certain stories that utilize it, it always features people deviating from their assigned-at-birth gender as a mask, one that falls eventually to reveal one's true, fundamental and immutable gender identity. My transness is not a mask. I wouldn't call The White Rose and the Black Lion transphobic—as I wouldn't call Twelfth Night or Mulan transphobic—but this is a trope that, nonetheless, contains ideas about gender identity I am not comfortable with. And while the book does depict resonant moments of Eleisa questioning why she can't be a knight despite her gender, it ultimately comes to the same, status quo-affirming conclusion many of these period romances do. Yes, it pushes against the class and gender dynamics laden throughout these kinds of stories some (like when Eleisa decides to fight back against the priest just before she is rescued by the Black Lion), but it is not enough. It is still, at a fundamental level, built out of the same material of women abandoning their dreams that go against the social grain for marriage and men saving women from forces who want to hurt them instead of women saving themselves.

White Rose is serviceable, and its own, antiquated way, enjoyable. But like the novels it emulates, it is disposable and somewhat insubstantial. And that's fine. Just not something that really sticks in the heart.