The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

The Small-Animallike Lady Is Adored by the Ice Prince

What's It About? 

I'm Liliana, the daughter of an earl, and I'm in a terrible bind. For some reason, when the “Ice Prince,” Prince William, hosted a party to find his bride, I was the lucky guest he chose! Except…living a life as royalty is just about the last thing I want. So my goal is to break off my engagement―the sooner the better! But why is it that day by day, His Highness's attitude only grows sweeter…?

The Small-Animallike Lady Is Adored by the Ice Prince has a story by Mugi Sawai and art by Hisui, with English translation by Emma Schumaker. This volume was lettered by Oliva Osanz Gonzales. Published by Yen Press (October 15, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

At least a few times in each Manga Guide there comes a story that's remarkably unobjectionable and cute that makes me feel guilty for rating it poorly. This is one of them. The Small Animal Like Lady is Adored by the Ice Prince at least lets its art do a lot of the talking instead of indulging in overwritten narration: Liliana is shown to be shorter than most of the people around her and we see how her cheeks puff out like a small rodent's when she's eating without anyone slapping a nickname involving “hamster” on her – and even more, there are no twee images of tiny hamsters eating sunflower seeds next to her. The art trusts us to get the message, and that also goes for William's feelings about her. He never flat-out says that he “adores” her, or even that he finds her fascinating because she's Not Like Other Girls™; we see his feelings written in his awkward body language when he decides to begin feeding her cookies and later attempts to refrain from touching her since he made her uncomfortable before. With such well-worn storylines, it's hard to overstate how important this level of trust between artist and reader is.

But the story treads such familiar ground that it still drags the volume down. Liliana doesn't want to become Crown Prince William's chosen betrothed at the selection ball (and neither do her doting male family members), so she tries to be deliberately unattractive and dowdy. Naturally, this simply makes her stand out all the more, and then her unvarnished self, presented in another attempt to get him to change his tune, finishes the job of making him fall irrevocably in love with her. If you've been reading shoujo or josei pseudo-European fantasies, you've almost certainly read this story before.

The good news is that if you enjoy this plot, the book does it pretty well. The mean girls are summarily dispatched, the doubting princely brother is similarly handled quickly, and darn it, Liliana is awfully adorable when she's shoving pastry in her mouth. Her commitment to just being herself is admirable, even if she's doing it in hopes of William dumping her, and both of them are decent characters. The art is a little fussy, filled with excessive frills and a truly baffling number of sparkles in Liliana's eyes, but as I said before, other things more than make up for that. Simply put, this is perfectly fine, and it seems to be fine with being fine. It's pleasant but not much more than that.