Prince Naru is next in line for the throne of Nirai Kanai and traditionally the prince would be married off by age 18. The problem is Naru just doesn’t care for any of the fish in the sea!
Naru may be a merman who was raised on stories of how terrifying the human world is but he still finds himself fascinated by it, and when he finally falls in love it’s with a human girl! Naru is willing to give up a lot to try and convince this girl to marry him and so he strikes a deal with a sorcerer to make him human to give him a chance. But he’s used to being fawned over by everyone in his kingdom: can he really convince a girl with no knowledge of his past and position to take a chance on him?
Mermaid Boys does draw from The Little Mermaid fairy tale but only lightly; Naru is a redheaded member of mermaid royalty who saves someone of the opposite gender from drowning, falling in love with them in the process, and Naru does agree to give up a vital part of themselves in order to go on land and woo their love. But Naru is a prince, not a princess, he gives up his good looks not his voice (although oddly enough this just seems to de-age him), and he has a year to form an intimate connection with the human girl Nami. It looks like Yomi Sarachi did adhere more closely to the original fairy tale when she originally posted the story in its earliest form in a series of doodles on her Twitter, but these story changes do lend themselves better to a longer-running story.
Although, she mentions that Naru was “a hundred times purer than he is now” and I, like Nami, think I prefer that version of Naru. Naru is clueless about the human world in cringe-inducing ways (he thinks panties are meant to be worn on the head! He doesn’t understand clothes!) and he’s also not very respectful towards Nami when he first meets her as a human, although that probably has nothing to do with his lack of knowledge about human social norms and more to do with his underlying personality. There are moments when I feel like Nami’s tsundere nature is played up too much but frankly I was surprised that she warmed even the slightest to Naru within this first volume. The boy doesn’t have many positive things going for him! I’m also a little uncomfortable about the age gap in this relationship: Naru is actually 21 and Nami is in high school and I’m always a bit leery when I’m supposed to root for a romantic set-up that has characters on either side of being 18.
Since Mermaid Boys has already deviated so significantly from The Little Mermaid concept — like the title suggests it even brings in more merboys who have become human — I am interested in seeing where the story continues to go. There is the one-year time limit to keep in mind, and it appears that Naru has to specifically get Nami to fall for him, but other than that the story is wide open with few restrictions on it. There’s also the sheer novelty of getting a manga about mermaids licensed in the US since there aren’t many of those, and for the moment that’s enough to keep me interested in continuing with the story.
However, we will have to see if those positive elements will continue to outweigh my exasperation with Naru’s actions and personality. The “humor” in Mermaid Boys could be a real deal-breaker for me but I want to give it the benefit of the doubt when we’re still early on in the story.