Nina lives a rough life in the slums of Dayah, Fortna, but even she never expected to be sold off into slavery by the people she considered family. Bought for her lapis lazuli-colored eyes, Nina’s buyer is relieved to find that she wasn’t actually a boy and only disguised as one since that’ll make impersonating the dead Priestess-Princess Alisha of Fortna much easier. Alisha had lived her life in solitude, dedicated to serving the gods and never seeing her own family, and she was only recently called back to the court to marry the crown prince of their aggressive neighbor Galgada in a bid for peace.
Alas, Alisha died in an accident on the road and the small handful of people who know this have been scrambling to find a “replacement.” And so, now it is Nina who will “die” and live again as Alisha, becoming a princess and serving the country that has never done anything to her to start with. But with palace intrigue behind the scenes, and the fact that Galgada could interpret any of her actions as a pretext to invade, she’ll have to steel herself and be resolute in all of her actions for the rest of her life.
Kodansha has been releasing more shōjo as of late (although technically this is a josei it reads a lot like shōjo except for a few moments of threatened sexual violence) — mostly digitally-only like this title — but a lot of it has been very romance-heavy which is less to my taste. I prefer my stories to be adventure or fantasy first, romance second which puts Nina the Starry Bride right in my wheelhouse. Nina’s “adventures” have been limited in scope so far (and the story is only “fantasy” in the sense that it’s set in another world, there’s nothing magical in the story) and the series seems to be building towards some potentially tragic romance (which I have some mixed feelings on currently), as Nina’s struggles to not be manipulated and to instead move the world around her to protect the people she cares about is absolutely the kind of shōjo story I can’t get enough of. The general tone, from the way the series opens with multiple kinds of tragedy yet maintains bits of light-hearted comedy on a regular basis, reminds me of some of the shōjo titles that VIZ puts out like Yona of the Dawn or Dawn of the Arcana and fans of those manga will find a lot to like here.
In that vein, Nina is a plucky and likable main character who makes plenty of escape attempts from “her” new quarters in the palace at first (not only is she in an incredibly dangerous position but pretending to be a princess is hard work for an illiterate teen from the streets!) and pushes boundaries as far as she can right up to the point where her own life is in danger. It’s a good thing that Alisha lived such an isolated life or else Nina would have been outed as an imposter the minute she was in the company of anyone who didn’t know about the switch just from her actions alone (apparently Nina and Alisha don’t even look that much like each other, they just share the same distinctive eyes).
Nina’s lack of a sense of self-preservation is a little baffling at times however. Even once Nina is in Galgada and is completely on her own, with only one distant servant from Fortna who is in on the secret, she seems to ignore the warning signs everyone else would follow out on sheer instinct. Although it is fun to watch a heroine who is always willing to jump into danger to protect others, Nina grew up as an orphan from a young age so you would expect her to be extra suspicious and quick to get out of trouble yet that’s almost the exact opposite of all of her actions. I don’t believe it’s intended to be read as a fatalistic streak of independence from someone in a life-or-death situation, but I do wish RIKACHI had reconciled these conflicting character traits a bit more smoothly.
That isn’t to say that Nina is a static character. She adapts fairly quickly to her new circumstances and she’s certainly becoming more clever at reading people’s emotions and predicting their actions. The biggest driving force for Nina’s growth isn’t to become more savvy and brave to protect her own life, it’s to protect those other people who know about the deception (read: brought her into it), especially the second prince of Fortna, Azure, who is both the mastermind of this scheme and also someone Nina ends up falling for. Some aspects of Azure’s situation felt a little contrived to me — I could never figure out why he was made second prince despite being the oldest child of the king and this instability of his position is what drives Nina a lot towards gaining more power for herself, so that she can protect Fortna from Galgada and him from other courtiers. But that aspect of the story is what it is and it seems like Rikachi is going to milk the potential conflicts from the two of them now being in technically opposing countries for all the tragedy is worth.
Finally, I did want to bring up the very cute costume designs in the series since that’s what initially attracted me to it. It was amusing that in RIKACHI’s author notes they say that the series was originally meant to be set in the modern day with contemporary designs. I’ll certainly be reading more of the author’s notes to figure out how that change happened! But as I started reading the series, as cute as the designs were, I found myself reflecting on how I’ve read several series in the past few years that take a pastiche of references from Near and Middle East cultures (the Fortna costumes remind me very roughly of outfits from around the area of Turkey but the characters seem to be writing in cuneiform from Mesopotamia) for the visual flair alone and wonder, is this exoticism? To be clear, you could transport the characters and basic plot into practically any setting and it would still work, there’s no real deeper engagement with the world (and not just because Nina has spent most of her time so far locked in two different royal courts), and I feel like this is the kind of accusation that might be leveled at an American creator if they did something similar.
It’s not enough to make me stop from reading the series, not at all especially since I’m delighted that what initially appeared to be a soapy, bare bones story has really delighted me with its characters, but I am keeping it in mind as I go forward. I do hope Nina the Starry Bride gets a print release someday but until then I’ll happily keep reading it digitally and taking tons of screenshots in the process.