My Poison Princess Is Still Cute, Vol. 3

My Poison Princess Is Still Cute #3

by Chihiro Sakutake

After relentlessly training under Loren’s mentor to become the cutest couple ever, it’s time for Loren to face the last boss—Poison Princess Raffy’s father, the Demon King! But when a visit with him causes an enormous marital spat, a rift opens up between them...Will these lovebirds learn the art of compromise and build a relationship that will last through the ages?!   Witness the fantabulous finale of these star-crossed lovers' life as newlyweds!

Genres: Manga

Kindle Edition

First published July 23, 2024

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final volume of Raffy and Loren’s misadventures brings both flying fish and disapproving parent (singular) into the frame. Will love win through and can it survive this many pages of content?

Iterating on the same joke many times over takes a certain amount of skill and at least a bit of variety. The other option is to just move on, but then you need to be funny with something else instead. It’s not easy and i acknowledge that.

Minus a couple of bright spots, which are pretty bright, this is really a heck of a slog. Two hundred plus pages of 4-koma manga is asking a lot and if it isn’t funny half the time? Woof.

Like I said, some of it works (the official Mark Seal of Mediocrity right there). The section with Raffy trying to be domestic and failing, a brutally ancient gag if there ever was one, has a clever final twist. But it’s too long a walk to get there.

The new maid character should have been introduced about two volumes ago, as she brings a little more to the table and curbs the butler’s more prurient urges. She keeps the rambunctious ones in place too. They could have done quite a bit more with that character.

These scattered oases in the desert are quite enjoyable. The entire section about skipjack tuna runs with the dumbest idea imaginable and pays it off in spectacular fashion. So spectacular that it outshines most every other joke in the series.

And it could all be so much better. The last section, where Raffy’s Demon Lord father decides against the marriage, has a very fun denouement and the legitimately brilliant joke of having the Demon Lord occasionally lapse into the sort of proclamations you’d expect him to utter when facing an arch-foe. It’s left utterly untapped, but it was a great idea.

There’s no consistency to this and I admit to being pickier about my humour than I am most things. There are a lot of 4-koma out there that are much funnier more often. That just leaves the ‘aw shucks’ of the romance, which is neither heartfelt enough nor raunchy enough (the two extremes that would have made it at least memorable) to be worth the time.

The final sequence does work okay, since it goes for a longer madcap sequence than the format typically allows for and that brings it ever so briefly to life with an energy that lets it close out on a briefly more positive note.

But, again, there’s just so much that isn’t interesting or funny in this book and the cute isn’t actually cute enough. You could get a single volume of the good gags in this series and it would still be a pretty small volume.

3 stars - I’m glad it’s over. There are sufficient gags here that worked well enough, but consistently funny this wasn’t. I don’t regret the journey, but I doubt I would have taken it in the first place had I known.

[Sheepy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a three volume series it seems, not a bad ending. Overall a good read that, I enjoyed the characters and the funny moments in their building relationship.

[Aurora · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a nice ending for a cute series. Glad they didn't drag out the joke much longer. ^_^;