The central conceit of Wolf Girl and the Black Prince revolves around our heroine, Erika, lying about having a boyfriend to fit in with two of her more experienced classmates, desperate not to be left out of her high school's social circles. When doubt starts to set in with her bitchy classmates, Erika takes a picture of a random hottie on the street and passes him off as hers - after all, what's the harm? Unfortunately for her, Kyouya Sato is the high school prince, a handsome young man who any schoolgirl would dream of dating. To Erika's surprise, he agrees to go along with her charade, in return for one thing; she has to be his dog.
So in terms of sympathetic characters, we're not off to a good start. One is neurotic liar terrified of a lonely high school life, the other is a man who treats girls like pets. They're going to have to work pretty hard to make this work.
The first episode - and as always, that's what we're judging here - does a decent job of explaining at least how Erika became a social pariah. Losing her temper with some careless boys who wallop her in the face with a football, an act seen by some of her peers who see her as unhinged - does leave her with few options. She only grabs hold of Marin and Aki as they haven't really settled, but they both have boyfriends and talk endlessly about them. Too embarrassed to admit to her lack of experience, she creates her facade and runs with it. Silly but understandable, it has an Ally McBeal neuroses about it that marks our heroine as rather underwhelming, weak and easily lead.
Kyouya is just a pig. He agrees to help Erika for his own amusement but in return treats her like garbage and makes her bark on command. It's not a great look in the modern era, but it's what we're working with. There's not a lot of time to flesh him out in this opening 20 minute salvo, but the plot does see him stand up for her when bullied by others and he is, of nothing else, committed to maintaining her deception to retain some self-respect for Erika. Still, just because you like dogs doesn't mean you can make a girl into your own personal puppy-slave and we'll need some cracking backstory to make him worth rooting for.
Tonally, the anime put me in mind of Kare Kano (His and Her Circumstances) where Yukino acts like the perfect student despite being a slob at home, and is forced into humiliating situations by model student Arima, but in that case it was played for exaggerated comedy, where as Wolf Girl leans into Shoujo tropes more seriously.
Like Kare Kano, the budget is also evident, as many scenes are just scrolling shots of a single background, oftentimes with a simple looped animation (like walking) playing over the top of it. While not too distracting, it's clear that this was hardly a big-budget production.
So based on just one episode, would I watch more? Perhaps. There's certainly something to suggest more interesting material given that the source manga has been given an anime and live-action adaptation, though so far we haven't found it. Perhaps a past pooch was pounded into the pavement and he's feeling nostalgic.
This is (so far) prett standard Shoujo fare, so approach as appropriate. It will likely appeal more to women than men, but there are those of us with more testosterone willing to give it a shot. There's no other elements holding the show together apart from the cast, so once that expands hopefully the depth will follow.
Wolf Girl and the Black Prince is out now from MVM.
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