Even though we are all ostensibly accustomed to the trend of light novels and their adaptations revealing the entire premise and half the plot in their titles, it still feels like this one is determined to toss as many buzzwords as possible into its own. We have a princess who is reincarnated, both distinctly catnip-filled terms, then throw in the fact that she cross-dresses for good measure. When we get to the fact that she's not looking for a fiancé, the trap has been well and truly set and baited. This will be a draw for some readers, but it could be an immediate turn-off for others.
The truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle. Alicia, the eponymous princess, does cross-dress to attend a magic academy – but only because it's a stipulation from her mother. This comes about because Alicia has objections to the marriage her mother has arranged for her to the prince of a neighboring country. Fernan, although very magically gifted, is also rumored to be ugly and repugnant, and Alicia has zero interest in tying herself to him. Her mother's solution? Send Alicia to school and give her a choice of four other potential fiancés, with the caveat that the school is boys-only and Alicia will have to disguise herself to attend. Once there, Alicia suffers a massive migraine that reveals to her that this is not her first life, and in her previous one in Japan, she was a fan of a series of BL novels…which she is now, unsurprisingly, living in. Her would-be fiancés are all the love interests in the novels, with the bonus inclusion of the book's protagonist.
Going by Reyes, Alicia isn't thrilled because she feels she's interrupting the story. A further complication rears its head in the form of Lucius, a very handsome new "character" who transfers in and promptly figures out Alicia's secret. To force him to keep it, Alicia agrees to make-out sessions and increasingly heavy petting, saying she'll do anything but have penetrative sex with him. As time passes, Alicia finds herself falling for Lucius, and if you haven't already figured out his identity, I'll be shocked. She's also failed to notice that all of her potential fiancés like her, but that's fairly typical for this sort of story.
As you may have guessed, not much makes this single-volume title stand out. That's not a condemnation of the book because it delivers its promises to be a steamy isekai love story. However, Alicia and Lucius may have started, but by the point we join the story, they have trouble keeping their hands off each other, although Alicia frequently protests, as the genre requires. The racy bits suffer a little from the fact that artist Akino Shiina doesn't appear entirely sure how breasts attach to torsos, frequently drawing them too far apart and looking like they were just stuck on rather than a part of the body. Since Shiina mentions that they more typically draw BL, this could be a matter of not being used to drawing naked female upper bodies, and the art is nice otherwise. Alicia doesn't try to hide her long hair under an unlikely wig, as many cross-dressing heroines do. Shiina manages to give her a sufficiently masculine look with the way she ties her hair back, and we see a variety of male hair lengths in the book, which feels more natural than usual. School uniforms also don't look like modern Japanese clothes, taking a sort of mid-19th century style, which helps with story immersion. There's still an overly powerful student council, but it is easily overlooked since the plot focuses more on the romance than the school aspect.
The single greatest flaw here is that the story would have worked better spread out over two volumes. We get a good enough sense of what's going on and who the characters are (or at least who Alicia and Lucius are), but there's not enough space to fully tell the story. Flashbacks can only do so much, and we're left feeling that this really could have been more than it is. Whether that's an issue of the adaptation or the source light novel, I can't say, but even if the original novel was only one volume long, the manga needed more space to spread its wings. Still, it's nice to see publishers delivering steamy romance content with an intended audience of adult women, and it's equally positive that Tokyopop's LoveLove line is branching out from BL, even if that's still a small component of this release.
This Reincarnated Cross-Dressing Princess Won't Be Looking for a Fiancé falls under the heading of "perfectly fine." It lets you know what you'll be getting when you open the book and delivers on that. It may not be the best isekai romance out there, but it's also a decent way to relax with beautiful people in another world.
