In Volume 1, we met Aki, a Wolfa butler, and Momo, a Sheepa princess who announced her intent to enter a relationship with Aki. They went on a date with Momo in disguise. Here, in Volume 2 of A Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, we see the end of that date, where the queen’s friend, a dressmaker, gets Momo to try on a load of outfits that reveal a fair amount of skin, leaving Aki pretty flustered. They also prepare for an event to celebrate Momo’s coming of age, wherein Aki is reminded that Momo will likely have to marry someone soon… and that won’t be her. Just how does she feel about Momo anyway?
The idea of either marrying into royalty or being long lost royalty had been a trope in fiction for centuries. The escapist ideal of being a lost princess, or being the (usually) woman to get to marry a handsome prince, is the older fantasy version of today’s ‘if I win the lottery’. It’s understandable – for the vast majority of people both then and now, royalty and wealth was something far out of reach and only attainable through fiction. You could argue that wish fulfillment is one of the oldest reasons to make stories.
This is sort of one of those. Aki is a commoner, albeit a servant in the royal castle, which must be a relatively high up position, while Momo is the princess that fell in love with her. In real life, this would be a horrendous power imbalance. In fiction, Momo barely acts like a princess, her maid ships them, and it’s clear they’ll get together by the end of the manga, so the politics is just a complication between their happiness, rather than anything to get too bogged down in.
The thing that amuses me is that the fact that Aki is Wolfa and Momo is Sheepa is made very little of. The royal family is Sheepa, and they are in the land of Sheepa, but many of the commoners are Sheepa, too, and while the influence of the moon on Wolfa is noted and commented on several times, this isn’t seen as a problem, just a consideration. If you like girls with animal ears, you have plenty of them here – the mangaka states here that the story started from a one shot, so we get the author ‘wish fulfillment’ here; it’s not stated, but I suspect they just wanted to draw cute girls with animal ears and made the story around that.
This volume actually introduced other ‘races’, although most are in the background, except a hyena character (Hyenaa? It’s not mentioned) Kunya, a princess from another country, who looks similar to Momo’s first love, the reason she shut herself away in the first place. We also get a glimpse of a troubled part love of Aki’s, although no details. Perhaps in a future volume.
I’m not in love with the fact that the first love of Momo’s is darker skinned and clearly not a great character, nor that the Hyena princess, Kunya, feels like she’s set up to be a third member in a love triangle – but at least she seems to be nicer than the other character of colour we see. I’m hoping that Kunya isn’t just a plot device.
Art – 9
Story – 6
Yuri – 8 (I mean, there really aren’t even many men given page time, there are two budding lesbian relationships and previous ones)
Service – 8 (Momo tries on some slightly scandalous clothes, and has a bath. It doesn’t feel super salacious, but it’s there.)
Overall – 7
If you liked the first one, there’s plenty more here to keep your attention. I’ll be continuing to read – hopefully Kunya will get a bit more development, I enjoyed her character.
Luce is collector of books, part time reader, identifies as a book dragon. I can be found on Discord as farfetched1235. I also have a Goodreads as Luce where I do mini reviews on the manga and graphic novels I read, and a Storygraph as farfetched where I do the same with novels and light novels. I hope you enjoy this review today!
