Review for Wolf Girl & Black Prince Collection

Introduction

Talk about judging a book by the cover! I read the blurb for this show, and my first reaction was that I didn’t want to watch it. Unfortunately I don’t have that luxury when it comes to review discs. A girl who is a habitual liar tells a fib about having the school prince as a boyfriend. To maintain the fiction she asks him to pretend, but it turns out that this prince is a sadist, and he agrees only if she becomes his pet dog. Already this sounds like a bit of exploitative nastiness, but the reality could be quite different. It’s just that the blurb has drained me of my motivation. It’s a bit of an odd release for MVM, although it could be indicative of the crumbs that Sony/Crunchyroll leaves the rest of the world. This 2014 show was initially released in the US by Sentai in 2016. This is an old show, practically vintage by anime standards. However Sentai did give it a re-release in 2023. I just hope that it’s more than the sum of its blurb.


Erika Shinohara wants to fit in, and on the first day of high school, getting into the right friends group is the most important thing. But a football to the face causes her to be late, and there are only two girls in the class who look open to being friends. The problem is that they are wannabe it-girls with little else but boyfriends on their minds. And to fit in, Erika comes up with a little white lie...


Now she needs a boyfriend, or a close facsimile. Who she encounters is the school prince, Kyoya Sata from her best friend San-chan’s class. He’s the guy that all the girls obsess about, the guy who has no problem getting the girls he wants, sweet, kind and sociable. He’ll be happy to help, right? Only in reality, he’s a total sadist, and he’ll only help Erika if she agrees to be his pet dog.


12 episodes of Wolf Girl and Black Prince are presented across 2 Blu-rays from MVM.

Disc 1
1. Caught in Her Own Trap –Liar–
2. A Rash and Blind Act –First Love–
3. A Precipitous Drop –Fall In–
4. Daily Anguish –Love Attack–
5. An Impregnable Defense –Christmas Eve–
6. Preparing for Battle –Valentine Day–
7. Mutual Love –White Day–
8. Self Contradiction –Spring Storm–
9. Honeyed Words –Wake Up–

Disc 2
10. Wasted Effort – Happy Birthday–
11. A Critical Situation –Judgement–
12. A Pressing Appeal –I Love You–

Picture

Wolf Girl and Black Prince gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer on these discs that is just as you would expect from modern anime in HD. The image is clear and sharp, line art is clear and smooth, and colours are rich and consistent. The character designs for the show are fairly generic for rom-com anime, while the world designs are immersive enough. There is no sign of visible compression, and given that this is a bright, colourful comedy, digital banding is minimal.

Sound

The sole audio track here is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 Japanese Stereo track, with player locked English translated subtitles. I finally had my suspicions confirmed, that I’m not really getting tired of pop music, that current popular music just isn’t to my tastes. For the first time in a while, an anime show’s theme tunes got my toes tapping, and wishing for the bad old days of file-sharing. It’s only when I looked closer and realised that this show is over ten years old, that I realised that for me, pop music was actually better ten years ago. The dialogue is clear throughout, the actors are suited well to their roles, and the subtitles are accurately timed and free of typos.

Extras

The discs present their content with static menus, and each episode is followed by a translated English credit scroll. The sole extras on disc 2 are the textless credit sequences.

Conclusion

Well my preconceptions were met, partially. I didn’t like Wolf Girl and Black Prince at first, even though it did foreshadow something deeper than what we get at face value. It’s the eternal question as to why good girls fall for bad boys, and the old misogynistic trope, “treat them mean to keep them keen”. As I expected, I spent a lot of the earlier episodes figuratively yelling at the main character to “kick him in the nuts and walk away”. You have to be okay with this kind of character dynamic to best appreciate the comedy in Wolf Girl and Black Prince, and there is at least comedy here to appreciate. Sometimes anime premises just rub you the wrong way, and this show caught me in the wrong mood.


It does foreshadow from early on, introducing Kyoya Sata, the titular black prince as the kind of guy that is so good looking that he has to make no effort to attract female attention, and he is cynical about it. By the time he encounters the Wolf Girl, he’s tired of the venal nature of the girls he attracts, and has sworn off them. And we get those enigmatic flashbacks of a trodden snowman, and the sense that he hasn’t had motivation to develop the social skills he needs to actually connect with a girl.


Then there is Erika Shinohara, the Wolf Girl, the girl with the habit of telling little white lies, and who desperately wants to fit in, as she starts high school. She winds up needing a boyfriend, and decides to fake it, picking Kyoya as a friendly looking guy that might help her sell the lie. But he’s the kind of jerk who agrees to do it, if she agrees to be his dog, and follow every command. And she agrees, coming to think that she might find the nice guy under the jerky exterior, or find what’s wrong with him to fix him, and early on, she’s repeatedly disappointed.


There is comedy to be had, and it is funny; it’s just that I can’t get past the premise of humiliation and infatuation. Around the halfway point, Erika does the sane thing and gets out of Dodge, but she starts regretting it. She even tries dating the one decent, kind and caring guy in school, and all the time she’s thinking of the jerk. Meanwhile, Kyoya realises that he’s just lost a good thing, and starts pining over Erika.


They eventually get back together, only this time it’s actually as boyfriend and girlfriend instead of owner and pet, and so Kyoya’s training as a proper boyfriend begins, with one or two minor impediments along the way. And here my hypocrisy becomes apparent, as I found the second half of the show to be rather mundane and generic compared to the first half when it comes to anime rom-coms. At least the first half does something different, unsavoury though I find it. The show ends by going into Kyoya’s particular neuroses, explaining just why he is the way he is, and it’s not exactly a mind-blowing revelation. I wound up rather underwhelmed.


Wolf Girl and Black Prince is okay. It tells its story competently enough, the characters are engaging enough to hold the attention, and the story moves along at a decent pace. The comedy works, and if you don’t have the same kneejerk reaction to its premise that I did, I can even see that it’s entertaining. But even with all that, Wolf Girl and Black Prince just peeks its head up above average.

Wolf Girl and Black Prince can be had from MVM’s webstore, Anime on Line, from Anime Limited, and from mainstream retailers.