Akagami no Shirayuki-hime
Snow White with the Red Hair

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Truly a hidden gem amongst Manga. Akagami no Shirayuki-hime is like another modern rewrite of the Cinderella story, except fairy tales has never had so much sensibility, or such a well balanced relationship between the main couple (as opposed to one simply sweeping the other off their heels).

I never thought I'd see so much rationale in a fantasy shoujo manga. I mean not only is the entire cast (all of them that matters) likable, but they're all intelligent and hard-working people, whose actions are logical, and whose emotions are balanced, considered, and developed only in response to other character's actions (rather than any plot device).

This ... is especially the case of the main heroine Shirayuki - she's not perfect, she's not strong, but she tackles everything with smart thinking and an iron will. Meanwhile, Zen is content to watch carefully from the sidelines and let Shirayuki do her thing, putting his faith in her strength of character and coming only to help when necessary. He might be the hero, but he certainly doesn't overshadow the heroine.

The story is well paced. Unexpected things may come and go, but nothing jumps out of the blue. The relationship is slowly developed from pure friendship across series of trials and challenges, with feelings and decisions that come gradually but not too slowly.

The art style is great — sim­plis­tic yet ele­gantly beau­ti­ful, cute with­out rely­ing on chibi-esque pro­por­tions, all-fitting yet unique on its own.

Its even more amaz­ing that this seems to be Aizuki Sorata first ongo­ing series! I sure see some amaz­ing works com­ing out of this mangaka’s career!

"Red is supposed to be the color of fate, right? Even if it’s annoying now, it might connect to something good when you least expect it."

Sure, but 79 chapters in and it's still pretty annoying. Alas, Akagami no Shirayukihime. I've finished you. I came on to read other reviews following my finishing of the manga and show and I've got to say, I'm extremely confused. This manga is rated relatively high for being pretty mediocre at best. Let's dive in, shall we?

Story: There's close to zero plot. I've honestly never felt that a plot could have been so easily resolved dozens of chapters prior. It's ... really just your average Mary Sue-type, boring protagonist who happens upon a prince whilst fleeing from another prince because something about her makes her special i.e. her hair (go figure). It's red as an apple which sure, red hair may be appealing, but it's literally just hair. But whatever. The rest of the story is pretty much just her making her way into the castle in Clarines and falling in love with a prince who falls in love with her too, all the while learning to be a pharmacist and whatnot. That's it. That's literally the entire plot. Here and there they run into problems because of her hair, but that's it. It's not creative at all and the parts about her job are ridiculously boring.

Art: Average. Nothing special or specifically appealing about any of it.

Characters: Alright, I have a lot to say about the characters. First, let's start with the main protagonist: Shirayuki. Booooooooooring. Wow. I have never been so bored and utterly puzzled by how much the other characters swoon for her. She's not particularly interesting to say the least. She works with medicine and plants and that's really all she's got going for her. The other characters tend to think she's unique and headstrong, but I don't really see it. She's pretty average. She could really be a side character. I mean, yeah, she's nice and intelligent, but that's all. Anyway, she's in love with the prince and I don't know, she has zero character development whatsoever. I can say that she does somehow help other characters develop in their own way. I guess she's influential and inspiring, so she has that going for her. Next up: Zen the prince. He's somewhat interesting, but not really. He's kind and genuinely makes an effort to be a good prince and succeeds. It's pretty admirable. But when it comes to Shirayuki... VOMIT. He's annoying. He's weirdly obsessed with her in a way and overprotective as hell; Always forcing one of his people to follow her around (though I'm not complaining cause that character is awesome, but we'll get there). He wants to marry her and make out with her and whatever, but gets weird and shy about it all the time. They've kissed before, but when his hand bumps into hers, he turns bright red. Why? Next up, we'll do two characters at the same time now: Mitsuhide and Kiki. I actually like these characters. They do and don't put up the Zen's bs. They are extremely loyal, but aren't afraid to tell him when he's wrong. I think they're all around interesting and I just want them to be together already, geeeeez. I'm only going to review one more character and that's the best, most interesting character of the entire series and the only reason I stuck with it so long: Obi. Mysterious and dangerous, yet sarcastic, talkative, and also curiously loyal to Zen. Obi is definitely worth every minute of the show/manga. We don't know much about him and he's a bit wishy-washy, but he's hilarious and unpredictable, and albeit, cool. The only downside is he's also freakishly fond of Shirayuki. Come on, he can do better than that.

Enjoyment: It's average. Really only rating it so high because of Obi. It just feels like a show going nowhere with a bunch of side story fillers that delude from the main plot. It can be entertaining at times, but often the romance and constant talk of medicine is cringeworthy.

Overall: 6. Again, because of Obi. This is not a great manga and I don't understand why everyone thinks it is. Will I still read it, though? Yeah. If you're bored and have nothing else to read, give it a shot.

I am surprised there aren't any lower review scores for the manga because I personally feel it is insanely flawed. Its a story that I heavily enjoyed that turned into something I found extremely boring.

This is a story that I am sad to say just gets less interesting overtime. It starts off insanely strong and the anime does a really good job covering basically a really good 30 chapter progression. With a nice premise and a strong core cast, it would be really REALLY interesting if we just threw that away for the rest of the series.

Spoiler alert. Yeah shortly after where season 2 of ... the anime ends, the cast is split basically in half as the permanent status quo change for the rest of the series so far. 120+ chapters of what is basically a less interesting version of what we had going on.
There is meant to be a big long separation of the whole cast but it does not feel pleasant at all to read.

Going through the manga for a long time has felt like a big drag as it just has not hit the same strong dynamics set up near the start of the series.