Half Prince – ½ Prince manhua and novel review

Recently I read this manhua and it got me so addicted that I made a research, found the novel translations, read them, and then read the rest of the novel in Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not good at Chinese at all, nop, this novel was the reason for me to start to learn Chinese. So I decided to write about it in my blog.

So what is 1/2 prince? It’s a novel by Yu Wo and a manga adaptation drawn by Choi Hong. The novel is finished but the manhua is still ongoing in the moment of writing this review.

The story is centered at Feng Lan (Xiao Lan) – 19 years old university student. The action is developing hundred years ahead in the future in a world where virtual reality games are very popular and realistic.
The beginning of the manhua is the moment when new virtual reality game with 99% realism is released. By chance Xiao Lan is the first person to ever log in game and as such she receives the right of one wish. Her wish is little strange as she actually wants to play as male character in game and so she becomes the only player with different sex than in real life. One reason behind this wish is that her brother provoked her to play without using her female charm and tricks, and not to hide behind others any more. The other reason is explained very well in the first chapter of the novel – she actually wants to be herself, to kill mobs in crazy ways, enjoy herself, laugh when ever she feels like it and do what ever she wants to. Something I really want to do too.
Anyways, she is allowed to create a male character – the ultra gorgeous elf Prince. And here starts the laugh as being too good looking can be very troubling. And so her adventure begins!
In game Prince meets several cool people and forms a party. They are Lolidragon(Little dragon girl in Chinese, I don’t like the English version of the name but I’ll use anyway) – a thief, Wolf – beast priest, Gui – demon bard (something like archer with support magic), Doll – an angel necromancer and Yu Lian – human mage.
I’ll stop with the story today and eventually I’ll post several spoilers for the future untranslated chapters later on.

The manhua
Actually the manhua is amazing, very addicting and I read it in one go. The art is very beautiful and very well captures the characters personality. As its still ongoing, I don’t have enough patience to wait for the next chapters. I’m visiting the scanlators site every day.

The novel
Actually better than the manhua, with much more details. The story is breath taking, the characters are almost real with their unique personality, especially Xiao Lan / Prince. The translation is a little bit slow as new chapter is released only once a month. That was the reason for me to lose my patience and start looking for other ways to read it. I can’t translate it as I’m not good in neither English nor Chinese but I can post few spoilers later for other unpatient people like me.