正しい王子のつくり方
Tadashii Ouji no Tsukurikata
(The Creation of an Ideal Prince)

Genre: high school, comedy, romance
Air dates: Every Tuesdays @ 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm, 01.08.2008 – 03.25.2008
Network: TV Tokyo
Starring: Kotaro Yanagi, Yurie Midori, Hiroki Aiba, Hatsune Matsushima (and others…)
More Info: D-Addicts Wiki

Plot:
An all-girls high school became an integrated co-ed school, allowing a first batch of boys from its brother (all-boys) private school to be admitted as a trial run. Unfortunately, the boys the school admitted were far from what the girls expected from the good-for-nothings to the rejects of the youth’s society. As a result, one particular class collaborated a program that would reform these boys from total rejects to noble princes, but as expected, it would take more than just convincing for the plan to work.

Verdict:
Let’s just face it, ladies. We all have to admit that the female human race is one of the most vain, self-centered, egotistical creatures to exist in this very earth. We don’t accept what we are provided and presented unless we change things our own way. In the case of this series, knowing something like this is impossible in real life, having a “class project” involving the reformation of their new male classmates was an ingenious idea.

The concept, somewhat, is similar to the plot of Gakkou ja Oshierarenai!, which aired a few months after this series ended as an answer to the “all-girls school became integrated with boys” romantic comedy theme. While Gakkou ja Oshierarenai! was a bit somewhat more realistic and not as light-hearted, Tadashii Ouji no Tsukurikata still gave me a delightful amusement with the very shoujo manga-esque elements present. It also presented that while it’s possible for one person to change another from being a total loser to a total winner, the creation, or rather, the producing of a reject to a prince does not always work with everyone.

Along with that, each of the girl assigned as the producer to the prince-would-be are as different as the boy they were assigned to reform. Each girl also has their own ideal prince, meaning that one girl’s prince may be completely different from another girl’s prince. There is even a chance that one boy did not even have to be completely reformed in to a princely figure just for them to be a prince. Overall, the girls determined that there was still a lot of work to be done to completely reform these boys and it takes more than just a total makeover or the memorization of proper etiquette for them to become “full-fledged” princes.

The cast are primarily the students. We rarely get any focus towards the teachers, but there are on occasion. Another reason why I decided to watch this series is because there are two names I was familiar with: Kotaro Yanagi and Hiroki Aiba of the Tenimyu (Prince of Tennis Musicals) fame. I also liked Yurie Midori’s role as the class rep and founder of the Prince-Producing Project (Nami Yuki) who participated in the project as a producer in place of a part-time teen model classmate responsible to reform Tatsuya Shinozaki, portrayed by Yanagi. I also like the relationship development between Nami and Shinozaki while witnessing the “producing” process of the rest of the cast, including their relationships to one another. The storyline altogether would definitely happen in the world wide world of fiction, but the process itself is realistically enough for me to believe that something like this can happen in real life.

The subtitling of the drama series was made by someone studying Japanese and did the subtitling as part of a project in a Japanese language class. Though even if that was the case, there were a lot of errors (in terms of grammar and spelling), most notably the way the subber romanized the Japanese names. Example of that is the way he wrote Shurinosuke’s name: he romanized it as Shu ri no su ke rather than the entire name of Shurinosuke. It’s a long first name, but singular first names are always one word and Japanese first names are no exception. In addition, I noticed that the video that I saw was also subbed in Chinese. As an assumption, I say that the person who subbed this must be more familiar with Chinese and probably translated everything from the Chinese translations directly in to English, which makes it a lot more difficult to capture the real meaning of the Japanese language used in the story. The translation of the title in the subs are also off from its actual meaning.

Again, for those who love school-themed romance comedies, here is another recommendation, especially if you want something a lot lighter and fun than Gakkou ja Oshierarenai! I just wish that there would be a better subbed version of the drama out there.

Tadashii Ouji no Tsukurikata Promo Poster

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