Madame Petit

A lot of spoilers for a lot of my favourite scenes ahead!
Madame Petit is a really thoughtful shoujo with a fresh setting between two completely unique characters. The characters are all sympathetic and the main couple are so goddamn cute, which is in my opinion the most important part of a shoujo. My favourite scenes have to be her arrival in Paris, when they confess their feelings and the ending. It's not a complicated read, it's straightforward and full of a lot of genuine heart.

When Mariko gets so frustrated and upset at everything in Paris that she screams that she hates the city and almost kills the French girl, I was right there with her. Why wouldn't she feel this way? She spends what she thought was going to be her happy honeymoon IN JAIL, upset and feeling infantilised from her ex-husband running away. He not only doesn't even trust her enough to tell her the truth about his disappearance, but even goes to the point of faking his own death to deceive her. Despite this, Mariko's lovable nature still shines through and the moment that she is filled with a childlike joy again from Niram's magic is truly touching. Definitely one of the highs of this manga for me.

There's something so romantic about Mariko and Niram's confession scene that transcends their cultural backgrounds. He, an Indian prince, professes his love to her in french as she drifts to sleep in his arms, the both of them weary and emotionally drained from what they've been through. He still feels inferior to her ex-husband and asks her to dream only of her at night (WHICH BY THE WAY IS A CRAZY WAY TO CONFESS YOUR LOVE, MY HEART COLLAPSED). They're just so precious. Mariko doesn't get to respond in the moment, but that confession definitely takes a top spot in my rankings.

Their time at the palace was extremely dramatic, and yet was somehow also filled with very cute moments between the two of them. My favourite scene has to be when she begs Niram not to take any other woman as his wife and has a jealous tantrum when he meets his fiancee. The way she whined about it and how Niram responded with the most lovestruck face was just so freaking cute. It's filled with a lot of fresh romantic scenes that you won't see in a lot of stories thanks to the special circumstances between the two of them. Niram and Mariko are such a distinct couple, that I would confidently say that it would be difficult for any couple to emulate their acts of affection as sincerely and well-executed as Madame Petit. Surrounding her in flowers when she awakes so she looks like a fairy? It's just so perfectly adorable for the two of them, I can't imagine another couple doing it as well as they do.

The art is pleasant, and reminiscent of an older josei era when things bordered on the more semi-realism side but everyone still had big, pretty anime eyes. The actual character designs are distinctive and where else are you going to find an actually well-written story about an Indian prince and a Japanese girl falling in love? It's a nice time capsule of the era.

All in all, I love Madame Petit, definitely one of the shoujos I like rereading the most! I gave it a 4/5 because the side characters feel more like plot devices than people I am actually interested in reading more about. Their stories are quite short/undeveloped(in comparison to the amazing FL/ML dynamic), and there's a lot of exposition about the palace drama. I understand it is necessary for clarity reasons, but it can feel a little boring to read about in between the real reason we're all reading a shoujo manga — the romance. A lot of the romantic development is much more about building the actual trust between the two of them rather than the fun romantic scenes and heart-racing dialogue, which I think is a bit of a shame that they never get a moment just alone with each other and when they do it's very brief.