By Dustin Cabeal

I never read the first volume of this. It wasn’t sent to me, and I doubt it was really something I needed to read for this volume to make sense. Sure, certain elements of the story would have been known already, but the story does a decent job of recapping the plot as it goes along.

The premise is all in the title. A princess has been kidnapped and held hostage in a demon castle. She spends her days finding ways to stay cool, have nice baths and for the bulk of the volume, finding new and comfortable ways to sleep. That is all that happens. If something different happened, then it was completely lost on me because I felt that I read the same story with varying degrees, over and over.

It’s a gag style manga, at least that’s what I think these stories are called. Yes, the gags were all different… ish, but it was still the same sleep gag over and over. The princess isn’t afraid of anything or anyone. She also doesn’t care about anyone else. Only herself and her sleep which makes her an extremely selfish character. I believe as the reader you’re supposed to find her cute and funny, but I found her disregard for everyone around her rather annoying. She wasn’t a character I had any interest in reading about ever again. Truth be told, I had a difficult time finishing this volume. The final third of the book I started spot checking the story, reading a page at the beginning of the chapter, then the finale and thus shortening my reading time. It certainly didn’t seem like I was missing out on anything.

The art is great. It’s cute; it fits the humor wonderfully. The character designs are unique. The demons aren’t particularly scary or anything, but they fill their role nicely. The art is certainly the best part of the story, but with the repeating theme over and over there’s only so much variation that can be done with the art.

You’d need to be a fan of this style of storytelling, and while it’s fun here and there, when the characters are unrelatable and unlikeable it wears thin quickly. That’s the case with Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. It would be a great premise if it were taken seriously or just dropped into another genre but in the gag genre… it’s limited and not exciting to read for long. Or in my case, ever again.

Score: 2/5

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle vol. 2
Kagiji Kumanomata
Viz Media