| 1/2 Prince | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Title | ½ 王子, ½ Prince, 1/2 王子, 1/2 Ouji,
1/2 Wang zi, 1|2 Prince, Half Prince |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Gender Bender, Romance, Sci-fi, Shoujo, Shounen |
| Manhua Series | |
| Author | Yu Wo |
| Artist | Choi Hong Chong |
| Publisher | Taiwan Tong Li Comic |
| Serialized In | Dragon Youth |
| Original Run | 2004 - ongoing, bi-monthly |
| No. of Volumes | 10, containing 55 released chapters (as of December 2011) |
1/2 Prince (1/2 王子, 1/2 Ouji, Half Prince) is a Taiwanese manhua based off a light novels by Yu Wo and illustrated by Choi Hong Chong. The story takes place in the year 2100 A.D. where humans have developed highly realistic virtual reality games. The protagonist, 19 years old female college student Feng Xiao Lan, is challenged by her twin brother Feng Yang Ming to play the newest popular virtual reality game - Second Life - without using the advantages of being a female character in the game. She decides to play as a male character and prove her skills as an elf swordsman. In the game, she makes many friends and her adventures begin.
Introduction
1/2 Prince is about Feng Xiao Lan, a wistful, yet cheery, 19 years old girl who shares the same interest as her 19 years old twin brother, Feng Yang Ming, to play virtual reality games. After being challenged by her brother, she is determined to become a male warrior in Second Life and prove her gaming skills to her brother without using "female benefits" in game. While trying to get the upper hand on leveling Feng Xiao Lan logs into Second Life too early and ends up being the first player ever to log on. As a reward for this, the Second Life superiors grant her wish to change her gender, an otherwise impossible request. Thus begins her adventures as an elf who is too stunning for the girl population to leave alone. With her/his perfect face, she needs all the help she can get to fend off crowds of girls/wolves. Along the way, Prince gathers a very odd team of players (in order of joining Prince): Lolidragon, the extraordinarily beautiful elf hidden GM (Game Master); Ugly Wolf, the beast priest that is part of the wolf race and two meters tall; Doll, the cute celestial (or angel, in the novel) necromancer that is afraid of her own undead creatures; Yu Lian, the short tempered human wizard and a furry lover. Last and certainly one of the weirdest is Guileastos (Pronounced like Juileastos), nicknamed Gui, the seeming homosexual demon bard (who is also a masochist) who is attracted to Prince. Together they form the team Odd Squad. After a clash with Dark Phantom, a team lead by the dark elf Wicked, the team joins the Adventurers' Tournament, to take revenge on Dark Phantom. As the Tournament progresses, Prince gets more and more tangled in trouble and heartbreak, gaining more and more enemies. If her troubles in game aren't enough, it turns out that Gui is Ming Ju Wen, her new Professor of Chinese Literature, while Ugly Wolf is her school clinic doctor, Lee Tian Lang. Even worse, her sworn in-game enemy, Wicked, turns out to be her childhood sweetheart. When the Tournament committee announces that the last match will be a to-the-death battle with 600 fighters on the field, Odd Squad decides, for strategic reasons, to train with Dark Phantom. During a training session, fighting mobs of monsters, Prince fell off a cliff and was half dead. Odd Squad and Dark Phantom split up to look for him. Wicked was the first one to find Prince, and in his pained delirium, Prince uses the childhood name for Wicked and Wicked realizes Prince's real identity. Thus, a love rivalry flares up between Wicked and Gui.
Characters
Setting
The series takes place in basically two separate worlds: the real world and the world of Second Life.
Reality The real world of 1/2 Prince is set in 2100 A.D. where humans have developed extremely advanced technology. This includes video games which with extremely high realism that are played with the help of a helmet while the individual is asleep. When not online, the characters of 1/2 Prince live out their everyday lives.
Second Life The world of Second Life is based off a fantasy video game with magical cities, various races and monsters and is made up of five continents: Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central (Most of Prince's adventures take place on the Central Continent). Players are only allowed to make an avatar once and cannot change anything afterward. After choosing race, the character can choose an occupation by completing certain requirements in the game. They level up by defeating monsters and gaining experience with allows them to add points to their different attributes. Note: Players do not gain experience for killing other players under normal circumstances for the beginning part of the game. After the game had been out for several months, players could kill others without penalties and gained experience from it. Note: Players who "die" in the game, they are transferred to a Rebirth Point and demoted a level. Players can form teams with one another, get married, own pets, sell and buy equipment, along with a whole range of other options all while they are really at home sleeping. Later on, the company introduced a patch which made the game more realistic. For example if the player did not take a bath he would stink among other things.
Media Information
Written by Yu Wo and illustrated by Choi Hong Chong, the 1/2 Prince manhua was serialized in Dragon Youth Comic (龍少年 Lóng Shàonián). 1/2 Prince manhua are only publishes in Taiwan and some regions of Asia.
Trivia
- There are some small differences between the manhua and the light novel. For instance, Prince's hair in the manhua is blonde, while his hair is white/silver in the light novel. Some minor characters have different races of avatar.