ミオの名のもとに

MIO NO NA NO MOTO NI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
7
RELEASE
March 16, 2023
CHAPTERS
33

DESCRIPTION

Princess Mio is betrothed to Prince Chika. However, they’ve never met, and he doesn’t know her secret—she’s a mermaid! When her tutor, Yuri, takes her out of the castle to meet her subjects, Mio begins to accept her true self. But Yuri has a secret too… And when Mio tells her father, the king, she wants to live life openly as a mermaid, he punishes her. How can she stay true to herself?

(Source: Viz Media)

Note: Chapter count includes seven additional chapters, one in each volume.

CAST

Mio
Yuri

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

Makarin
90/100
A fantasy manga about a mermaid going through every land
In the Name of the Mermaid Princess started out as a simple manga about prejudice and discrimination but stands out with its lovely cast.
In a world with humans, fairies and half humans, Mio is the princess of a "human supremacist" kingdom. What the people can't know, however, is that Mio is half-mermaid so she is forced to stay in her room, while she's given drugs to suppress her mermaid form until she can finally marry a prince she's been writing letters to since forever. This and that happens and she ends up fleeing and going on a big adventure full of drama, action, friends and foes.
What starts out as a simple metaphor for racism, homophobia and more, quickly proves itself to be way more complicated than that and transforms into a story about traditions, past grudges and suffering. "In the name of the Mermaid princess" is not just about saying that humans and half-humans shouldn't hate each other, it bleeds way deeper by going into how that hate came about and how it stays alive. For 7 entertaining volumes, Mio meets all kinds of people and shares every emotion possible with them, learning to control her powers as a mermaid but also to learn about her responsibilities as a princess and her moral obligations as a living being. The most important part, however, comes towards the last volume because that is when Mio finally sees why humans fear the "others" and has to make difficult decisions that will have an effect on the entire world.
At the end of volume 6, she's being kidnapped along with Jurai by Yuri, the king of the dragons. She learns that there is an entire country in which the others rule and every human child is being killed. Yuri wants her and Jurai to rule with him and expand the country to the entire world, killing all humans in the process. Mio later learns that being a mermaid is special because it is said that the mermaid, master of the waters, the wolf, master of the earth (that being Jurai) and the dragon, master of the sky are said to come back one day to free the others and rule the world.
I like this manga a lot and have read it physically instead of online (because I've had my eyes on it for a while and my sister ended up buying the first 5 volumes so, you know) and haven't regretted it one bit, I think it could've gone on for a bit longer if parts of some countries had been explored for a bit longer, some of initial premises were also completely thrown away but that was okay, especially since it's the first work of the mangaka.
Out of nowhere, we learn that ACTUALLY the father was told by some mysterious elders to kill her but he loved her too much (even though he very clearly hated her at the beginning of the story but whatever).
The art is nice, the extra-chapters were fun and I'm looking forward to reading more by Fumikawa-sensei.
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