Wolf Girl and Black Prince (Okami Shojo to Kuro Oji), or “Girl With Low Self-Esteem Needs Therapy”, is an anime that gives Boys Over Flowers a run for its money for its portrayal of the worst male love interest in a shojo romance. I only heard about this anime because I was watching a video about Takahiro Sakurai, the seiyu for Ayame Sohma. A clip of Kyoya, the male love interest, was shown in the video and I was intrigued because he was so pretty. Let’s just say, I wasn’t expecting so much cringe and second-hand embarrassment.

The story is about Erika, a schoolgirl who lies too much in order to fit in. She has a fear of being lonely and left out on her first day at big school, despite having a very reasonable and intelligent best friend already, but the friend, San, is assigned to a different class. Erika tries to impress her two classmates, who constantly boast about their relationships with older men, by saying that she too has a daring partner, does bondage play with him, and fucks him all day and night. The girls start to disbelieve Erika’s stories, and in desperation, she takes a picture of a random guy on the street and tells them that he is her boyfriend.

The random guy turns out to be Kyoya Sata, the "prince” of her school, and classmate of San. She ends up asking Kyoya if he could pretend to be her boyfriend to keep up the lie. He surprisingly agrees, but only if Erika spins around three times and barks like a dog. Because she’s so desperate, she does so, and thus begins a very weird relationship of this pretty boy making sadistic demands of his pretend girlfriend, and the pretend girlfriend somehow still falling in love with him, and spending the next eleven episodes begging him to love her back. A mess.

Erika falls for Kyoya very quickly. By episode two, her heart is all a’ doki-doki-ing, but despite that, Kyoya treats her like a dog, looks upon her with disdain, and constantly feels like he owns her. It’s only when a potential love rival appears in the form of the docile Yuu Kusakabe, who actually likes her as a human, does Kyoya start taking her seriously. But by taking her seriously, I mean dragging her away from Kusakabe and declaring that Erika belongs to him. And Erika looks upon him with heart eyes and flushed cheeks because it’s the most romantic thing he’s ever done to her. The bar is in hell.

After the Kusakabe challenge, the pair become an official couple, but it’s still one-sided as Kyoya refuses to show Erika any affection or care. His childhood friend, the simple-minded, best boy Takeru, constantly tries to get Kyoya to be more loving towards Erika and encourages Erika when things look bleak. The longsuffering San regularly asks the questions that need to be asked, challenging Erika’s love for Kyoya, but when it’s clear there’s just no helping her, she offers her mild support from the sidelines. Poor San.

The worst moment of the anime is when Erika confesses her love to Kyoya for the umpteenth time, and asks for his honest answer back. He smiles and makes a very decent, very kind confession to her, only to laugh in her face and tell her he was joking as soon as she starts crying tears of joy. Erika understandably storms off and calls calls him terrible, but has already decided to accept whatever attention she can draw from him an episode later.

The last three episodes offer a sliver of character development, as the womaniser Nozomi Kamiya keeps trying to get Kyoya to cheat on Erika because he seems so out of her league. Kyoya genuinely gets offended on her behalf, and rejects all temptations that Nozomi throws his way. This then helps Nozomi turn over a new leaf to find his own exclusive sweetheart, and then he hilariously joins Takeru’s support club, trying to teach Kyoya how to be affectionate, and inviting himself to Kyoya’s house for some bromance bonding.

We then have an admittedly funny and sweet episode for Erika’s birthday, which features Kyoya’s physical inability to say I Love You. It’s rare to see a flustered Kyo, and in the end he’s only able to whisper it in her ear over the noise of a passing car, but for Erika, it’s enough to send her into a googly-eyed mess.

I was in the need for something trashy and mindless and I sure found it in Wolf Girl. I can’t say I enjoyed it, but it was something light and silly to pass the time. It does remind me of why I don’t like tsundere stories, especially ones this extreme. It’s so sad seeing Erika sprout doggy ears and a wagging tail at any stoic glance from Kyoya, and it’s frustrating to see someone clearly in love with someone else, but doing all they can to treat them like trash. I much prefer enemies-to-lovers tropes. At least they’re not so one-sided.

Just like Boys Over Flowers, this is a “watch it if you want” conclusion. You won’t be missing anything if you skipped it.

5/10