Born from a foreign model and a diplomat dad, Ruri Morikawa feels like she should be a normal Japanese girl. She’s gorgeous, seems sharp, and is very smart. So…what happened? Why does she feel so unsatisfied with her college life?
Well, 100% the reason is due to her long-time fri…enemy Asahi being with her. While growing up Asahi consistently got what she wanted, and it usually affected Ruri, whether that was in making friends with her classmates or even getting along with her teachers. And despite studying hard enough to get into a school Asahi wouldn’t be smart enough to go to, Asahi still found a way to be with her. So with that, and Asahi’s followers also along with her, Ruri’s exciting college life is not so exciting.
But a random summoning from some losers in another world changes Ruri’s, Asahi’s, and those followers’ lives for good! Especially Ruri’s and, definitely later, Asahi’s.
Was amused that when I started reading The White Cat’s Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King’s Lap manga I thought about Arifureta, which I’ve only briefly read, and my recent read The Ideal Sponger Life. “Wait a minute,” I said, “I know there’s so many commonalities with isekai, but this part where students, or someone, gets reincarnated by other people from another world is really the thing to flip the usual dying and then getting reincarnated bit isn’t it?” Clearly, the more isekai you read, the more it’s general patterns start to emerge. The only clear difference here is we follow a female lead, and one where she actually is a cat in the dragon king’s lap.
…Ok, I’m lying and not lying at the same time. The first page does actually have Ruri turned into a cat in the dragon king’s lap. Then it immediately dives into Ruri’s life before this happens. As in, local college girl being (unwittingly) bothered for ages by someone who can’t read the room — to the point where she’s had to don a wig rather than be ordered by the teachers to bleach her hair — gets summoned by buffoons in a fantasy world. Those buffoons have been looking for someone called the Priestess Princess, and good news for Ruri: they believe it’s Asahi, which means she can finally get away from her for good.
The bad news is the people also have been charmed by Asahi, to the point where they create a lie that Ruri aimed to kill her, and that gets the king to toss Ruri into a forest. From there though, she finds her way around the forest, finds a house, meets a nice (and strong) old lady in Chelsie, and learns a lot about who she really is in this world, why she’s being followed by cute (and DEFINITELY NOT dangerous) fairies, and even learning Asahi might have some ability that’s causing all these problems.
The manga does streamline a couple things from the light novel but naturally keeps the general set up the same — Ruri eventually aims to get revenge against the people who sent her here with no way to get back to her own world — but, and while I’m sure the signs were there in the light novel, the humor feels like it’s gotten a major step up. Like, tons of humor everywhere. The visuals look nice at times and some of the fairies we meet and the expressions they have (those are definitely murder fairies, don’t think they’re innocent!) can be great. But it really felt like at almost every page Ruri would become baffled in a funny way or someone would get pumped as Ruri does any action (like give a very expensive item to someone who can’t buy it from her!) to create some humor. It does have its place, yet it felt like it could’ve been dialed back a bit.
Overall though, the manga’s not the light novel, but it’s a solid adaptation of it so far. I say so far since there’s still much the manga has to adapt — like how is Asahi handling Ruri being away from her? How is the dragon king going to deal with meeting Ruri in human form and cat form, and, speaking of which, we will certainly see more of her in cat form in volume 2 based on where this ended. So there’s a lot to look forward to in the future, just curious to see how it’ll be paced from here on though.