When the kingdom of Forland comes under attack from a disgruntled scientist and his two cyborgs, Princess Alita flees the castle, hoping to find her brother and his army to bring them back. Instead, she trips, falls off a cliff and knocks skulls with a bounty hunter named Falis.
When the two awaken, they find their souls have somehow switched bodies, though being in the body of a pampered princess does nothing to diminish Falis' strength or skill with a blade. Falis first agrees to defeat the scientist, and then, to run the country until a way can be found to put she and Alita back in their proper bodies. Alita, in Falis' body, takes the role of a servant and plays niece to the royal court's butler, Jodo.
I found the anime version of Murder Princess first, but as it was only 6 episodes, the conclusion felt incredibly rushed. So when I learned the anime was based on a manga, I went hunting for it. Except it's only two volumes (11 chapters total), and, if anything, has less of a conclusion. There's a great computer, hidden somewhere among the 4 kingdoms, that possesses all the knowledge of the world. It could tell how to reverse Falis and Alita's problem, or how to repeat the destruction of the world that preceded this one. And one of the 4 keys is in Alita's body.
In the anime, the computer is found and activated, but ultimately destroyed so its power can't be abused, but also preventing it from solving the main characters' problem. In the manga, they never get to that point. The computer is known about, and that there's a powerful witch, working for a never-seen, even more powerful master, who has 2 of the keys, and that's it. There's also a looming threat that the world and its people are gradually being corrupted because fate has gone off-course. Alita was supposed to die that night, and the soul transfer's mucking everything up as the corruption turns people into Resident Evil monsters.
That never gets resolved, either. It isn't as though Inui spends too much time on humor plots about how unfit the blunt, uncultured Falis is to be a political leader. Those jokes and gags are in there to be sure, but they're kept brief and within the flow of the plot. There's just too many things to introduce in too little time. We get Falis' origin, but not why she has two partners/subordinates, one a Frankenstein with the fashion sense of Bebop from the Ninja Turtles, and the other an actual Shinigami, a soul reaper. Seems like there would have been a story there, but oh well.
I reviewed volume 1 and volume 2 a month apart back in 2020. I strongly considered using that first image from the volume 1 post for this one, but figured I should pick something else.
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