The Spring 2025 Manga Guide

12 Dirty Deeds to Unite the Princess and Her Heroine (18+)

What's It About? 

When Princess Sephilia and the fearless heroine Lenaria were young, they pledged their futures to one another. But when Lenaria returns triumphant after slaying the demon lord, it's not the princess's hand in marriage she requests—it's her royal panties! Cursed by the demon lord in its final moments, Lenaria must now perform twelve wildly perverted acts to lift the spell that threatens her very soul.

12 Dirty Deeds to Unite the Princess and Her Heroine has a story and art by Moridam, with English translation by Matthew Carolan. Cedric Macias letters this volume. Published by Ghost Ship (March 25, 2025).

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris
Rating:

I firmly believe that folks of all orientations deserve their own stupid smut. But as with a lot of adults-only material, it's important to know what you're getting into. Thus I feel the need to inform any lesbians looking for lurid laughs from the silly sapphics of 12 Dirty Deeds to know that even by the stands of dumb porn, this is duuuumb. It's a story where a recurring fate worse than death is being transmogrified into a porno magazine; where the fictional history of a kingdom called Big Breastia is predicated on eras of anti-small-boob and anti-yuri discrimination; where the heroine magically reinforces her own ass muscles for defensive purposes multiple times (despite virtually every character in this rocking a pretty serious dump truck, to begin with).

It is exactly the kind of illogical illicitness run with reckless abandon in so many manga about hapless dudes getting hot women improbably thrown at them. For the lady-lovin' ladies, I think that's only fair.

Does that mean it's particularly good? Ehhh… First off, I will say that, despite the title, it's impressive that 12 Dirty Deeds isn't an excuse for a multi-chapter succession of sex acts. Instead, it's a screwball action-comedy filled with horny hijinks, where every castle guard confrontation, magical healing session, or demon shakedown is an excuse for pin-up pose battle shots and stupid sexed-up names for attacks. It creates just enough earnest engagement with horned-up heroine Lenaria and her anti-perverse Princess Sephiria as they fall face, tits, ass, and other parts first into their curse-breaking quest. The fact that they're terminally not bright in how they go about it suspends disbelief in a way that keeps things moving until you get to the subsequent spread of scantily clad lesbians scrambling for third base with each other.

That's needed because the plot really doesn't make any more sense than the in-between pages it takes up. One would think that it wouldn't be that hard for Sephiria to deal with doing the down-and-dirty deeds necessary to simply break Lenaria's curse, least of all because she's fantasizing about finger-blasting the wedded knight on their wedding night from the first moment they're reunited. But that would be a short and very different comic, so Lenaria has to come off as repressed purely for plot-device reasons. A later chapter does allude to the idea that her mother gave her some poorly pointed purity-pilled sex-ed that resulted in her warped view of these acts, but by that point, it doesn't matter. Also, Moridam's art is genuinely ambitious in everything it does. Still, the amount of backgrounds they insist on including clutters things up more than necessary, especially on a digital copy with all the screen tones. Like everything else on this trail to tribadism, very messy, but it's fun and funny enough that it is worth checking out if it looks like your flavor of hot, knowing garbage.

There's a charm for stories with ridiculous premises that take themselves very seriously. The humor is in the fact that you can have your characters say some of the most ludicrous things or end up in some of the most out-of-pocket situations, but they will treat it with the same amount of severity as if their firstborn was kidnapped. I like comedies like that as long as the premises themselves are interesting, but that's where our first problem crops up. 12 Dirty Deeds has a solid grip of comedic timing, and some of the jokes are pretty funny. The story unfolds almost like a sad and dramatic love story between a princess and her childhood friend, but the actual drama stems from the fact that this childhood friend is cursed with a desire to perform perverted actions. So now those actions need to be satisfied for the curse to be removed.

Just because the characters are taking the situation seriously does not mean the story is taking it seriously. For the first half of the book, that is rather funny. The problem is that as the story progresses, it starts finding fewer and fewer creative ways to make these jokes land. I think it's banking a little too much on the premise to sell the comedy without realizing that it has sadly fallen into a state of monotony as the same joke gets repeated in slightly different ways. It tries to cover for this by taking a more battle-centric approach by the very end, but at that point, I've lost even more interest.

This also comes down to the fact that the presentation is just not that interesting, at best, and downright intrusive at worst. The scene layouts aren't properly thought out, which can lead to very confusing set pieces or cuts between scenes. Plus, this series, for some reason, LOVES screentones so much to the point where they're almost on everything, and it legitimately hurts my eyes after a while. Throw in some action with explosive overlays, and I can barely stomach looking at the paper anymore. The actual perverted elements of the story aren't engaging either, as they are relatively tame compared to a lot of the other things that you would find in this very guide. If you want some hot Yuri or a good laugh, there's so much better out there than this.