Kitchen Candy-Candy Princess

There's a manga that I recently read called Kitchen Princess.. It's a story about an orphaned girl who has the sense of taste that moved to Tokyo to fulfill her parents dream to become the best pastry chef. Her ability allows her to taste a food and always remember it forever along with identifying ingredients within it. The girl was soon acquainted herself with 2 attractive boys and becomes the school's talk because of her having such an "ordinary" talent --which they thought was eating.

This lead her to be bullied yet starting to have a closer bond with the 2 attractive boys which leads to even more bullying by a girl who secretly likes one of the boys she's close with. Of course, aside from her dream, she is secretly hoping to find this "flan prince" that saved her from drowning when she was younger.

For some reason, when I was reading this, I immediately thought of Candy-Candy. There were several similarities I noticed in both stories.

Candy-Candy

Najika

Hairstyle
This is just me nitpicking, but they both have blond pigtails. Though Candy-Candy's hair is curly, but.. the way it's tied, with ribbons on top, is similar.

Personality
"Different from other girls" and independent. Always want to make her friends smile. Cheerful, strong on the outside but is hurting on the inside.

Circumstances.
They're both orphaned since young. Living in a orphanage that is in the middle of nowhere with a nice old lady as the head of the orphanage with little children that thinks of her as the big sister.
Went to live in the city, and studied in a school of "rich" people, staying in its dormitory.

Romance

Candy's fake prince.

Are both looking for the "prince" who cheered them up when they were crying at a younger age. Najika's clue was a silver spoon, Candy-Candy's clue was a clothing accessories (that I dont know the english term of). They both found a guy that they thought was their prince and even fell in love with him and he with them.

Najika's fake prince

But he was actually not the prince, so the author killed him off in order for the girls to end up being with the actual prince, if she just moved hearts while he's alive she might be considered a slut, though killing them didn't really justify the idea.

Their destined loved ones, was not their first choice at first due to their first impression, (Najika's guy was cold and anti-her at the beginning, Candy's guy was a man that lived in the woods for so long he grew beard and could talk to animals.) They eventually changed and became a better gentleman before end up being with the girls.


I assume that the Kitchen Princess was somehow inspired by it or without realizing it wrote it similar to Candy-Candy because s/he once read the manga when s/he was younger.
There are a couple of differences, first of all, the book is about cooking which means competition and similar plot idea on several chapters.

The story had a nice idea, and I liked the titling of the chapters but soon it just gets tiring/annoying and it felt dragged so I skipped through a few chapters all the way till the end. The whole romance plot was easy to figure out. It's obvious who she'll end up being with and there was the overly used love square problem where, as usual, the main character always gets all the boys to like her.

Overall the drawing was well done, but I wouldn't continue buying Nakayoshi to keep reading it.. I'd rather just go online and read for free.. yet still think it wasted my time.