Yukine Hanami and Satosumi Takaguchi team up for a story about one young man’s Gakuen Hell.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yukine Honami/Satosumi Takaguchi
Translation/Adaptation: Earl Gertwagen
What They Say
Yuuhi-kun planned to build a soccer field on the piece of mountain land that was his inheritance, but when his brother’s elite Shuuiku Academy needed a new campus, Yuuhi was forced to reconsider. Now he finds himself both the landlord, and a student at the school! Needless to say, the other students are none too happy about being shipped out to the boonies, so Yuuhi – AKA “chicken-head – has become the object of their collective ire. But there’s something about the country bumpkin that has many students eyeing Yuuhi in a different way…a way that makes him uncomfortable. Seems there’s a lot more than “book-learnin” going on at this school, and Yuuhi’s about to get a whole ‘nuther kind of education!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
All Yuuhi Torishima wanted to do was to play soccer. But he lives in the country and can’t always get a place to play. His dream is to level the mountain that he is to inherit from his father, and put in a soccer field. His dream is quickly shattered when his father announces that the mountain is to be signed over to Shuuiku Academy for the creation of a branch of the school. (“It’s already decided. Is that okay with you?”. Ahh, parents.) Yuuhi is protesting loudly to his friend, Hayato, when he is overheard by two young men, who it turns out, are two of the three council members of Shuuiku Academy come to talk Yuuhi out of signing over his mountain. Yuuhi had no intention of signing over his inheritance, but when these two city guys insult the countryside, Yuuhi decides not to sell his mountain, but to rent it!
Yuuhi, flushed with the power of being a landlord, takes Chairman Ezaki’s invitation to become a student at the school against the advice of his brother, Morio, a teacher at the academy. Yuuhi is resented by most of the students at the school because of his lease of the mountain land. And his life at the school becomes even more problematic, when as RA assigned by Chairman Ezaki, he posts a list of prohibited behaviors for the dorm, and is subjected to cruel jokes and pranks, even death threats as a result. Yuuhi’s resolution of the conflict initiates some introspection on the part of his fellow students and is the turning point in their behavior toward him.
This series is about acting truly and sincerely from the heart, and the power of this to change people, even jaded students at an elite academy. It is about a young man learning about himself, learning about love and affection, all in full view of others, who begin to realize what they themselves may have lost in their “sophistication”. Honami and Takaguchi have produced an engaging school story with characters that are believable and involving.
Honami or Takaguchi have not done graphic sexual depiction in previous works and have not done so in this one. Any sexual activity is discreetly rendered or occluded. It’s often more a visual shorthand than anything else. What earns the 18+ rating is the addition of more frank sexual talk and more verbal cues to the action. It is an appropriate rating.
In Summary:
I have great hopes for this series. There is Yukine Honami’s expressive art and Satosumi Takaguchi’s track record of story-telling going for it. (Shout Out Loud! is a personal favorite.) And although there’s quite a bit of cruelty in the jokes the students perpetrate, and in the behavior the students exhibit, it’s no “Rika the Breeder”. Probably normal for a boy’s school, and a BL boy’s school at that. There are some unintentional(?) laughs though. It was difficult not to chuckle when Morio was explaining to Yuuhi that the school harems, excuse me, groups ” all play a certain role. Improving academic performance…providing experience in a social environment…that’s why the school tolerates them.” Only in the rarified world of BL!
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Digital Manga Publishing
Release Date: August 15th, 2007
MSRP: $12.95