By Jun Yuzuki
Del Rey, 183 pp.
Rating: OT Ages 16+

The description on the back of this book makes Gakuen Prince sound fairly innocuous. “A wild, no-holds-barred competition for the boys” in a shojo manga usually means that the girls compete in comedic ways to get the boyfriend they want, usually without the boys knowing. Here, the competition actually means that the girls take turns having sex with the boys and blatantly disregard how the boys may actually feel about it. The volume starts with a boy named Mizutani transferring into a formerly (and still mostly) all-girls school. He quickly finds out that during breaks, he’s obligated to have sex with the girls of the “S” class (basically the wealthy girls) and let them have him before the rest of the girls in school get their inevitable chance. He gets around this by pledging himself to a random shy girl, Rise. This makes the girls lay off Mizutani, but as a result, Rise becomes the subject of some really vicious bullying.

This sounds horrifying, but it’s clear that the author isn’t taking these subjects very seriously. While it is very disturbing that Mizutani is being chased down to be gang raped, it’s hard to be wary when the bell to signal the break sets literally every girl at school after Mizutani, because that moves it more firmly into the realm of comedy. Similarly, the way all the other boys have resigned themselves, and their descriptions of how they adapted, also takes some of the serious edge off of events. I found Rise’s bullying to be more disturbing than Mizutani’s situation. The bullying is pretty scary stuff, including razor blades in her notebook, roaches in her cellphone, and a near-rape committed by one of her classmates. A similar situation happens to Mizutani later, but they both save each other just in time. It is a shojo manga, after all.

Despite all the bad stuff, I really liked it. I think it was enjoyable only because all that stuff was in there, though. Had it just been a typical shojo romance manga where the girl puts up with some halfhearted bullying because the popular boy likes her, there are any number of other series I could read that would take its place. Most such series have exactly the same jokes and use the same plot devices as Gakuen Prince. This was more enjoyable because it takes everything one extra step. Of course, that puts it in the realm of questionable taste, but again, it’s clear that nothing is being taken very seriously.

It’s interesting to take gender into consideration, though. What if it were a girl at an all-boys’ school? If that were the case, I’m pretty sure the girl would be the strong type that would beat the boys up comically before they got anywhere close. But what would happen if Mizutani beat the girls up here? Well, that probably wouldn’t be okay, even though these girls really deserve it. In either case, fanservice is what it is, and it’s probably good to keep in mind that such things are disturbing regardless of the intended audience.

So, here we have Gakuen Prince. It’s one of the handful of “wolf in sheep’s clothing”-type series I’ve run across, where scary things happen in an otherwise fairly typical shojo manga (other examples are Hot Gimmick and Peach Girl). These types of series are inherently addictive because of their content. Bear in mind bad stuff happens, but if you’re a shojo manga fan, you’ll probably wind up enjoying it despite yourself.

Volume one of Gakuen Prince is available now.