![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
After School Nightmare, Setona Mizushiro
Mar. 9th, 2008 06:37 pmAfter School Nightmare, Setona Mizushiro. v1-3 (scanlations), v 1-5 (Go!Comi)
Mashiro Ichijo, a student at an elite boarding school, is told he must attend a mysterious class required for graduation – a class that takes place in the shared dreamworld of those students involved. Each of the attendees appears in the dreamworld in a form that reflects their true self and wears a cord with three beads on them. Each bead can be shattered by physical or emotional violence, and when the last bead shatters they wake up; if, before that, they can find a key – usually hidden inside the altered body of one of the students – they can instead graduate, leaving the dreamworld behind them. But the classes are terrifying, bloody and cruel, and the students who graduate fade from everyone’s memories, leaving behind empty desks and nameless lockers.
Ichijo’s participation is triggered by his own carefully guarded secret – he is not entirely male (he describes his body as only male “from the waist up”), and he’s just started menstruating; when he appears in his dream form, he is (unlike the other students) identical in appearance to his everyday self, but wearing the girls’ version of the school uniform. His fellow students, however, are less recognisable, their forms often horrific reflections of their own secrets, and their motives unclear.
This is beautifully disturbing and very very good: revolving (possibly unavoidably) around issues of identity, particularly gender, it’s hard not to sympathise with almost all of the characters, and yet impossible to see how they can all get what they want. I also like the art, which is recognisably shojo without being annoyingly frilly, and the Go!Comi editions are very nice. V1-4 have the colour opening pages, as well, although they're missing from 5.
( More specific discussion, assumes knowledge of series while failing to actually usefully summarise events. )
I was hoping writing this would result in the arrival of volume 6, but although it is out the place I ordered it from ordered me volume 5 instead, thus dropping them to the bottom of my list of the three suppliers I'm currently experimenting with. The Go!Comi website has a sort of trailer thing here (for some reason, I can't link to the series page - look for the list on the right) to give an idea of the series and checking release dates with one hand over the screen to avoid accidentally reading any of the blurbs has a relatively quick schedule, with volume 8 (possibly the final? I’m pretty sure it’s finished in Japan) out in August.
Mashiro Ichijo, a student at an elite boarding school, is told he must attend a mysterious class required for graduation – a class that takes place in the shared dreamworld of those students involved. Each of the attendees appears in the dreamworld in a form that reflects their true self and wears a cord with three beads on them. Each bead can be shattered by physical or emotional violence, and when the last bead shatters they wake up; if, before that, they can find a key – usually hidden inside the altered body of one of the students – they can instead graduate, leaving the dreamworld behind them. But the classes are terrifying, bloody and cruel, and the students who graduate fade from everyone’s memories, leaving behind empty desks and nameless lockers.
Ichijo’s participation is triggered by his own carefully guarded secret – he is not entirely male (he describes his body as only male “from the waist up”), and he’s just started menstruating; when he appears in his dream form, he is (unlike the other students) identical in appearance to his everyday self, but wearing the girls’ version of the school uniform. His fellow students, however, are less recognisable, their forms often horrific reflections of their own secrets, and their motives unclear.
This is beautifully disturbing and very very good: revolving (possibly unavoidably) around issues of identity, particularly gender, it’s hard not to sympathise with almost all of the characters, and yet impossible to see how they can all get what they want. I also like the art, which is recognisably shojo without being annoyingly frilly, and the Go!Comi editions are very nice. V1-4 have the colour opening pages, as well, although they're missing from 5.
( More specific discussion, assumes knowledge of series while failing to actually usefully summarise events. )
I was hoping writing this would result in the arrival of volume 6, but although it is out the place I ordered it from ordered me volume 5 instead, thus dropping them to the bottom of my list of the three suppliers I'm currently experimenting with. The Go!Comi website has a sort of trailer thing here (for some reason, I can't link to the series page - look for the list on the right) to give an idea of the series and checking release dates with one hand over the screen to avoid accidentally reading any of the blurbs has a relatively quick schedule, with volume 8 (possibly the final? I’m pretty sure it’s finished in Japan) out in August.
