Seiho Boys High School 2

Kaneyoshi Izumi – Viz – 2010 – 8+ volumes

There’s a panel in one of the chapters that almost perfectly sums up my attitude towards this type of shoujo premise (ie what kind of crazy/potentially sexy things happen at an all-boys school): at one point, when talking to a prospective student that rubs him the wrong way and also asks why he doesn’t have a girlfriend, Kamiki gets a scary voice, a far-off look in his eye, and a strange background with “a door to another world” while suggesting that “a boys’ school is not limited to just girls.”

Which is why I don’t read these, but thankfully Seiho Boys’ High School avoids almost all the traps that these series fall into. There is a gay character or two, but there’s no fanservice between the boys in this volume at all, and it’s very character-centric in a way that surprises me, since these are usually driven more by wacky hijinx-type stories. There’s none of that here. And it’s very sweet.

The sweetness mostly comes from the main character, who is a genuinely nice guy to everybody. Maki’s past with the girl he had a crush on is revealed in this volume over the course of three chapters. Initially it’s easy to hate his love interest, the rude Erika, because she tends to say the worst things to Maki when he attempts to be nice to her. But he continually insists that it’s because she’s bad with people. He finds it endearing, and it gets turned around pretty quickly when the rude things she says continually cross the line into the absurd. She won’t give Maki the time of day, but he has it bad, and continuously courts her and stands up for her despite everyone else badmouthing her constantly. Watching them slowly grow closer and closer, with Maki’s nice guy act and Erika’s prickly personality, was quite endearing, and changed my opinion of this series around entirely. The ending was especially worthwhile, and while it can be seen as a kind of cheap emotional cash-in, it was still effective, and something you don’t often see in this type of series.

Maki aside, there are two other side stories in the chapters in this volume. One of them kicks off the flashback, when Maki takes an insistent girl on a tour of the school. Looking at her, he constantly thinks about how she’s the type of cute girl he wants to date (not necessarily looks-wise, but he thinks about how a girl with a nice smile and a cute personality are the ones he likes best). She’s slightly manipulative, which puts Maki off, and when it turns out she went to the same junior high as Maki and badmouths Erika, he rather harshly kicks her to the curb, with the raucous support of all his friends.

One thing is, when Maki stands up for Erika, it’s usually because people call her “a nasty eyesore” and state outright that she’s not good enough for Maki. Maki counters this with… really terrible comebacks. For instance, “Don’t ever call Erika an eyesore, you ugly bitch!” The point is that he loses it when it comes to Erika, but it still seems out of character and a little hypocritical.

Another, unrelated, story is about a lonely local girl who laments the fact she doesn’t have a boyfriend and has to play hostess to her best friend and her boyfriend for the weekend. She runs into the boys from Seiho, and winds up convincing Kamiki to pretend to be her boyfriend for the weekend. This doesn’t go any of the usual places. The girl doesn’t fawn over or develop a crush on any of the Seiho boys, and even when Kamiki plays the part of the most gallant boyfriend on Earth, saving her from her lies more than once, the story is never about the two of them hooking up. It’s about her and her friend, with the Seiho boys playing foils to some extent.

Again, that’s one of the main reasons this stands out, in my mind. What other all-boys’ school series has the boys taking a backseat to a female character who isn’t likely to reappear? The side stories are very sweet, the characters likable, the stories touching, and I’m happy this goes against the formulas like that. It’s not super-stand-out as far as plot and characters go just yet (and its episodic formula has me thinking it might maintain this status quo for some time), but it’s a great light read, and definitely good for shoujo fans. Don’t let the title scare you away.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.