Things finally seem to be going better for Rise, now that she and Azusa have had their mock wedding and have been officially approved of and supported by Reiko Onitsuka, the student body president. However, it's clear that Akamaru still dislikes and distrusts Azusa. Nobunaga, a member of the student council, decides to use that fact to try to lure Akamaru to the dark side (i.e. the student council, which Akamaru has thus far resisted joining).

It all starts when Azusa comes down with a cold. Rise goes to his house and learns just how much he's been hiding from her and everyone else. His secrets soon land him in hot water at school, threaten to destroy his relationship with Rise, and add to Akamaru's list of reasons to want him gone.

This is the first volume in this series that I haven't disliked. Which isn't to say that I think this series has taken a turn for the better. It's still a dumpster fire of horrible people, a central "romance" I can't bring myself to root for, and world-building that is both shoddy and vile. But this volume allowed me to mentally recast Akamaru as Rise's true love interest as Azusa repeatedly shot himself in the foot. Again. Seriously, the guy is an idiot. He probably doesn't deserve whatever volume 4 has in store for him (anything called

can't possibly be good), but I wouldn't cry if he were banished from the school for good.

This is also the first volume in the series that hasn't included on-page or hinted-at sexual assault. The male student council members apparently have orgies while the study body president is away, so these high schoolers are still having a ridiculous amount of sex, but at least it looked to be consensual.

All right, back to Akamaru and Azusa. I'm still not sure why Akamaru seems to like Rise so much, but he was definitely pretty cute, saving the lunch Rise didn't get a chance to give Azusa, and eating his mushrooms when Rise commented on his picky eating habits. The more I grew to like Akamaru, the more of an inconsistent mess Azusa seemed. He'd act like a clueless but potentially adorable idiot one minute, and then become hard and cold the next. And considering what his private life turned out to be like, Jyoushioka High School's setup should have been a snap for him. I'm not sure the author thought that one through very well.

This is where my Gakuen Prince reading experience ends. From what I can tell, volume 3 was the last paper volume of this series to be printed. Digital versions of the later volumes are available, but I don't care enough for this series, or even just Akamaru, to want to buy them.

Extras:

Considering that this volume ends on a fairly dark note, the extras are practically sugary sweet by comparison.

• A one-page comic-style author's note about one of her assistants.
• Four two-page shorts, each focused on a different character: Azusa Mizutani, Omi Akamaru, Suguru Munechika, and Reiko Onitsuka (who seems to either be bi or a lesbian).
• A personality test that matches you up with one of six characters in the series. I was fairly confident about my answers until the last question, which I wasn't sure about. Then I peeked at the results, and I'm going with the answer that gets me Akamaru, because the other answer would have gotten me Azusa. And hoo boy, the descriptions for the different people you could end up with are about what you'd expect considering this series. For example, here's a portion of Munechika's: "The more incompetent you are, the more he'll want to protect you. And this will lead to love! You should ask for his help, even if you can do things for yourself. It's better to leave it all up to him in bed too!"
• A two-page afterword.
• A two-page comic about a prank the author tried to play on her assistants that didn't work out.
• Five pages of translator's notes.

Rating Note:

I had no idea how to rate this. It was relatively entertaining and didn't enrage or repulse me as much as parts of the previous volumes. 2.5 stars is probably overly generous, but it's what I'm going with.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Azusa and Rise learn that they're going to need to do a little more than just exchange neckties in order to be accepted as a real couple by the girls at their horrible school. They will also need to participate in a mock marriage, a ceremony known as the Fiançailles. Just ignore the fact that this was never mentioned in the first volume.

Rise wants nothing to do with the ceremony, especially since it will involve kissing Azusa in front of the whole school. Azusa, however, really wants the continued protection of a fake girlfriend, although he keeps telling himself that one of the main reasons he wants to participate in the Fiançailles is to finally end the other students' bullying of Rise.

Two other characters get involved: a girl named Noriko Fuwa and Akamaru, a popular but aloof guy from S-class. Noriko is determined to make Azusa her own. Akamaru, meanwhile, seems to want to protect Rise. He had previously warned her to keep her distance from Azusa, and now he goes after Azusa for continuously upsetting her, making her cry, and making her even more of a bullying target.

Anyone who accidentally skipped the first volume would likely assume this was a relatively normal, if annoying and slightly risque, romance series. A couple potential love triangles are introduced, and, if I remember right, not a single character mentions the fate that Azusa is trying to avoid.

If you did skip the first volume, or if it's been a while since you read it, allow me to remind you: at this particular school, girls vastly outnumber the boys and see this as an excuse to hunt them down and rape them. If a boy is lucky enough to find himself a girlfriend who can protect him, or if he can find a part to play (school idol, unapproachable sex god, etc.) that the girls think is acceptable and that he's willing to perform, he's safe. Otherwise, he's at the mercy of any girl who can catch him. All of the school's teachers are either too dense or too non-confrontational to be of any help.

And that's why this series is still garbage, even though this second volume scales the worst aspects way back. It was also easy to see that Yuzuki had no clue how to handle the characters or write this world. The male students' parents were generally as rich and influential as the female students' parents. Why wasn't that a factor in how they were treated? Heck, one of the teachers was too afraid of Akamaru's father to tell Akamaru that he was going to have to attend an after-school tutoring session.

In the first volume, Rise was a ball of barely suppressed rage and disdain. In this volume, that mostly disappeared, and she became a more generic delicate flower of a heroine, prone to beautiful tears. And while it was clear that Azusa was still supposed to be her primary love interest, Akamaru was at least a hundred times better than him. Where Azusa was childish, easily distracted, and prone to yelling at Rise when she didn't do what he wanted, Akamaru was protective of Rise and mature enough to see when his interference might make things worse for her rather than better. Granted, readers still don't know his motivation (if he even has one - I'm doubtful that the author has any kind of plan), but I certainly liked him more.

Although this volume did have far fewer on-page rape attempts, it still wasn't sexual assault-free. In a kissing scene that made me shudder with revulsion, Azusa forced his tongue into Rise's mouth in order to prove that they were a "real" couple (only true couples French kiss, or something like that - yeah, like I'm going to believe Munechika never French kisses any of the girls he has sex with). He got his tongue bitten, but that's beside the point. Also, the rapist lesbian returned: the school's student body president gave several female students to her as punishment for throwing raw eggs at Rise. This was supposed to be funny.

So yeah, this was slightly better than the first volume, but still crap.

Extras:

Several author's notes, a few humorous drawings, four pages of translator's notes, and a four-page untranslated preview of volume 3.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I bought this and the next two volumes while bargain bin shopping a while back. The cover made me think it might be some kind of "bad boy + nerdy wallflower" romance. It's not.

Jyoushioka High School used to be an all-girls' school until a few years ago. Although it's now co-ed, the school's girls still vastly outnumber the boys. All the boys are placed in S-class, which only the richest and brightest girls are assigned to.

Azusa Mizutani is the school's newest male transfer student. He has no idea how the school works, and he soon realizes that he'll have to learn fast. Since boys are few and far between, nearly all of the girls are sex crazed. S-class gets first dibs on raping the boys, after which they're fair game for anyone who can get at them. Munechika, the school's most powerful guy, has learned how to make the system work for him, and his advice to Azusa is simple: just accept it and don't get anyone pregnant.

Azusa doesn't have many options. He can take control and actively seduce girls the way Munechika does, keep running until he's finally cornered and raped, or find a girl who's willing to date him and thereby stake her claim on him. When he accidentally comes across Rise Okitsu, a girl who just wants to make it through high school without getting involved in any trouble, he decides to declare her his girlfriend.

I always liked Del Rey's manga releases because they all had pages of useful translator's notes. Those notes are probably the best thing about this pile of garbage.

This series is basically just an excuse for lots of on-page abuse and near-rape. Within the first few pages, Azusa spots a guy in tears because a gang of girls ripped all his clothes off. During his first class, he reads a note being passed around in which all the girls are talking about how hot he is and what it'll be like when they tie him up, take embarrassing pictures of him, and rape him. (I don't recall the word "rape" ever being used in the volume, but it's pretty clear that's what the girls intend to do.) After Azusa forces Rise to help him,

There are a couple instances where girls try to drug Azusa -

The brief quiet period after Azusa initially announced that he belonged to Rise bothered me on multiple levels. Both Azusa and Rise started to relax, thinking their fellow students' sudden friendliness was genuine, and all I could think was how gross it would be to smile and laugh with students who were only behaving like decent human beings because of a necktie (students who are dating each other exchange neckties).

There are a few gender-flipped instances of the sorts of things women often encounter. For example, when Azusa first finds out how the girls treat the boys, he tells himself that the boy he saw on his way to his first class must have had a problem (had done something that led to the girls attacking him). That kind of thing wouldn't happen to him because he's different. So we have victim-blaming as a form of self-comfort (which doesn't last long in this case). Then there's the whole "ownership" aspect of dating - guys gaining some measure of protection by declaring that they "belong" to one particular girl. The gender-flipping didn't make any of it less gross, and I have a feeling that, in the end, Yuzuki was aiming more for "titillating rape fantasy" than some sort of commentary on rape culture.

There was also some "not like other girls" crap. Rise was the only girl who wasn't involved in the boy-hunting and the only one who seemed to be even slightly bothered by any of it. There were also multiple instances of her fuming about the "heifers" and "sluts" at her school.

If I continue on, it's because I already own the next couple volumes and it's always hard for me to force myself to offload stuff I haven't read. I can't get the "what if it gets better?" voice to shut up, even in cases like this, where odds are really good that it won't get better and might even get worse.

Extras:

Four pages of translators notes, a couple pages of honorifics explanations, a few author freetalk sections (including the postscript, in which the author writes "Well, to tell you the truth, I've been drawing manga just by my instincts, so I don't know the basics of building up a story." (175)), and at least one humorous four-panel comic featuring characters from the series.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)