Unbalance School Life

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Japanese: あんばらんすスク～ルライフ

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 2

Chapters: 15

Status: Finished

Published: Dec 1, 2015 to Aug 16, 2016

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi

Themes: Magical Sex Shift, School

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Manga Action

Authors: Mutsuki, Tsutomu (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 5.80¹ (scored by 833 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #18826²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #9223

Members: 1,931

Favorites: 2

5.80

Ranked #18826Popularity #9223Members 1,931

MangaManga ActionMutsuki, Tsutomu (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /2

Chapters: /15

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Synopsis

A former boys' school recently integrated into a co-ed high school. Shinya Sanada spent the beginning on his high school life in a hospital, so he arrives to what he thought was the boys-only dormitory a month late. What's waiting for him is his former childhood friend, although he's much more womanly than he remembers. Shinya decides to adapt to his new life at school.

(Source: MU)

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Characters

Sanada, Shinya

Main

Oomori, Midori

Main

Ousaka, Haruna

Supporting

Reviews

Oct 1, 2016

MaskettaSenpai

Recommended

Comedy is hard to really review and rate because, really, it all comes down to a simple question: is it funny or not? Saying anything beyond that is like masturbatory self-aggrandizement for the reviewer, an excuse to blather on without point or purpose.

So, Unbalance School Life centers on MC Shinya, who arrives to school one month late to find that all the other guys were turned into women by a plot contrivance. As the only man on campus, he has to try and keep it in his pants as he struggles to keep up in class.

The set-up is more or less just an excuse ... for the wacky shenanigans that follow, but the shenanigans are sufficiently wacky. There’s not much in the way of forward-driving plot, but as a vehicle for jokes and humorous situations, it works. A healthy portion of those jokes are going to revolve around accidental gropings (according to Japan, boobs are more felt than my rug), but there is genuine humor here, too, thank God. I got quite a few sensible chuckles and even a hearty guffaw here and there.

Part of what sells the humor is the MC. Never doubt the power of an MC to make or break a premise, and nothing can kill any sense of fun or excitement faster than a boring, stick-in-the-mud dead fish doormat of a protagonist. Luckily, Shinya, our main character here, is a complete dick, and I love him for it. He’s a man of simple wants and little patience or capability for tact, and it’s great. More characters should be unrepentant dicks. It just works.

Now, the rest of the cast is pretty standard for a story like this (including “the flat-chested one” everyone’s favorite apparent character archetype), and most are forgettable, but this is the sort of comedy where one-note personalities are more forgivable. As tools for setting up jokes and good lines, they do the job just fine.

The art is also actually surprisingly well done. Don’t expect Murata-style layers of detail and depth, but it gets all the basics right enough to be pleasing to the eye. Unlike “Shishunki Bitter Change” there are backgrounds and variations in panel layouts and my God I didn’t know how much I missed them. The characters themselves look pretty standard, which can make it a problem when it comes time to distinguish between them (How many black-haired generic manga school girls can a man be reasonably expected to keep track of?), but maybe I’m just racist. Also, we get full on nudity, nips and all, out of nowhere. It feels kind of sudden, but I have to commend the artist for drawing so skillfully with just one hand above the table.

There’s not a whole to this under the surface; what you see is what you get. If you’re looking for drama or introspection, you may get some literal navel-gazing, but little else. The beginning is a little muddled with character introductions and set-up, the romance element seems rather perfunctory, and it takes 8 or so chapters before we get the actual backstory, but these are relatively minor sins when you're having a good time. With Chapter 15, it looks like the story is going in a radically different direction, so who knows what that will bring. I'm compelled to keep reading, at least.

Unbalance School Life is breezy, it’s humorous, and it includes the line, “This isn’t slutty! This is avant-garde sexy!” There’s worse ways to spend an hour or two. Go in with the right expectations and you’ll have a grand old time.

TL;DR: It is funny.

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Jul 20, 2022

Jamais_vu

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler

An all-boys school goes co-ed and literally a week later, an alien crash lands and spills all her genderbender juices over the student body, oh no! Now, next to the few natal girls that are yet unicorns, the school instantly became an all-girls school! Well, until the only guy who escaped this mishap (?) arrives ...

The ultra-fun premise is better than the execution. Unbalanced School Life is decent, but this manga doesn't know what it wants to be. It's a 2 volume 15 chapter series, but the pacing is weird as hell and the manga pretends it has the luxury of pacing like a 8 ... volume or more school life romcom. There is an entire chapter of going to the mall, and another about some POTENTIAL (not even definitive, just potential) love interest giving the MC (the remaining male) private tutoring. These two chapters alone account for one seventh of the total runtime. Besides, these two chapters also didn't make use of the premise: they are between a guy only into "real girls", and a naturally-born girl. These mentioned episodes could have been in any school SoL manga.
These two characters aren't even that interesting) when you have a literal entire school that could explore the genderswap aspect (which has also shown to have a few more interesting characters, like Midori). Allow me to channel my inner logistics nerd, but this setup is so fruitful, they could even make a couple side stories about how the school adapts to the change (e.g. looking what sports gear still works, and what has to be newly ordered).
The plot thread of finding out who is a "real girl" and who is an ex-boy could also have stretched throughout the entire manga, instead of being resolved immediately.

This natal girl that serves as potential love interest isn't alone: the MC's current crush is on his older childhood friend, who is the school nurse (being like 8-10 years older), and it's hinted that also his same-age boy childhood friend (now neo-girl) might either be interested in him or he in her. So it's a veritable love polyhedron. But manga, you can't really afford this. You are just 15 chapters long.

The most interesting few pages is when the MC asks his natal female potential love interest if she considers the neo-girls to truly also be girls. She is painted as a bit a stuck up person, but also "proper", so normally you would expect her to say something like "Of course! Their minds may have been originally male, but now we face the same struggles in the world." or something to that effect; or on the other hand "I can't. Not yet. I can't ignore that they were teenage boys with certain urges and mindsets until recently. I need to have more time, and see more willingness from their side to adapt."
But instead she snaps at him and goes on this yikes speech of "Haah??? Why should I do that? They are clearly still boys, even if they look like girls. Just look at how they act!" and we see a scene how the ex-boys still horse around exactly like boys. Not merely tomboyish girls, but truly like boys would.
And the speech itself not, but what it points to, made me so pensive and melancholic.
I can hardly explain why. This feeling is partially one of beauty: no matter what happens to you physically, you are still you. The mind is not so fragile that it can easily be overwritten.
Then there's the element that the ex-boys do not let their new state take away the joy in life. They refuse to let that happen. We just have to keep living, no matter what lies in our past.
Partially, the feeling was also one of sadness that despite or precisely *because* what I just mentioned, it is simply the case that these boys now have a new corporeal and social reality to deal with, and this scene here of them rough-housing around in a field, is a peak of their remaining boyhood. It can only go downhill from here. Every day, they will be a little less the boys and men they were.

There are even more such emotions to that scene, but anyway, enough with the melancholy.

Another story beat is that the neo-girls become aware that integrating a proper male into their dorms (including bath access) is perhaps not as mentally easy for them as they thought it would be. They feel apprehension that he is truly a guy, and they are girls, and he could do many, many things with them if he wanted. Of course this is all framed as purely a coolheaded, logistical debate, not one where psychology already plays a major role (as they still, naturally, all feel like guys) -- but that may lay in their future.
But who really cares? That plot point is dropped as fast as it's brought up. As said, because this manga has bizarre pacing.

The ending points to this series being told to prematurely wrap up, or the author just losing interest. But even the last volume still has that weird pacing issue so I'm not sure if it's the former.

Honestly this manga should not exist. Not because its idea and concept is unappealing. On the contrary. But because it's a fantastic skeleton for a much bigger story, in the vein of Love Hina or Boku Girl and other such genre heavyweights.

Recommendation: read if you are into gender bender.

A vaguely, very distantly related manga would be Ame Nochi Hare, about students that switch gender whenever it rains.

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Poll: Unbalance School Life Chapter 13 Discussion OtterBoy1 - Apr 28, 2021	0 replies	by OtterBoy1 »» Apr 28, 2021 6:51 PM
Poll: Unbalance School Life Chapter 15 Discussion Hinata-chi - Dec 8, 2016	4 replies	by waalex11 »» Mar 5, 2018 3:12 AM
Poll: Unbalance School Life Chapter 4 Discussion Stark700 - Aug 17, 2016	0 replies	by Stark700 »» Aug 17, 2016 11:29 PM
Poll: Unbalance School Life Chapter 1 Discussion R4vel - Mar 12, 2016	2 replies	by Stark700 »» Aug 17, 2016 11:18 PM

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