| HSG is an overlooked manga, and it deserves to have a thread for people to leave their post-HSG thoughts in it for others to read, at some point in the future. If not for an older (than me!) woman on another forum happening to recommend HSG to me, I wouldn't have given it a chance. I avoid most of the school girl ecchi nonsense like the plague. But what this woman said when she described the series intrigued me. What she told me when describing HSG was that she went to an all-girl school herself, and that the manga is a fairly realistic depiction of life at an all-girl school--mainly because the mangaka went to an all-girl school herself. Being a male, I imagined that all-girl schools turn females into lesbians, so I was more than willing to have a looksee after she told me that! What I love about HSG is that, as well as being hilarious, a lot of what happens in it is 100% believable. I can believe that girls stop caring when they have no males to look at them; letting laziness rule. I can believe girls stress over removing hair from their bodies, while males remain totally ignorant about such things. I can believe that girls get jealous/playfully bully their friends after the friend in question gets a boyfriend before them. I can also believe that, deep down, females aren't too different from sex-crazed guys. If there is a point to HSG, the point the mangaka was trying to make is that, underneath all the values society forces on each gender, everyone is pretty much the same. And that's what made the series truly amusing: the fact that the mangaka rarely had to do anything other than putting a group of fictional teenage girls together, chucking in a lot of natural chattering and mixing in some panty-shots to please guys for the series to work as a most excellent comedy. The only reason I 8/10'd it, rather than 9/10ing it, is because the story seemed to run out of steam once the school trip arc got going; an arc that should've been the best part. By that stage, pretty much every joke involving the main characters had been beaten to death, and the jokes involving the dull lesbian duo weren't very funny. At all. During this section of the story, Kouda started appearing more and more, doing increasingly silly things, and that only lead me to believe even more strongly that the mangaka was short on ideas. What also played a part - and probably connects to the above - is that the manga ended abruptly; before the third year. That struck me as very odd, considering the mangaka had already made a joke about repeating the second year - without the characters aging - in order to fit in everything she could. You could argue that, with HSG being a comedy, it wouldn't have worked well if the final year of their high school lives had been covered because of exams and everyone being forced to separate as they moved on with their lives. However, it was HSG's excellent characterization that made the many character-related jokes funny, and it was weak on the part of the author for her to seemingly quit while she was ahead. It reminded me of GTO's ending... though, in that instance, the character development had pretty much been covered in full, Onizuka aside. I'm hoping the manga isn't over and that it's going to be continued, one day. The back of the ninth volume says that it's only the end of the first part of the story. I haven't read up about it yet, the execution of the final chapter and MAL listing the series as being complete being what has got me believing the story is over. ...Enough. I liked the series, and anyone else with taste should, too. It has niiiice art, complete with sexy drawings of (very well developed!) school girls in their underwear, and the dialogue is top notch throughout. Funny, naughty AND it has a realistic edge. Seriously, you can't ask for much more. If not for me having a ton of manga to get through right now, I'd be feeling depressed about having no more chapters to read. If HSG 2 ever gets released, someone hook me up! |
| i totally agree.. i don't really like it when Kouda gets a lot of screentime because as one who sees realism or at least believability in this manga as its strongest point, Kouda's exaggerated antics is annoying if used many times, which is the case in the school trip arc.. ending it like that seems to be a little bit eh? too.. and i wish there was some final chapter that featured the moron group together again.. kuh.. why did this manga not continue.. i want more things to learn.. such an eye-opening manga to initially clueless guys like i am on some private things girls go through.. |