Houkago Hokenshitsu
After School Nightmare

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I don’t often read shoujo manga, mostly because I tend to find that shoujo manga would fall under one of the two categories: ones filled with blushing heroines, princely (lady) boys and convenient fairytale stories or the other side of shoujo; the one that attempts to be dark and mysterious but most of the time only ends up being filled with pretty gothic clothes and whiny characters. Although there are some excellent works that fit under these stereotypes and pull it off, I do get rather bored of its predictability.

After School Nightmare is such a shoujo manga that keeps me on my toes ... by meshing together the two types of shoujo, plus adding its own flavour of the psychological streak, to create an unorthodox balance between fairytale romances and dark, depressing stories. There’s a reason why it is rated 16+; it leans more towards the genre josei and rightfully so: it is packed with heavy content, sexual situations and even has VERY strong themes of incest. At times, the psychological impact it made on me was so great I felt like crawling into a cave.

After School Nightmare has a questionable premise. Think you had or have it bad as a teenager? Not only does our protagonist, Mashiro have to deal with school life, insecurities and sexual frustrations like most teenagers...but he also has to deal with a gender-identity crisis. Neither male nor completely female, Mashiro is born with the body of being half male from waist up, and half female waist down, living life as an intersex being. Because of his condition Mashiro can never truly feel comfortable in his own skin, and never truly knows his place as a male or a female. Then there’s our other two main characters; Sou, the enigmatic male classmate with trust issues and Kureha, a tragic girl who is afraid of men to the very core of her being.

The After School Nightmare starts. Students with inner conflicts (such as Mashiro, Sou and Kureha) must take a class once a week after school in order for them to be able to ‘graduate’. The subject? Dreams. All students are thrown into one collective dream; and in it they must try to find a key that will open the door to ‘Graduation’.

Now, what most may ask when venturing into this work would be “What is this ‘Graduation’? What happens when you graduate?” This is never explained or elaborated upon until the very last pages of the final chapter, but constantly is it brought up and speculated about.

The dreams are one of the most interesting aspects of the manga. Like most dreams it is abstract, and so it is up to us, the readers and the characters in the story to figure out the meaning -- but tells us about the situation and characters more clearly than dialogue or narration ever could. All the participants are not in their usual bodies, but instead take on forms that reflect themselves. They act out gruesome slaughter; they learn things of each other i.e. their stories; their struggles; their sanity and most of all, they learn about themselves.

The story and writing is clever. It is riddled with metaphors, allusions, thought provoking ideas and woven with many layers. Characters are given a streak of realism with their dialogues and actions – they anticipate the other person’s move and respond realistically accordingly to it, as opposed to the majority of stories which are mediocre, where everything happens in a convenient manner i.e. Person A is heartbroken and ‘just happens’ to be alone in a room with another person. Person B takes advantage and advances on Person A. Setona Mizushiro, author of After School Nightmare, give her readers more credit than that. Nothing is given to us in a frank or blunt manner. Recurring themes run throughout the whole or part of the series, hinting to us till the very end and we are pushed to use our minds to work things out ourselves, including the ending.

ASN is rich in characters, both main and supporting. Mizushiro manipulated all of her characters well. Frequent and minor characters are treated with importance and every character (even the ones in the backgrounds whom you would not pay attention to) is interconnected to the dream. Mashiro is perhaps one of the most interesting characters I have ever come across in a manga or anime because he struggles to settle with what sex he is, so sees life from a “gender” perspective. For example, he would kiss a girl because “that’s what a guy would do” and the prospect of him actually having feelings for the girl does not even come to mind. Throughout the manga the Boys VS Girls debate is brought up (which is the better sex, the stronger one?) and points about one gender or the other is constantly brought forth.

Kureha and Sou, our other two main characters were so brilliantly fleshed out and done that they could easily rival Mashiro in taking the spotlight. Kureha, the girl who makes Mashiro feel like a man and Sou, the boy who makes Mashiro feel like a woman were wonderfully interesting and disturbing, and kept the story going.

Setona Mizushiro has a unique style of artwork, combined with the classic shoujo style. By classic, I mean the typical random flowers decorating the panels, and large panels with nothing but writing. Mizushiro has some traits that are unique only to her that makes her art instantly recognizable, like oddly drawn eyes and long lips (which look good may I add) instead of the usual ‘desirable’ small lips in most anime and manga character designs. There is a moderate amount of backgrounds but most of the time it is unnoticeable because of the lack of tones used to bring it out. Mizushiro likes to keep her style clean and simple, leaving the backgrounds to be mostly white and flat.

Mashiro’s character design is amusingly feminine and masculine at the same time in both mannerisms and physique. On that note, people who are VERY uncomfortable with anything related to yaoi or yuri may not enjoy this because of how boyish or girlish Mashiro may look as he is caught between Sou and Kureha’s love for him (but it was fun working out whether he is a gay or a lesbian, I must admit).

The pacing of the story is slow yet it does not have the feeling of being tedious. Rather, it sets a solemn and calm tone to the story as things unravel and to let things sink in. The story itself almost has a quiet and dark feel because of the pacing.

Reading After School Nightmare is like being in a nightmare yourself. It’s not the most pleasant experience, but you just can’t wake up to get away from it (or in this case put it down). It is reads like these that give me hope that not all shoujo are formula made, and that there are some authors who give their readers a bit more credit than they are usually given.

School's a nightmare. But the extra-curricular lessons are where the true horrors lie.

A (highly) unique manga but not deserving the amount of high reviews it has on MAL.

The thing that stands out to me is how far off the reviews are with the actual "overall" definition of the manga.

This can be understandable as it can be quite difficult reviewing a manga with several major character developments without spoiling the whole thing.

This however doesn't excuse how all the reviews read like they are reviewing the synopsis instead of the whole thing.

The two main issues I'd like to contrast with the other reviews are that:

... 1) This isn't a twist within a twist manga

There are really few to no clues provided to the reader early on for any of the major shifts to be considered twists rather than sudden event shifts. Normally this is a pedantic issue but for this type of manga, it is important to emphasize how you won't get much of an idea how much you'll like the latter events from the earlier chapters.

2) This isn't a bi-gendered theme manga

Well...maybe it is. I haven't really read any background for this manga to know which things are symbolic and which are not but all I can say is that while the gender issues are brought up a lot in the series, overall it's a non factor and the whole thing is hand waved at the end. This shouldn't bother anyone who's already planning to check out this manga but for those wondering if you should skip this because the topic seems like it would be boring (and in my opinion the manga presents the issue as boring and cliche) it's important to emphasize that if you read this to the end, you'll understand what I mean by this and while I can't say it would definitely be worth reading up to the end, if you don't reach the ending, you won't get to enjoy this manga as anything other than a gender based manga.

Unto the other stuff:

A major part of this manga relates to character's inner personalities but I suggest not going into this expecting any valid psychological analysis thrust unto the characters. Rule of cool is used to justify many of the mental solutions in this manga and while it is a major part of what makes this very unique, it can also be very frustrating getting caught up in the character elements only to have to remind yourself that it's obvious after each mini-arc that the manga doesn't really plan on addressing the character's issues beyond the surface level or maybe even less than that.

It gets worse once you find out about the ending so try to keep this in check because the characters all have their potential to be great. Some if not many do rise to this level only to fall in quality and rise again but the important thing to keep in mind is that if a certain character gets annoying or boring enough to make you want to stop reading the manga, just read on. This is the type of manga where you lose more by not reaching the end because by that point it wouldn't matter at all. (Not because you have reached the end of a manga but because by the end, without spoiling any major detail, your hate for many of the characters won't matter at all where as stopping at mid point will keep you from discovering many of the out of nowhere character developments that are suddenly brought up.)

In the end, I personally didn't like this manga very much but it has that unique charm that kept me going and I do feel it wasn't a waste of a time finishing this despite there being no event that really made me like this.

It's been a few years since I read this manga and I still mentally groan when I think about it.

It felt so very shallow and even insulting at times with how it handled gender, sexual orientation, etc. Which I will give it that it is from the early 2000's so things hadn't progressed to where they are now. Regardless, I don't think the characters were handled well and the whole read left a bad taste in my mouth.

If none of this bothers you then you will probably enjoy the read. I would just caution anyone who might find the handling of the gender ... and sexual orientation aspects upsetting.