Gakuen Tengoku
Gakuen Heaven

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Despite there having only ~46 chapters scanlated, I figured I'd leave a review considering there isn't any. This manga deserves that much at least.


Story: 6.5/10
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This was quite a roller coaster throughout. Initially we're introduced to a possible childhood friend reunion love story. Then of course, a possible love-triangle/minor harem comes into play. A bit later, there are a handful of ecchi scenes accompanied by a handful of sex scenes. Add in some "conflicts" every now and then for a change of pace and that's pretty much what has occurred so far. For the first half of the manga, the story progression is paced pretty well ... although I have no idea regarding the later half. Sadly, there were some filler chapters that were time wasting but for the most, the flow of the manga is pretty much on point. As for the few conflicts that arose so far, they were definitely eye-roll worthy. Even though quite some time was invested into them, they were usually solved simply- almost to the point of being deus ex machina'ed away by our protagonist.


Art: 6.5/10
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Well considering the manga dates back to 2004-2006, it obviously will not be as refined as today's works. Given that, it really isn't that bad. We have a school based setting and with good background work to match. It is worth mentioning that the artwork did improve through the course of the manga. U-Jin definitely improved his/her drawings and it showed through the work. The characters are drawn pretty well but I feel that the male lead and female lead don't really look exactly their age despite being adults among high school kids. To the mangaka's credit, there were a large variety of characters and s/he did a good job with each of them having distinct and varying details that made them unique/distinguishable.


Characters: 6.5/10
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It's a bit hard to get into character depth without spoiling a lot of the story as it's pretty much the meat and potatoes of the manga. For the most part, the male lead was a indecisive (read: a wuss) guy but came through when his female cast relied on him. The females? to put it nicely, they were pretty wanting to get a piece of the MC. U-Jin did a nice job when it came down to separating on-screen time for characters and didn't abandon the supporting characters. The cast weren't abnormally stupid or silly and pretty realistic when it came to their reaction and antics. Like I mentioned in the Story section, conflicts were a non-factor. Therefore the "villains" that were setup for the conflicts were pathetically silly and eventually transitioned into supporting characters later on. I feel rather disdained of the situations our male lead gets himself into though I don't think that was the author's intention, maybe.


Enjoyment/Overall: 6.5/10
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So far despite the wonky story line and less than appreciable characters, it has been a decent read. The current scanlations left off at a rather interesting point in the story that I actually want to read further into; so the manga can be quite enthralling when it wants to be. As far as recommending it to others, yeah it's still good enough for that purpose. The genre tags are spot on with perhaps romance taking more of a backseat, so if you're a fan of the genres then you already know your course of action huh?

tl;dr: A manga that is pretty generic yet still has some greatly amusing aspects, but has major issues that prevent it from being all that enjoyable.

This manga is bizarre. It could have been a semi-decent, albeit generic, harem rom-com. The core premise of a teacher trying to stay true to his love for another teacher while helping other students who fall in love with him so he has to fend off their advances is decent. But the implementation is horrible.

The first major issue is all of the things he has to help them with stem from other teachers essentially molesting them and that's supposed to ... be funny. If he manages to stop them before they went too far and then afterwards they went to jail that could be reasonably amusing. But rather the teachers manage to get away with quite a lot before they get stopped , far too much for me to think of it as funny at the least. And upon getting stopped, they don't go to jail. They don't even get fired. They just continue doing what they're doing in a different way. And later they're even portrayed as good people. I just found all of this too gross for what is supposed to be a comedic manga. The other issue is that the protagonist is pretty useless, and doesn't even really do much in the various situations where he's supposedly the one that stops the villains and saves the girls, so it all really feels kind of lame.

Because of those two issues, even though there are a good amount of comedic and fluff filled portions that just have the protagonist interacting with the heroines that were amusing and enjoyable, overall the manga was one that simply wasn't that fun. The ending is also the standard indecisive ending, but that's pretty much standard for manga like this so I didn't really find it disappointing. The art was quite good though, so I suppose there was some value in reading it for that alone.

This will be a spoiler free review after having read the entire manga.

Story - If you have read Love Hina you'll find the story of Gakuen Tengoku familiar. The problem is that the story here never really advance and in fact the manga seems unfinished.

There are a lot of stupid situations that make you ask "what's the problem with those people" and "does police exist in this manga?". Nothing really exciting happens and there are a lot of things that are not developed whatsoever. An example would be the principal who is the cousin of the MC and she likes him, but this part of ... the story is there just for basically 3 things to happen over the course of the manga.

The end is also very baaaaaaad.

The manga at least has a light atmosphere so that's a plus in my eyes.

The main character - This MC is the most useless character of all time. Seriously, he is so pathetic that it makes you angry with him. He is weak, dense, clueless, naive...the only thing he has going for him is the luck he gets for being the MC.

For the most part of the manga, he is never the one making things happen. He tries to resolve things, but most of time his ideas are dumb and often things get resolve without him doing much.

Overall - This manga could have been good, but without plot and with such stupid characters (most of the teachers and he MC) it makes it hard to call it good. The only thing i likde about this manga is the art which is good and the girls are all very cute.

I would not recommend this manga to anyone simply because there are much better options out there ready to be read and since time is something finite i advise you to go look for something better.