|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||
|
|
Reviewed by Barb Lien-Cooper My husband read this manga first. I could tell he was sort of charmed with it, but he asked me to review it instead of him. Puzzled, I asked him why I should review it instead of him and he sort of hemmed and hawed, then said something like, 'It would be better if it came from you." So I read it and was actually quite charmed by the unpretentious and sometimes quite funny little volume. It's been sitting around the house, eating at my conscience like a reproach, almost daring me to write a review. But what can you say about a mature title that is sorta, kinda, sometimes about sex, but is so sweet and gentle that the "mature" title label almost seems inappropriate? I can just imagine how difficult it must have been for the powers that be at Dr. Master to rate the darned thing. It's not exactly a sex comedy per se. No one really has sex in the comic (but for one imagined panel), it's not really about high school girls dreaming about sex, and it certainly isn't about eroticism. Just from what I saw in Volume Six, you could almost see this manga getting an "older teen" label, except that there are just a few too many jokes that aren't exactly dirty or explicit, but you might have a difficult time convincing yourself that someone under the age of sixteen should read them. Yet teenagers, especially teenaged girls (the audience for this manga) are pretty hep to the world, and they know the score in terms of the biological changes in their own bodies as they go from girls to young women---which is, really, what this manga is all about. The biological references are just strewn about so frankly and unapologetically that the very audience that might most appreciate this manga are, under American community standards, not the ones who should probably be reading High School Girls. Oh, the girls would probably like and understand it. It's probably more the parents and librarians that might object. Okay, I'm going to start over because I sound all over the place with this review of a manga I honestly did enjoy. Let's start with the set-up: A young, male high school teacher gets a job at an all-girls' school. Seeing that he is young and naïve, the first thing the girls do is undermine his authority by asking him some sexually frank questions that totally fluster him. Matters develop and devolve from there for the poor young man, who has totally lost any real authority over his young charges. In volume nine, the girls are now enjoying their high school vacation (school trip). Being a bunch of curious, intelligent young adults, they talk a lot about subjects that usually aren't talked about in polite society, but are sort of talked about amongst young women who are confused and interested in the changes that happen to them "twixt twelve and twenty" (to quote a fifties book about teenagers from an earlier era). For instance, in one of the funnier stories, the youngsters laugh about the misinformation they gave each other back in junior high about how a girl gets her first period. One of the students, we see in a flashback, desperately wants her first period because she's believed the hype about what a glorious step into young womanhood having periods must be. After unsuccessfully trying out all the outrageous schemes her sister-students have suggested in order to make the period happen (it doesn't, of course), nature finally takes its course. She discovers that she shouldn't have believed the hype. To her, a period is just a bunch of cramps. The end. It's a silly, funny story about something just about every young woman goes through, with just enough ring of truth to it to make it resonate with the audience instead of get on our nerves. My favorite story involved how two young females met and got together and became a couple. It's not a sex story; instead, it's one of the better love stories I've read on the subject, a bit too sweet perhaps, but forgivable because you genuinely want to see them become a couple. I've been calling High School Girls "Azumanga Daioh's precocious older sister" because both works share a certain joie de vivre that is undeniable. I'm not saying High School Girls is in any way Azumanga Daioh's equal. A.D. is a total classic in the high school manga genre, after all. But High School Girls has its own modest charms. I liked it. What else can I say? Comment on this review of High School Girls v9 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
|
||||
 |
| home | reviews | news | features | about us | advertise | privacy policy | contact us |
