Kaneyoshi Izumi

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.

Despite the slightly lackluster quality of the previous volume, Seiho Boys' High School! has continued with its fifth volume to be a surprisingly entertaining and emotional series. Nothing about it screams 'typical shoujo' and the humor can be crude at times (which is fair, considering the setting) but certain chapters pack as much of a wallop as some other more notable series in the genre; the Maki/Takano subplot continues to tug at the heart as these two damaged young people struggle to be together considering all the baggage holding them back, physical and otherwise. At no point does Kaneyoshi Izumi attempt to gloss over the fact that Maki still cares about Erika or that Takano is, well, Takano and that is what makes every scene involving them feel so sincere, with no drama solely for the sake of drama.

There's also a rather sweet and silly chapter in this volume concerning Hanai and his crush on the campus prince among boys, Kamiki. Does anything actually come out of it? No, because Kamiki isn't interested in boys. But at least it shows Seiho Boys is fully aware of Hanai and his own problems having romantic interests in a hetero-dominated boys only school. One can only hope that Izumi gives poor Hanai a boyfriend before the series is over. As for Kamiki, he may soon be in his own relationship before long, with the girl who has been pursuing his heart for over a volume or so now, Miyaji. Which must mean Kamiki is getting over his sister complex, right? Although not as developed as Maki/Takano at this point, it has become obvious how much potential Kamiki/Miyaji has in the long run. This means the only character in the main crew this volume who did not have a romantic story thread was everyone's favorite glasses-wearing snob, Nogami. Perhaps there will be more of Nogami and his lady love, Nurse Fukahara, in the next volume; their screwball romance would be a welcome break from the angst of Maki and Takano.

Seiho Boys' High School! is halfway over and has greatly improved from its early chapters when it was not really sure what it wanted to do or how it wanted to present itself. It's become a boy-centric shoujo with edges but also one with heart that can be sentimental without going overboard and humorous without becoming a pantomime show. If the rest of her work is as good as this one, Viz would not go wrong by licensing more of Kaneyoshi Izumi's work for the near future.
… (altro)

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.

Okay, Seiho Boys' High School, sit down for a minute. You are based around an all-boys school located on a remote island, dubbed the Alcatraz of the Japanese educational system, right? Having said that, there's been a surprising number of girls on your pages so far, as if every male character needs a female counterpart to be complete. A little skeevy, yes, but you are a shoujo manga at heart and you can't help it. Still, maybe the focus on the characterization should be shifted a little onto the boys? They are, after all, the stars of the series; they should be fleshed out to the greatest degree before you start expanding the cast radius to include full-time girlfriends.

Back to the review. Seiho Boys' High School has always been a rough around the edges kind of shoujo manga, a two-pronged story of romance and humor told through the mouths of young men. Lately, it's gotten very dramatic, especially with Maki and Takano's thorny relationship and the re-introduction of Erika, the lingering ghost of Maki's past that hangs over their courtship. Their respective chapters seem to be going at a very fast pace, especially odd considering theirs seems like a relationship you would want a slow build-up of before one or the other falls in love with their GF/BF. As a thorn in their side, Erika's presence got enough page play to be deemed important (and hopefully will be brought up later in the series) but is soon glossed over the rest of the volume for the other boys' issues. Seiho Boys still has a problem with running storylines concurrently in each chapter, a technique mastered by few shoujo (including the always popular Ouran) so not every romantic situation gets developed evenly. I'm still waiting for more romance between Nogami and Fukuhara or even a boyfriend for our poor token gay boy, Hanai (and the first person to try and tell me Hanai isn't gay will be chucked off the Internet, I swear).

Having complained a bit earlier about the boys' characterization, I do love the fact that girls like Takano and Fuyuka are beginning to take center stage in the story. As Seiho Boys is not a typical shoujo, these girls are not typical shoujo heroines. They are both blunt with their feelings when the cards are down and especially for Takano can come off as unnecessarily churlish in certain situations. Typically, they are mostly defined by their relationships - Takano and Maki, Fuyuka and Kamiki - but they end up becoming characters in their own respective rights. And then there is Kamiki's sister, Mana, which means there is a touch of their brother/sister complex from the first volume, but not so much to make anyone feel uncomfortable (and it actually gets resolved in this volume, thank goodness). Fuyuka's confrontation with the boys over cleaning Kamiki's room is wonderful to read, and anyone who doesn't like Fuyuka after that scene probably doesn't like the series, as it pretty much exemplifies the heart of Seiho Boys: screw the typical roles, we're doing things ourselves our own way and letting it be known to everyone, like it or not. It's still funny and nice to look at, and as the romantic tensions begin to creep more and more into the overall narrative, we're seeing some surprising sides of our favorite Seiho boys as they try to manage their love lives with living in the boys' only dorm from hell. So far, Seiho Boys' High School is a promising new series that will hopefully only rise in quality over the next couple of volumes; fans of the atypical shoujo manga should be reading this one for sure.… (altro)

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.


The opening entry in the Seiho Boys High School! series showed promise but only earned a C because it could not manage to separate itself from the flood of shoujo titles currently on the market. With this next volume, manga-ka Izumi shows that there's only one direction for this manga - and that is up. The humor and energy from volume one is still here and is tempered by the emotional drama that is prevalent in Maki's history. This volume is very much Maki's story - his years in middle school and his troubled romance with the fierce young woman Erika - and it dominates the majority of the pages within the book, probably to the chagrin of readers who would much rather prefer reading about the whole gang of boys and not just Maki. I would have preferred more of Nogami and Hanai since they are my favorites, but I guess I'll have to wait until volume three.

A really off-putting part of Seiho Boys' sophomore volume was its opening chapter, in which Maki escorts Sakura around campus and can't stop thinking about Erika. This is clearly meant as a bridge between Maki's current situation and the reason he isn't actively pursuing a girlfriend, but the way they did it - pretty much ganging up on the poor girl and having the entire dorm kick her out - was terrible. Izumi did not feel like Sakura needed any redeeming characteristics as a person since she was only around to contrast Erika's character, so she quickly turned into a horrible little monster that Maki clearly did not like. The entire chapter made me uncomfortable - Maki's guiding about Sakura despite knowing he did not like her and the conclusion of Sakura's miniscule storyline being the worst highlights.

Having said that, the rest of the book, especially Maki's back story, is great. It is wonderfully detailed and provides great insight into his character. I love Erika as a character and it was a delight to read her scenes with Maki. For reasons I won't divulge, we probably won't see much of Erika in the rest of the series, which is a shame because for someone that only shows up for about two chapters, she is well-developed and three-dimensional, her story adding an extra depth to Maki's own character. I hope the other boys get the same amount of development as Maki has received in this volume. Add to this the chapter in which Kamiki plays the faux beau to Fuyuka's desperately single self and it becomes apparent that this is a manga that is aiming to be better than its contemporaries. A male-dominated shoujo series with lots of humor and heart that doesn't suck? If you're not reading Seiho Boys by now, you should really reconsider!
… (altro)

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.


A lot of expectations and preconceived notions naturally follow any manga series published under the Shojo Beat banner: a dramatically told love story that is heavy on the romance and drama and told from the female perspective specifically for the female gaze. Seiho Boys High School!, as it stands right now in its premiere volume, is really none of those things. Sure, it has some dramatic moments and the purpose of the series is so its cast can one day find romance, but it's a series about horny teen boys on a secluded high school who see more girls in the pages of magazines than in real life. Hell, at one point two boys end up fighting over the rights to read a pile of porno mags; they are not exactly the dreamy mature lads from series like Hana-Kimi or Boys Over Flowers, not by a long shot - which is good, because I honestly think this series would be dead boring if they were.

Boys like Nogami and Maki don't really live in the world of reverse harems seen in Ouran, and you'd do well to not categorize Seiho Boys High School! as a reverse harem manga: even if the ratio of boys to girls is overwhelming based on premise alone, it's not about which boy will which girl hook up with in the end or even about the girls at all. This series consciously decides to not view the boys' school for a female gaze, showing all of the gross and unkempt things that naturally arise from a ton of adolescent males living in dorms and rejects romanticizing their lives in favor of showing what happens when boys who don't talk to the opposite sex on a regular basis cope when meeting one after a long girl-less dry spell (hint: it is not pretty for anyone involved, as poor Ayako found out the hard way in her respective chapter).

Despite it having a lot of things going for it in terms of being out of the ordinary, Seiho Boys High School! somehow manages to stumble over the starting line by committing a terrible fallacy often seen in series that want to be unique by doing half the work required: it tries to pander to the same characteristics found in so many shojo manga before it, from the fireworks at the beach to stealing a bike and riding off into the sunset with someone else's girlfriend. There's even a smattering of sister complexes that would seem by-the-number if it weren't for the actual characters involved. In the process of embracing some tired tropes, the series self-consciously laughs them all off and occasionally subverts them to humorous effect, but even this can't hide the self-doubt it has in its own message: a manga series about boys for girls that isn't bishonen city 24/7. Sadly, this self-esteem problem routinely manifests itself from the mouth of the manga-ka herself; Izumi doesn't seem very confident in her work, comparing it at one moment to a weed in a bookstore and practically begging her readers to buy her work. This kind of humble-is-me pandering is usually typical in manga-ka's side notes, but coupled with the in-story issues the series already suffers from, perhaps it would not have hurt Izumi to show a little more faith in her own work's strengths.

What exactly are Seiho Boys High School!'s strengths? For one thing, it is wickedly funny, especially the blue humor that shows up during the scenes in the boys' dorms, whether they be fighting over porny mags or yelling at a certain "butt-scratching prince". The artwork works hand-in-hand with Izumi's own sense of comedy, especially when it comes to facial expressions (it seems that the usually low-key Maki gets to wear the best of these, followed by the always overly dramatic Nogami). It takes its time setting up what will probably be the series' usual cast of characters, but there are hints galore that now it is more comfortable in its setting and story foundation, the only direction that Seiho Boys High School! can possibly go is up - and with it, the size of its readership. Only the release of the second volume will truly tell, and hopefully enough people will hang around for it to see how this manga stands on its own two feet.
… (altro)