Manga After School Nightmare

[Dagger]

[url=http://www.gocomi.com/series/nightmare/][u]After School Nightmare[/u][/url] is a new-ish (both in Japan and the US) series from Setona Mizushiro, a very talented storyteller. I first became familiar with her through her older BL work, but she's also done a lot of non-BL material--including [b]X-Day[/b], which was released by Tokyopop a while back.

The English version of After School Nightmare is being put out by Go!Comi, and it's a great purchase even on the technical front... the printy quality & color pages are lovely. As for the premise, the Go!Comi page linked to above probably does a better job of summarizing it than I could, but here's a quick rundown.

The protagonist is a hermaphrodite who has been passing as male all his life. However, his secret risks exposure once he enters a bizarre after-school class in which students participate--often cruelly or violently--in one another's dreams. Your dream form represents your inner self. For instance, one of the main character's classmates appears as a girl with gaping holes in place of her face and her heart.

Two volumes have been released in North America so far; the third is coming in April. I love Mizushiro's comments at the end of volume 2: "After School Nightmare is a manga that is jam-packed with all my favorite elements. It's got cute stuff. Cruel stuff. Dark stuff embedded in blackness. Round, sparkly, transparent things. Sincerely erotic stuff, vague boundaries, fluttering skirts and long silky hair. Feathers! Keys! Moons! Somehow, I've actually been able to include everything I wanted, so I'm in bliss."

Anyway, it's a fascinating series from a manga-ka who really knows what she's doing. I very much recommend it.

~Dagger~

[Kei]

[color=darkblue][size=1]It certainly looks interesting enough. The art style seems like something I would be able to tolerate.

What intrigues me most is the fact that this breaks out of the monotony of what's popular at the moment. There is only so much crazy action/adventure one can take, lol. While does seem like it would carry a few action elements, it appears to lean more toward the side of psychological mayhem than anything else. Of course, I could be totally off on that description, but that's what I get out of it from reading the synopses I have thus far.

I certainly want to give the series a try, that's for certain, lol. I'll try to find it the next time I go to Borders.[/color][/size]

[Dagger]

Since all of the "combat" takes place in people's heads--yeah, that does make it pretty psychological. :p

Adding even more to that is how your time in the dream is measured. Each student starts off with a necklace with three beads on it. When he or she receives some kind of emotional shock, one bead shatters. When all three are gone, you're forced to wake up.

One of the most interesting parts of following the series is speculating who the dream class students might be in real life. As of volume 2, the only characters whose identities we know for sure are [spoiler]Mashiro, Kureha, the girl who graduated (Midori?) and the new giraffe kid (Itsuki).[/spoiler] For now I'm going with the theory that [spoiler]Sou is the grasping hands and his sister is the knight,[/spoiler] since it seems a little too obvious for [spoiler]him to be the knight.[/spoiler] The [spoiler]little gothloli girl[/spoiler] is kind of a wild card, though.

However, [spoiler]that still leaves at least one character unaccounted for. If anyone else is already in on the action, I'm guessing it's probably the normal guy (Shinbashi) or the kendou captain.[/spoiler]

~Dagger~

[hyuuga_hinata]

i love the artwork of Afterschool nightmare,i hope they make it into an anime!

[Dagger]

The difference between Setona Mizushiro's older and newer artwork is very pronounced. If you know they're from the same artist, you can see how her style evolved, but it looks so much more refined and modern now. It's not that I dislike her older manga--her rougher style has a charm of its own--but I think that After School Nightmare benefits a lot from its polished visuals.

~Dagger~