Prison School, Vol. 1 (Prison School, 1)

Prison School began serialization in Japan in 2011. Now, in 2015, American readers can finally join in on the fun. This is one ride worth waiting for. Prison School may just be the most hilarious manga I have ever read, and I have read a lot of manga. The story takes place on a previously female-only high school and the main cast, which consists of 5 males, are the first boys to attend it. As one would expect, they get into trouble for peeping on the female students and are sent to an on-campus prison run by the student council. From there starts an epic back-and-forth battle of wits between the boys and their captors. Despite not being very bright, the boys have moments of brilliance and create strategies that rival the characters of series such as Death Note or Code Geass. This creates an absolutely hilarious reading experience. That said, its ability to make you laugh isn't its only strength. Hiramoto's art is simply beautiful and he is extremely talented at creating expressive characters. The manga has a lot of fanservice, especially when the Vice President is concerned. However, in addition to looking enticing, Hiramoto knows how to make the moments equally hilarious. I often find that fanservice occurs at the expense of the story but that does not happen at all in this series. Kudos to Hiramoto.

If you enjoy comedy manga and aren't afraid of dirty humor or fan service, do yourself a huge favor and read Prison School. You won't forget it.

The anime made such a favorable impression on me with it's bizarre premise and voluptuous execution that I had to seek out the manga! The boys start their adventure, leading to the escape route being blocked by the chairman. The VP is of course the favorite but the budding relationship between Kiyoshi and Hana is also top tier.

I couldn't wait for this to be in stock. I purchased when they were out, and am I glad I did. I love this series and now I can actually have a physical copy of it in my house. Perfect buy! :)

At the time this initial volume was released, I had been on a bit of a manga bender. After a long hiatus from mangas, I was reading any and all that I could get my hands on. The less I knew going in the better. When I discovered this I was first surprised that it was shrink wrapped. Well, after I opened it and started reading it I knew why! It's ecchi! Hilariously ecchi! It'll be few and far between that you won't be laughing.

Now some of you are turned off by this type of material. That's ok, I can respect that. It's not for everyone. I will say though that if you are somewhat interested in this but still slightly hesitant, go for it and get it. Aside from the ecchi stuff, the characters in this series are extremely endearing. By the end of this first volume you will have grown fond of the protagonists, love the antagonists, and just appreciate and enjoy the journey all these characters are going through.

This first volume lays the groundwork for many of the events that will follow. Trust me, once you finish this volume you will be begging for more. If ecchi bothers you then no problem, you can skip out on this. But if it doesn't bother you and you have an open sense of humor about these things, Prison School is a wonderful manga that you will enjoy time and time again. It's thrilling, heartwarming, and epic in its own right.

Here is my 3/10 mangaupdates review:
Akira's over the top art is good and the "serious" humor works fine for the about 6 volumes but i now had enough after flipping through the next 4 volumes as i couldn't see anything to stick around but the series was fairly decent while the joke lasted. The prison arc actually concludes after a while but the following scenario isn't that hot (no pun intended) or original. All in all Prison School is nothing phenomenal but at least the it's a clear comedy and not a porno. Not a lot of "hard ecchi" titles can say that but it's a shame that the author had to kill Me and the Devil Blues which started to really get going.
Update: I flipped through the recent stuff due to the expose the series got after the Kodansha win (an in house award) and the anime but the third arc is just the first one again with clear focus on SM + Watersports so the series had been reduced to a harem porno only. The characters further became deeply unsympathetic and the narrative is weirdly cruel and exploitative so i can only recommend again to drop the series after the first arc and to read the comparable and equality award-winning Ping Pong Club (7,5/10) instead. Jigokuren - Love in the Hell (8/10) further presents a quality ecchi satire that ended too soon and i reviewed both. I wonder why sex focused American comics as Image's Sex Criminals can both get serious awards and stay on my pull list for the whole run while the Japanese counterparts are regularly bottom of the barrel. At least Me and the Devil Blues came back but the author has a history of burning out as seen here so i will be cautious when i see his name pop up in the future as this isn't his first derailed porno.

This is a review from someone who owns the first two volumes but hasn’t read past that although there are clearly going to be more than that. So future developments may contradict some of the things I say here. But they are still accurate within the context of the first two mangas.

To anyone who is too lazy to read my review I will just get one simple thing out of the way which is that my opinion of this manga is 85% positive. Now that is out of the way I will explain what you’ll be getting into if you buy this manga and help you decide whether or not it’s your cup of tea. As for the plot's more eccentric aspects I will be covering them towards the end of the review.

I do believe that saying “Do you like Femdom?” Is the best 4 word review anyone could give this manga seeing as 80% of it is simply the male characters enduring intensely violent sadism at the hands of their attractive female captors. Though now and then the sadism is simply kinky fan service most of it on the other hand is instead guys getting their faces beaten in especially one character who is an absolute pain magnet.

All of Prison School’s female characters are irredeemably evil monsters who have apparently crawled out of the depths of hell for the express purpose of torturing males and would be right at home running death camps despite usually having deceptively innocent Yandere style introductions. OK, OK, OK, I suppose the warden has these tiny little flickers of something other than pure concentrated evil now and then but they never last or are strong enough to actually mean anything.

My only complaint is that as someone who grew up watching and reading a lot of anime and manga with the same kind of sadism directed towards the male characters I've just got to say that it would be nice simply for the sake of variety if nothing else to just once in a while see something like this with the reverse set up. The fact that this is so cliché is the sole reason I deducted any points at all. Of course I do understand that if it was reversed perhaps with a spin off then everyone involved with that project would get dragged out into the street and lynched.

Moving on it doesn’t take long until the logical occurs which is that the prisoners begin working on an escape plan which I almost guarantee you will get into. It really was one of those “I can’t look away sort of things.” Even though the escape plan’s progress is slow and straightforward and they milk it for all it’s worth it still had me on the edge of my seat barracking for them. I would compare it to any of the good escaping from prison set ups from any of the good escape films such as Escape From Alcatraz, or The Great Escape, or so on and so forth.

Now about the plots eccentric qualitys. Personally I just think of this as a prison manga set in a prison where the entire sadistic and abusive prison staff are all female. However the actual plot is that it’s not a real prison it’s just a little section of a high school where both the students and staff just happen to be 98% female and where they just happen to take detention VERY SERIOUSLY!!!. But in practice separating the eccentric and official story set up from the way I usually think of it is really splitting hairs. I know some people might think it is strange that I didn't bother mentioning anything about the fact that this story isn’t technically set in a real prison until towards the end of the review and was instead simply acting as if this was just a manga set in a regular prison. But in practice once you get past the brief introduction explaining how they have ended up in this horrific predicament it really is just splitting hairs. Don’t misunderstand this is not a criticism I’m simply trying to paint a clear picture for you. So if you start picturing something that is distinctly separate from a more hardcore prison setup you’re going to find that you’re mistaken and will soon forget that this story is technically set within the borders of a high school once you actually take the time to sit down and start reading Prison School.

Though I said that I’m a fan at the very beginning of this review I didn’t say why that was. To clarify it is simply that I’m a fan of psychotic foaming at the mouth more evil then evil characters. Nothing more nothing less. It’s just that simple.

So hopefully I’ve painted a very clear picture and you should now be able to figure out if Prison School, will be your cup of tea or not.

So hilarious and I love the art style! Just a warning, there is LOTS of fan service and there are more than a few times when the characters get mixed up in seemingly sexual situations. However if you don't really care about those details, like me, the story line is pretty entertaining.

Awesome series but don't like how it's 2 volumes in 1. I prefer having individual volume's because of the artwork each one has but still would of been better if it had a hardcover for the amount of pages it has.

Honestly this is a great series and I wasn't really expecting it. I watched the anime and wanted to see what happens after that. The story while not overly complicated changes throughout the series. This series is a school life comedy although the school aspect of it is minimal, you still get the same vibe from it. I will warn anyone who is offended by nudity or adult situations do not pick this series up. If you have a sense of humor and can laugh at amusing accidental adult situations you will probably enjoy this series.

I stumbled upon this series in a book store and was intrigued what could be in it to have the manga be shrink wrapped? I read a few chapters online and was immediately hooked. I decided to buy the book because I loved it so much. This book will not disappoint. The premise is so ridiculous and the action so over the top. Characters are drawn very cleanly with a lot of attention and detail. This is not just a smutty manga - there is more depth to it. The humor is the big draw for me. Gakuto cracks me up (THINE!) and the Chairman

As for the shrink wrapping - I would say there is nothing in it that couldn't be in a PG-13 movie. The violence does draw blood, but often the victim flails in a comical fashion and quickly recovers on the next page (much like Love Hina). There is cleavage abound thanks to the Vice President and plenty of panty shots (again, much like Love Hina) There are occasions where you will see a full set of boobs nipples and all. God help the children if they see a boob. The violence is never grotesque (Battle Royale) and the the adult situations never go beyond implied. There is no actual sex in the book. (battle royale definitely passed that line a few times). So if you can handle some fan service, you will be fine.

Highly Recommended.