Surely to truly experience manga to its fullest, one must read it all. Action, superheroes, romance, sports…

… and whatever the hell genre this one falls into!

Image to admit I had already watched the first season of the anime of this manga and thoroughly enjoyed every perverted minute of it, but it stops at a satisfactory ending, but with no further seasons seeming to be coming in the near future, I’ve decided to proceed with the manga, but rather than start at the start of the end of the story the anime told (which is very manga accurate). I’ve decided to start from the beginning to get the benefits of the full-tilt ecchi experience that Prison School has to offer.

Prison School was produced by mangaka Akira Hiramoto, who won with Prison School in the General Manga Category at the 2013 Kodansha Awards, the Japanese Manga awards, where it shares the title with previous year winners like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Hitoshi Awaaki’s Parasyte. Hiramoto is also responsible for other mangas Me and the Devil Blues and RaW Hero.

Prison School tells of the first 5 male students to be accepted to the all-girl boarding school Hachimitsu Private Academy; Shingo, Joe, Dre, Gackt and our hero, Kiyoshi. As one would expect, these hot blooded young men decide to try and see the girls in the shower block, and, as one would expect, their mission to do so goes horrible wrong, and they find themselves with a choice, be expelled, or face a month in the school’s prison.

The schools prison system is run by the Shadow Student Council, led by the president Mari, a man-hating disciplinarian, her second in charge, Shiraki, a busty psycho with a riding crop, a problem with excessive sweat and an uncomfortably (for the boys) shirt skirt, and finally Hana, a karate expert who ends up with a strange predilection for golden showers.

Unfortunately for Kiyoshi, he has fallen for the darling of the school, Chiyo, a sumo enthusiast whom he has agreed to go on a date with, and he won’t let being trapped in prison stop him from getting there. He and Gackt come up with a plan to get him to his date, but will the Shadow Student Council stop him?

Unfortunately, this being volume 1, we don’t find that ultimate result out, so whilst the volume does end on a decent cliffhanger, it doesn’t end satisfactorily, which is a bit of a bummer. The story is extraordinarily sexist and rude, but fans of this type of comic would expect no less, and in actual fact would insist on it. This is American teenage movies like American Pie or Porky’s in comic book form, so I guess one does have to ask that the reader be acceptable of the type of humour it represents.

Hiramoto’s art is dynamic, but occasionally uneven and even a little bizarre in its choices to show nipples in one drawing, and not in the next… is there a nipple limit in manga?

All in all I look forward to further tankoubon in this series, but this first volume, which granted does require a lot of set up, fails to end on a satisfactory note.

Score: **