Great Place High School

by Naduki Koujima

The GP high-school 'Technologies & Information' club is filled with all sorts of weirdoes, narcissists, and worse. It's hard enough for their president, the kind Ryouichi, to put up with all that and keep the club running, but when Minami joins the club, things get even worse! Minami is a good boy, but any machine he approaches breaks...

Genres: Manga, Yaoi, LGBT

160 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2008

Reviews

[Ari · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember reading Great Place High School back when I was in high school. It had been one of the many purchases I made from Borders back when they existed, and I remember really enjoying this manga because it was extremely hilarious with a slice of salacious content that was alluring to a dumb teen like me.

Now I'm years and years from that point in time when I read this, and my tastes have (thankfully) changed from what they were when I was 17 years old. Rereading this manga gave me a bit of whiplash, and not from any lingering emotional attachment but because of the content within the book.

Great Place High School by Naduki Koujima is utterly hilarious. The comedy hits really well and I found myself really enjoying myself as I read it. Most of the story is presented in a 4-koma-style layout, and it takes a very good mangaka to be able to effectively make use of such few panels to tell an engaging story with the sort of humor that is expected from any 4-koma.

If this entire manga had only been a series of funny, slice-of-life 4-komas, I would have been happy and given this 4 or 5 stars.

Great Place High School by Naduki Koujima is also really gross at times, and this is why I have to give it 2 stars. The incestual undertones that are present between two of the supporting characters who are cousins that look alike due to being the sons of twins are frankly disturbing and I wish Koujima hadn't bothered to include it at all.

The biggest issue for me is the entire sub-plot between the student body president and vice-president. The two characters are childhood friends, but they have a very unhealthy relationship based on possessive ownership and subservience. They also happen to have the most graphic scenes in the manga. The manga censors their sex to a degree, and the sex is consensual between them both, but it is the fact that their relationship is based on the belief one of them belongs to the other like some sort of object. The manga almost grinds to a halt when it decides to focus on those characters and their very explicit relationship.

What is annoying is that there are two adult characters featured in the manga who would have been more fitting to be in a sexual relationship, but Koujima chose the high school seniors instead.

I guess in the end this is a lesson in realizing some things are better left in the past, and that I should be grateful LGBTQ+ content has gotten better and more accessible since 2008. Writers and artists are creating better stories that tell genuine stories over relying on toxic genre tropes.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the main story cute, but not really interesting enough to keep me wanting to read the book. I think it took me over a month to read this because I just really did not care about the story. Also, the side story about Rin and Eichi was obsessive and gross, was not a fan.

[TT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this volume as well as v. 1-4 of the series by the same name!

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 1/2 stars rounded down.

[Kuronekko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yaaaaaaaaaay! This format is reeeeeeally different - i wish there was more about the not-brothers-but-cousins, tho... Kuma!!!! I LUV YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!

[Gaxment]

good

[Nyx · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 ⭐️

what’s with the implied incest??