Please note

This review is all subjective and my own personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, nor am I asking you to. I hope that this just helps you get an idea of what the manga I am talking about is like and form a basic and general consensus on it. The ratings I give anime and manga are mostly my personal overall enjoyment. This review will contain unmarked spoilers, but this manga is very short. TL;DR will be at the bottom.

High School Musical is a manga that is based off the popular Disney movies under the same name written and illustrated by Asabuki Mari. Now, I have not watched the High School Musical movies but the synopsis state that it is something about "Two high school students who are worlds apart -- the school's hoops star and the president of the science club -- secretly decide to audition for their school's musical, a decision that turns both their world and their school upside down." An adaptation of something western into a manga format is not anything new, so why is this manga notable?

This manga is literally ten pages long. This manga tries to fit an 1 hour 38 minute long movie into ten pages. Quite the challenge indeed and makes one question as to whether it is actually possible. Sadly this manga failed to do so.

Trying to fit a movie into a couple of pages means that sacrifices have to be made. It is simply unavoidable. Do you just show the very beginning of the movie, or try to fit all of it into ten pages? What this manga does instead is skip straight to the ending. Now I would imagine the events of this manga to be similar to how the High School Musical movie ended, because that is what this manga pretty much is. An ending with no build up nor development whatsoever, and we are thrust into it straight away. If I could compare this to some other manga, I can think of Citrus. Imagine if (major Citrus spoilers)

Spoiler, click to view

the entirety of the Citrus manga was just Yuzu and Mei's wedding. The manga starts with that and ends there, nothing else. No development or build up. That is similar to this manga.

This is all the development I could come across when reading this.

Characters are introduced pretty blatantly, with the names of the two main characters being introduced in text instead of dialogue.

Reading this manga it is pretty obvious how the main characters are presented, wanting to position us to root for them and immediately see them as the limelight of the manga. But in the manner that it was done with this manga I had no idea what to feel for these characters. Due to the utter lack of substance they just seem to be empty characters with very little to speak of. All we see of the main character is that he was a captain of a winning basketball team and the female character is his girlfriend. Very little other than that is said really. At the end of the manga they talk about which university they are going to which is out of nowhere. The other characters are just background characters that are very forgettable, just like the rest of this manga.

Writing a short story is arguably more difficult than writing a long one. With a long story, you can drag things out and pace the development in an easier manner. However with a short story, you are more limited in what you can do. Whilst the author certainly had a challenge in trying to make a story in ten pages (based on another piece of media on top of that), it is not impossible to make a meaningful story in ten pages or so. I have read one shots nine pages long or so and what they managed to craft had more substance than High School Musical. It is difficult to do, but definitely possible.

The ending of this manga is no better either. When I first read it I was taken aback, and I thought there must be more than this.

That is it. There is nothing more. I looked around but all the places I looked at had the same ending. I think this speaks for itself as to the quality of the ending.

One redeeming quality I found the manga had was the art. Whilst it does seem to be a common art style shared across multiple shoujo manga, I liked it, perhaps because it reminded me of Ouran High School Host Club. It was simple but I liked the art style. The characters looked nice with it.

Given everything I have talked about I am really asking myself as to why this was made. Was this made to advertise the movie? I have no idea.

Conclusion and TL;DR

At the end of the review, we are left with one question. Should you read this? Well, this manga will really not take you long to read. This is something you might want to read for yourself to gather your own thoughts on it. But at the end of the day you are not missing out on anything if you choose to skip this. What I have brought up in this review is:

• It tries to fit a 1 hour and 38 minute long movie into ten pages but fails to do so.
• The manga just shows us the ending and nothing else.
• Due to the utter lack of content the characters are empty.
• The art is nice, at the very least.

I somehow managed to write over 800 words for a manga this short. I was rambling for most of it and I thank you for sticking through it if you did. If you did not like this review, then I apologise for wasting your time.

Edit: I just found an Amazon webpage selling what appears to be a physical copy of this manga. The interesting thing is that the store page lists the manga as having 176 pages.

If this is actually real than that could mean that there was much more than those ten pages many of us read. Maybe this manga is actually not bad. The only way to figure out is to buy this manga, which is quite expensive (2,544 yen) and I cannot do that. If anyone does buy this manga, please let me know.