Mission! School

Ishikawa Takuya is your average high school student and he doesn't stand out in any particular way. So he is surprised when his principal asks him to take care of some transfer students. He is even more surprised to find that the transfer students are actually 30 female students who came from a boarding school that was destroyed in fire. At first it seemed like a dream come true, but he soon comes to find that the girls have knives, guns, and deadly training, making him curious as to what kind of school these girls came from.

There really isn't much to say about this manga. The first two volumes are the standard generic fare for an ecchi romance manga that relies heavily on a gimmick. A boy stumbles into relationship with a girl, the girl's behavior ranges from a bit weird to completely out there, and boy has to deal with the consequences of her antics. The moment that I was finished reading it, i forgot about it immediately almost completely.

The comedy also leaves much to be desired. I can't think of a single joke that lands. Other comedy series "Kill Me Baby" involves guns and it's jokes land much better than any joke in "Mission! School". But that's probably because it's a gag comic that has more than one joke. "Uppote!!" also has girls with military training and guns (and the girls themselves are actually guns, but that's for another time) and also does a better job than "Mission! School". The only good thing that this manga has going for it is that it's short, and when one of the compliments for something is that it doesn't overstay it's welcome, that's a clear sign that something has gone wrong.

The one compliment that I can give it is that it's art is decent and appropriate a lighthearted comedy manga, and looking at the authors other work, he does a pretty good job at the art.

But then the third volume shifts gears, switching from your typical comedy ecchi manga about girls with guns and military training to becoming a self-aware meta comedy manga about how the manga that these characters are in is being cancelled due to low numbers and the characters are doing everything they can to not get cancelled when the amount of pages gets to zero. Things that range from the female characters showing more skin to titillate readers to re-arranging volumes of the manga on store shelves to make it more noticeable to customers in hopes that more people pick it up.

It just makes me feel bad for the author who was clearly passionate about their work but ultimately ended up having their cancelled. Maybe this manga could have led somewhere interesting, but we'll never know, so the only thing that we're left with is are the three volumes that are presented to us, and what we got just wasn't very good.

Unfortunately, this shift in focus doesn't help the manga as it's comedy, characters, and overall style largely remain the same. I can't recommend "Mission! School".