From Publishers Weekly
At the formerly all-girl, elite and oversexed Joshi High, a competition is underway for the new boys just admitted as students. The newly coed Joshi is home to the elite S-Class, comprising only the smartest and richest students, including the few new boys. The arrival of male transfer student Azusa Mizutani shakes things up when he inadvertently breaks the rules and chooses Rise Okitsu, who is not a fellow S-Class student, to be his pretend girlfriend. What follows is a deviant game of cat and mouse as Mizutani pleads with Rise not to throw him to the wolves by breaking off their pretend romance all the while forcing her to endure torture at the hands of jealous female classmates. Yuzuki creates a situation that is undoubtedly meant to awaken feelings of romance in readers by relying on a mix of hostility from the female classmates and cluelessness from the main male characters. At times, the story is almost endearing, and you want Mizutani to just get it and be sweet to Rise already, while at others it borders on perverse.
Gakuen Prince is fun in this first volume, but walks dangerously close to just being trashy.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up–As the new boy at the Jyoshioka School, Azusa becomes the focus of the largely female population. He soon learns from another male student that the girls have sexual expectations of every boy in the school. (&We&'re surrounded by a pack of females in heat. We&'re completely powerless.) When he intercepts a note and realizes what they expect from him, he bolts from the classroom, chased by screaming girls. He hides in a room and meets quiet Okitsu. Thinking quickly, he unbuttons his shirt and his pants and pulls her out with him into the hallway, saying, &I&'m her guy now,& thus declaring himself off limits to all of the other girls. The fact that Okitsu&'s glasses fall off and she accidentally steps on them will come as no surprise to readers anticipating her ugly-to-beautiful transformation. For a predominantly comedic book, this story raises serious questions, like who is really running this school? The girls chase Azusa down the hallway wielding tasers and later force him to drink a &love potion& without fear of reprisal. The only apparent authorities are student members of the disciplinary committee, and they only reveal themselves when they think that things have gone &too far,& which means that things are pretty rough even by
Lord of the Flies standards of self-rule. The artwork is filled with energy and makes excellent use of dramatic shading. This one is for mature readers.
–Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
