Gakuen Prince

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.)