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Rating: Foreword: I fucking love Go Nagai. I have loved him ever since, at the tender age of 14, reading Devilman forever changed my existence, making me a slave to a faith that still remains today and shows no signs of waning. Since then, it has been a continuous quest to track down every work of the master available, even the most unknown and crappy ones, because I liked everything about Nagai, even what most people considered poor, crude, or disgusting, because those people were stuck on Mazinger and Jeeg, the sugar-coated and politically correct Nagai of the cartoons of their childhood, while I was fortunate enough to discover him through his original works. So don't talk to me about giant robots: nothing against robots, mind you, the Mazinger Z manga is great, MazinSaga is excellent, and the Getter Saga created with Ken Ishikawa is an absolute masterpiece, but generally, that's not the real Nagai, that's the public facade, the television one, the "socially acceptable" one. The real Nagai is the one of Violence Jack and Devillady, of Kekko Kamen and Cutie Honey, the Nagai of sex and blood, the mephistophelean, excessive and unrestrained Nagai, who wipes his ass with political correctness and doesn't know the meaning of terms such as finesse, moderation, and sense of measure. Time has passed, I've changed, and so have my tastes in comics, but Uncle Go has always remained there, a constant presence able to lift me up even in the most disgusting moments of life. Because you can say anything about Nagai: that he can't draw, that he's childish, that he always leaves stories unfinished, that he's a pervert, but one thing cannot be denied: when he sets his mind to it, he can kick everyone's ass.
But let's talk about today's manga.
What J-Pop offers us in 6 volumes is none other than Harenchi Gakuen, The School Without Shame, the Maestro's first masterpiece, which appeared in "Weekly Shonen Jump" from August 1968 to September 1972. It is a work of seminal importance (ahahah!) for the history of Japanese comics, as the progenitor of the ecchi genre, that thread based on subtle eroticism which differs from real hardcore (hentai), as well as the first boys' manga to present erotic elements within it.
The plot in brief: there's a school full of perverted teachers who love inventing new ways to abuse preadolescent students, usually stripping them to discover their fresh bodies, or in any case subjecting them to various forms of humiliation. Opposing their abuses are, of course, the students, led by the leader Yamagishi, no less perverted than the teachers, who restores order by thoroughly beating them only to also indulge in skirt-lifting and panty-stealing. Aiding in the fight against the teaching staff is also the beautiful Jubei, belonging to a ninja family that aims to overthrow the Japanese government to restore the shogunate.
It goes without saying that a work with such premises could only cause an uproar in Japanese society, and indeed it prompted the Parents and Teachers Association, or PTA (the Moige of the Land of the Rising Sun), to protest by requesting the suspension of the series, with the result of enormously increasing its popularity and leading Nagai to push further with provocation and excesses. The manga immediately became one of the most beloved by young readers and gave rise to an actual franchise, complete with TV series, live-action films, and dedicated OAVs.
The work is divided into three narrative cycles, during which one can witness the evolution of the two protagonists and the renewal of the supporting cast. Curious fact: the actual ending of the series is not at the end of the work, but in the middle.
The beginning, to tell the truth, isn't the best: the first stories are quite childish and almost entirely devoid of the erotic element, managing to make one yawn more than laugh, even if the sacrilegious and iconoclastic spirit of Nagai is present from the start. Towards the end of the first volume, the quality of the stories improves significantly, and from there on, it's a crescendo of absolutely hilarious absurd and silly situations for anyone who appreciates Nagai's vulgar and bawdy comedy, in full 70s sexy comedy style. The mere design of the unlikely teachers is enough to make even the most composed reader burst out laughing.
Action and splatter sequences are not lacking, with plenty of double pages.
Certainly, the themes addressed, which is child abuse, much more felt today than at the time, might upset someone, but the whole thing is told in such an absurd and unrealistic way that it's impossible (at least for me) to find it offensive. Moreover, it's worth noting that throughout the manga, references to the act of sex itself are completely absent (except for the bonus stories from the 90s contained in the fifth and sixth volumes, intended for an adult audience and considered true hentai).
On the other hand, it cannot be denied how towards the end of the series the comedic force begins to wane to become simply a display of gratuitous sadism towards the female gender. The last stories elicit grim laughs, and one notices that the formula was beginning to become stale. Devilman was on the horizon, Nagai's mind was focused on darker thoughts: hence the right decision to end the series, avoiding continuing it and ruining it.
A few words about the drawings: it's the style of Nagai that everyone knows, as raw and sparse as you like, but expressive and effective. Devotees of a certain type of "Michelangelesque" drawing will turn away horrified; I find it perfect, and above all, I can't imagine a more suitable one for a manga of this type.
Therefore, a highly recommended work that helps to reveal a fundamental but little-known side to the general public of this legendary author, which remains even now, in light of everything he has done after, his most insane and scandalous work.
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