Fairly interesting after the the first chapter. It reminds me of an Anime from the '90s which I can't recall the name of. Whether or not I continue reading hinges on the answer to an as yet open quesiton: WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANY GIRL GO TO THIS SCHOOL?

Edit: Ah, that's it! Revolutionary Girl Utena. I've only seen the condensed movie. I guess they will try to pawn this off as an homage, but given how much straight-up plagiarism Magnum44 pointed out, it will take some serious originality in the next few chapters to pull that off.

... Last updated on November 7th, 2009, 7:00pm

...Six chapters in and I think I'm dropping this manga. There's hardly any yuri, no comedy, and it seems the plot is just a repetition of the same thing... girl being abused before finally being saved just before the abuse becomes something more serious. It's not fun. I like reading about cute girls doing cute things, not cute girls getting beaten up. The manga doesn't have the emotional or philosophical depth to be successfully dark, and so it's just annoying.

This is such a blatant rip-off of Revolutionary Girl Utena! Seriously, someone should get sued here. Let's see:
- Lesbian undertones, check.
- Duels where the winner owns a girl, check.
- Absurdly powerful student council, very involved in the duels, check.
- Bizarre academy with some sort of "virtual reality" thing going on for battles, check.
- Girl that dreams of being a knight that protects princesses, check.
- Said girl does not use the school uniform, but a different version with short tight pants instead of a skirt, check.
- Said girl accidentally gets involved in the duels and "wins" a girl, check.
- Magical weapons extracted from the chest of the girls, CHECK.
- *deep breath* First duel in the series fought against one of the members of the absurdly powerful student council, who is a complete a-hole and treats his girl/weapon like crap, hitting her around and generally abusing her, and then is defeated by the main girl by the use of a sword-like weapon that she had never used before, which results on the girl/weapon abandoning her a-hole of an owner and becoming the property of the main girl as per the rules of the duels, CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK!!!

There are only two bits of originality here so far: the harem thing (the duelists can have many girls rather than just the one), which could go either way; and the very nasty concept beyond the whole game thing (see Accipiter's comment), which is seriously going to need one hell of a justification in order for me to suspend disbelief... which I just don't see happening, considering how poorly the author has fared so far.

I'll give it another chance to redeem itself, and then it's an 1/10 for this ripoff of a manga. It doesn't help that it's trying to ape one of the absolutely most brilliant series out there. If you find this the least bit appealing, I urge you to go watch Utena instead.

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Update after chapter 2: after a plagiariciously rocky start, the series gets slightly better. The premise is still unbelievable, mostly because it's played straight: the girls really seem to be all weak and defenseless (except the protagonist), the guys really seem to be a bunch of psychopathic a-holes that think nothing of bullying an injured girl. But... well, this is manga we're talking about. We've all seen worse when it comes to completely unrealistic premises, eh?

Might be worth reading, if you can summon up enough suspension of disbelief AND if you can put up with some rather unoriginal ideas... a warning you can safely ignore if you are into harem-style manga

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Update after chapter 7: I apologize for having said that this manga was a rip-off of Utena. That clearly isn't the case, and I'm going to prove it if it's the last thing I do!

THINGS THAT PROVE THAT THIS IS NOT A RIP-OFF OF UTENA:
- Utena is given a special ring under mysterious circumstances that, upon entering Ohtori Academy, allows her to fight duels. Sora is given a special GLOVE under mysterious circumstances that, upon entering Utopia Gakuen, allows her to fight duels. NOT A RING - A GLOVE! TOTALLY NOT THE SAME!
- In Utena, a certain character seems to be the nicest guy around while in fact he's the main antagonist; he acts friendly and gets close to Utena while in truth he's just using her for his own purposes. That guys is the director of the school. In Shitsurakuen, a certain character seems to be the nicest guy around while in fact he's the main antagonist; he acts friendly and gets close to Sora while in truth he's just using her for his own purposes. That guy is the TOP STUDENT of the school. HOW ORIGINAL IS THAT, HUH??
- You have to walk a long path to enter Ohtori Academy. Upon passing the main gate, you find a large self-contained area with a bunch of individual buildings, a large tower near the front, and a forest in the back, which is oddly perfectly hexagonal. Whereas you have to walk a long BRIDGE to enter Utopia Academy WHICH IS ON AN ISLAND. Upon passing the main gate, you find a large self-contained area with a bunch of individual buildings, a large tower SMACK IN THE MIDDLE, and a forest in the back AND ALSO TO ONE SIDE, and the island is PERFECTLY OCTOGONAL BUT THE FOREST IS NOT! Gosh, I'm getting exhausted just writing all the differences.
- But this is all incidental. The real difference is that in Utena you could sympathize to some degree with every character, even the bad ones, and the good ones (Utena! Anthy! Juri!) were downright awesome, which is why Utena is widely considered a timeless classic. Whereas in Shitsurakuen there's hardly a character that you won't either hate or just feel sorry for, and even the best characters are weak and lame, which is why this series is widely considered a poor person's Utena (at least that's what it says on every review of this series I've read so far).

I think I've proved just how... good and... original this series is. Will the... admirers please reconsider and stop voting this comment down? No? Alright.

... Last updated on January 10th, 2010, 5:09pm