Kei is ready for another day of school.
High school. That perennial hell of awkwardness, uncertainty, and humiliation. A crucible of angst and anguish, where hapless teenagers who only have their age in common are locked into a confined space for eight hours and forced to make nice, or else suffer in isolation whilst paradoxically surrounded by their peers.
Welcome to the school zone, and remember: hell is other people.
School Zone is a Yuri Genre Cringe Tragi-comedy/existentialist nightmare manga by Ningiyau, about miserable high school girls driving each other up the wall in-between bouts of wallowing in Gayngst. Light on the "gay" and heavy on the "angst", there's little here in the way of overt yuri content beyond longing looks and bottled-up emotions, but the manga strikes a bizarre tone where slapstick, gag faces, and humiliating faux pas sit (un)comfortably next to the alienation, hopelessness, and futility of teenage yearning. Originally revolving around the idiot antics of walking Boke and Tsukkomi Routine Yokoe Rei and Sugiura Kei, it quickly snowballed into an ensemble work starring an impressive collection of weirdos and oddballs who together weave a tangled web of melancholy and madness. Although their individual plot threads are only tangentially related, these miserable girls are united by their struggle to sink or swim in the deep, dark ocean of high school malaise, searching for a way to connect emotionally with each other and keep their heads above the undertow of unsettling existential dread.
Mag Garden published the series from 2018 to 2022, when it was placed on indefinite (possibly permanent) hiatus due to Ningiyau's desire to work on other stories. In May 2023, a (Japan-only) audio version of the manga was released.
Seven Seas Entertainment released an English translation under the title School Zone Girls in May 2021.
Not to be confused with the School Zone horror manga series by Kanako Inuki or the publishing company that produces educational materials such as flash cards and workbooks.
Inside the School Zone, you can find examples of:
- Aborted Declaration of Love: Yokoe is in love with Kei, but anytime a hint of earnestness slips into her demeanor, she immediately plays it off as a joke because she's afraid of ruining their present relationship.
- Aesop Amnesia: Lampshaded as early as chapter 6:Narrator: "Neither of them ever learn. [...] They will probably have the same conversation again next week."
- Art Shift: Yokoe often slips into sparkling bishojo mode (complete with Bishie Sparkles) whenever she's feeling unusually happy, or trying to butter Kei up.
- Backing Away Slowly: In chapter 21, Yatsude and Kei leave Yokoe alone with Tusbaki outside a convenience store. They manage to convince themselves everything is alright until they look out the window and see Tsubaki, laden with sweat, backing away from Yokoe and her bizarre hand gestures.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine:
- Kei & Rei are the earliest example, since they're the original main characters and their smart/stupid dynamic was front and center in all the earliest chapters.
- Negoro outranks Kei as tsukkomi though, so anytime it's Kei, Rei, and Negoro you can expect Kei to get demoted to co-boke with Rei.
- Hiiragi & Utsugi mimic the Kei & Rei dynamic in their own plotline. Hiiragi is a short-haired girl with a short fuse, while Utsugi is a bubbly moron who will stop at nothing to befriend her.
- Kaname & Hinako also mimic the Kei & Rei dynamic, though it's inverted in their case. Kaname is the loud, scatterbrained idiot (or so she seems) and Hinako is the short-tempered tsukkomi who berates her, but Hinako is the one in love with Kaname.
- Book Ends: Assuming the manga's hiatus after chapter 99 is permanent, then it ends the same way it began: Kei trying to wake Rei up on the first day of a new semester.
- Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: After Kei overhears Yokoe and Yatsude telling ghost stories about the school bathroom, she very loudly and very obviously announces she's going to the upstairs bathroom. It takes the other girls a second to realize she's scared to go alone.
- Cerebus Syndrome: By the mangaka's own admission, the series was started rather haphazardly. It began as an idiot comedy about slacker high school girls, but gradually—especially with Tsubaki and Hiiragi's chapters—it goes into some dark corners of adolescent angst and anger and crippling self-esteem issues more typical of a drama.
- Connected All Along: In one chapter, Kaname chats on the phone to "Yukacchi" and says it's been a long time. It turns out to be Kishiya, who (despite appearances) is in the same grade as her, implying they went to middle school together.
- Delayed "Oh, Crap!": Initially, Tsubaki is thrilled somebody found her wallet. Then she remembers she keeps voyeur pictures of her own sister in her wallet.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Tsubaki states it's not that she doesn't have any friends, it's just that everybody has somebody they like more than her.
- Distracted by the Sexy: In chapter 25, Yokoe is too distracted by the sliver of Kei's bra visible through her shirt to do any studying.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Hiragi, when her sis-con sister makes a move on her in chapter 11. With a thousand-yard stare, she announces she'd rather eat dog shit and light her hair on firerather than indulge Tsubaki.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Tsubaki appears in the corner of one panel in chapter 6, walking behind Yatsude.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Some of the very early chapters (like the short chapter where Rei sees a cat that looks like Kei), feel very jarring when compared to dozens of chapters later, after Ningiyau perfected the manga's formula of weird girls freaking out and sniping at each other over relationship stuff.
- Easily-Overheard Conversation: In chapter 18, Yokoe has an exemption from swimming in PE due to being so thin-blooded she'd pass out. As she sits the lesson out, she overhears Yatsude in the locker room fawning over Sugiura's giant boobs and copping a feel. It's enough to make Yokoe pass out anyway.
- Feigning Intelligence: In chapter 21, Yokoe holds her fists out and tells Tsubaki that if she picks the correct hand, she'll win a prize. Tsubaki looks like she wants to cry, but reluctantly picks a hand. Yokoe reveals both her hands are empty, and pretentiously says that, "In life there are no right answers!" Tsubaki looks like she wants to cry even harder.
- Festival Episode: Chapter 87 has the cast put on yukatas and go to a festival.
- Foreshadowing:
- After Hiiragi tells the school nurse she's befriended Utsugi, the chapter ends with the nurse pulling out Utsugi's medical file. In her portrait, Utsugi is wearing her uniform properly, but has long Messy Hair and gives the camera a haunted thousand-yard stare like she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The nurse portentiously asks "Utsugi Ren?" Unfortunately, this foreshadowing may have been all for nothing, since the manga went on indefinite hiatus.
- One chapter has Kishiya get startled when she finds out Fuji's age, foreshadowing the fact that she's younger than Fuji despite being mistaken for a college student.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: The manga has a lot of plot threads. They include:
- The idiot couple, Sugiura Kei & Yokoe Rei, and their baffling, Opposites Attract friendship.
- The fractured relationship between the Hinase sisters, the meek Tsubaki (a sis-con) and the explosive Hiiragi (not a sis-con), who is resentful that everybody fawned over Tsubaki when they were children.
- Club President Yatsude Negoro and Tsubaki, her kouhai, trying to drum up interested in the Film Studies Club, despite neither of them knowing what the club actually does.
- Fuji Matsuri's foolhardy quest to win a stuffed animal from an arcade's crane game even after losing $800 on it while she fawns over the lovely arcade clerk Kishiya-san.
- Yatsude playing third wheel to Kei & Rei's idiot antics, Tsubaki's crippling self-esteem problems, and Fuji's obsession with Kishiya-san, while trying to help them all work through their issues.
- Hiiragi's odd friendship with the bubbly, bouncy Utsugi Ren, who tries to get her to open up emotionally and have some fun.
- Tsubaki's odd friendship with two gyarus, Kaname and Piyoko, who try and get her to open up emotionally and have some fun.
- Piyoko's unrequited crush on the flighty gadfly Kaname.
- Student Council President Sakiki's quest to clamp down on dress code violations at Hiiragi and Ren's school, while being surrounded by incompetent yes-men.
- Kishiya-san hanging out with her reserved, emotionally-distant friend Akane at Seiran Academy.
- The Four Loves: In chapter 97, Yatsude has to teach Fuji that her "love" (eros) for Kishiya is different than her "love" (philia) for Yatsude, but Fuji is too stupid to understand what she means and insists that she loves them both the same.
- Held Gaze: The crux of chapter 16. Yokoe sneaks a peak at Kei during class. When Kei notices, Yokoe passes it off as a joke by texting her and mockingly asking if she fell in love from it. Kei responds by deleting Yokoe's contact info and blocking her number.
- Hey, You!: In a flashback chapter showing when Kei met Rei, Kei uses omae, a rather impolite way of saying "you" to greet Rei. Rei, who more politely addresses Kei as "Sugiura-san," mentally notes, "Ah, she calls people that?"
- Hyperlink Story: Occasionally, the unrelated plot threads will cross over in unexpected ways, like Hiiragi overhearing a conversation between Yokoe & Rei that seems to echo her own friendship issues.
- I Lied: Kei is deathly afraid of horror movies, so when one comes on the TV she covers her eyes and recites all 47 prefectures at the top of her lungs. Yokoe reassures her the commercial is over. It's not. As Kei screams with shock, Yokoe clenches her fist in triumph and announces "I lied."
- Kubrick Stare: Kei, on the first volume cover. Made even more unsettling by the fact she's pulling her mouth open to reveal her teeth. Since this image is the first thing prospective readers will see, it sets the tone rather perfectly.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Kei Sugiura with her Boyish Short Hair really looks more like a boy than a girl. Her brash irritable behavior only amplifies the impression.
- Last-Name Basis: Despite being best friends, Kei always calls Rei by her last name, Yokoe. Averted for Rei, who always calls Kei by her first namenote . Zig-Zagged for Negoro; Kei and Rei trade off between her given name and her surname, Yatsude, depending on how annoyed they are at any given moment.
- Left Hanging: Ningiyau announced they were placing the series on an indefinite, possibly permanent hiatus right after throwing a few kinks into the Fuji/Kishiya ship — including adding a brand-new friend and/or love interest for Kishiya — and leaving all the other relationships and long-running mysteries (like Ren's implied Dark and Troubled Past) with no resolution whatsoever. Only Kei and Rei get even the slightest bit of an And the Adventure Continues ending.
- Mood Whiplash: In between the cringe and gags every so often there will be a chapter with a a much more serious tone, such as the chapter that details Yokoe's feelings for Kei, before snapping back to pure comedy.
- Moving the Goalposts: On a trip to the beach, Yokoe invites Tsubaki to play Tic-Tac-Toe in the sand. When Tsubaki takes the center as her opening move, Yokoe declares she's not intimidated. She then draws more lines and doubles the size of the playing field.Yokoe: "Looks like I took the center back. Get on my level."
- No Indoor Voice: Yokoe and Kei's arguments often start with one of them trying to deny or downplay something. They end in screaming matches that clue the rest of the class into whatever they were trying to hide.
- Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Whenever Yokoe rambles, Kei slips into autopilot. Yokoe then uses the opportunity to try and propose marriage.
- Pair the Dumb Ones: While Sugiura doesn't consider Yokoe her lover, the two play out the Boke and Tsukkomi Routine together on a daily basis.
- Sunken Face: In the eighth chapter, Yokoe gets hit in her face by a basketball during PE class. The next panel is Yokoe on the floor, her face sunk in like a rubber balloon, while Yatsude comments that she looks like a sea urchin.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Yatsude was roped into joining the Film Studies club, which mainly consisted of chatting at family restaurants on club funds, and now she and Tsubaki (her kouhai) are the only two members left. Neither knows what the club is supposed to do, so they spent two months just cleaning the club room.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue: In chapter 44, Yokoe traipses into a playground at night and accidentally puts her hand on some dog poop. She pleads with Kei not to abandon her. In the next chapter, Hiiragi walks past the same park, and Yokoe's plaintive pleading becomes a counterpoint to Hiiragi's angsty inner monologue about whether to accept Utsugi as a friend.
- Uncatty Resemblance: When Yokoe feels the blistering stare of a stray cat on her, she finds it oddly familiar to the withering looks Kei shoots at her.
- Weight Woe: After Kei discovers she's put on a bit of weight, she commits herself to dieting. The very next day, Rei teases her for her tiny lunch and feeds her chocolate until Kei breaks down and abandons her diet.
- Will They or Won't They?: Despite constantly getting on each others' nerves, Kei and Rei plan to spend pretty much the whole summer vacation hanging out and even living together. In her head, Negoro wonders if they're a couple already and—if not—what difference it would even make, compared to their current relationship. She immediately has her question answered when Rei puts on a disgusting face to tease them; Negoro concludes that nobody, male or female, would bother putting up with Rei.
- Wrong Assumption:
- When Yatsude tells Tsubaki to go out and recruit other first years for the Film Studies Club, Tsubaki has a teary-eyed epiphany where she assumes Yatsude came up with the plan as a way to help her make friends. The narration then immediately points an arrow at Yatsude and tells the reader she wasn't thinking anything like that.
- After Fuji bashes her head open on a low-hanging sign, the game center clerk tends to her injuries. Fuji is stunned that the clerk is a virtuous person, while the clerk's internal monologue reveals she's just happy she got out of work.
- Yes-Man: Student president Sakaki's council is filled with fawning female sycophants who applaud her hard-assed proposal for restoring morals. According to their inner monologues, one doesn't understand the kanji, another was sleeping, and a third just wants to know if she's single.
- Yuri Genre: Downplayed. It started off as pure comedy, and the comedy continues to be a major focus even as the yuri elements get more explicit by the volume.
