Title translation: Paradise Lost.Our heroine, Sora Himoto, has just been accepted to the prestigious Utopia Gakuen. She meets one of her childhood friends and talks about her dream of becoming a knight who protects princesses. Upon getting to the highschool she sees two male students, each attended by a female student, engaged in some kind of duel. Upon losing, the defeated student breaks his dagger and the girl with him cries out in pain… and no one seems to care or notice.This manga blatantly rips off draws inspiration from Utena but with the bride/dueling mechanic extended to the entire student body. The school financers have taken it upon themselves to use sophisticated virtual reality to create an environment where gender (in)equality has been pushed back a few thousand years and then cranked up to eleven. The duels are part of a game called “Exaclan” where the males students are contestants and the female students are weapons to be used, wagered, traded, abused and discarded. The female students have no protections or rights of any kind against the player who currently owns them, and any girl without a master has no protections or rights of any kind, period.Seeing that the situation is fucked up beyond all possible belief unfair Sora starts about entering Exaclan and trying to start a one girl revolution that quickly turns to a one-girl-and-her-harem revolution.
Actually, adults are visible in most of the scenes in the infirmary. Unfortunately, they're all female. Which likely means...
All Men Are Perverts: This trope is zigzagged. It's heavily implied that several girls are sexually abused by their "owners", and then there's Akane, who is a pretty nice guy who's just terrified of being ostracized/not allowed to graduate. Sumita is also an exception; Reiko states that he never touched her, and he seems to genuinely care about her..
Aloof Ally: Reiko, briefly. She was not permitted to remain aloof.
Black and White Morality: There are stories where even the darkest villain has complex motivations, and even the brightest hero must ask questions about the righteousness of his or her cause. This is not one of those stories. OR IS IT?
Break the Cutie: After Sora wins Tomoko, the boys figure out that Exaclan only protects against physical harm, not threats or emotional abuse. A group of boys isolate Tomoko and proceed to terrorize her in the worst way. Tomoko doesn't handle it well.
Broken Bird: Yuki before Sora makes her believe that things can get better.
Tsuki.
Bully Hunter: Sora, a particularly overloaded one.
Butt Monkey: Shinji, Sora's first enemy, rapidly spirals into this after losing three fights against her in a row. The 4 Koma comics spend a lot of time mocking him.
Chained Heat: The cover of volume three features Sora and Reiko tied to each other by Reiko's flail weapon.
Chekhov's Gun: Periodically we see snippets of a fairytale story involving a prince, a princess, and a demon king, with elements that parallel the actual plot. This just seems like a way of comparing the story with fairytales until its revealed that it's an actual in-universe story called "Paradise Story" and that El and X took their names from it and are deliberately causing the actual events of the series to mirror that story.
Cosmic Chess Game: The whole plot is basically one huge chess game between two super-intelligent individuals (namely, Tsuki and Karin, who are gods within confines of Exaclan) trying to prove their points to each other. Sora is the only loose piece.
Covert Pervert: Koharu has rather risque "bedtime fantasies" involving Sora...
Depraved Homosexual: Mitarai. Subverted, as he tells Tomoko: "Between a guy who you don't know what he's thinking, and an okama who you don't know what he's thinking, which would you prefer?"
Despair Event Horizon: Lots, which is to be expected in a series where the girls are no more than slaves. Pretty much all of the girls have already crossed it, but the real kicker is when its shown that a number of the boys have crossed it too. Its the reason they follow the system instead of opposing it; they can do about as much about it as the girls, and so play along.
Determinator: Sora again. She will protect all the girls.
Dragon with an Agenda: Although he's initially presented as the Big Bad, El is this for the man in charge of Utopia Academy. His plots are unforgivably cruel but he has goals that others aren't privy to.
Dying Like Animals: Sora quickly finds out that most of the girls are mice, and all of the boys are (forcefully) jackals.
Early-Bird Cameo: The picture at the top is from the first chapter of the series, showing the (presumed) "harem" of the main character. After three volumes, the last of the characters in the picture finally appears, and not all of them are under Sora's protection or have even met her. One is The Mole (she eventually has a Heel Face Turn). Another is crossdressing to be a member of the all male student council.
Ears as Hair: Inverted. Tomoko has hair which, according to Sora, looks like ears.
Easily Forgiven: While it is somewhat understandable that the guys went along with the system, it still doesn't excuse how extremely cruel they have been treating the girls. The most egregious example of this might be between Koharu and Shinji. He tried to rape her and she is the one who apologizes first (for reasons no mortal could comprehend).
Tsuki as well. She manipulated Sora, attacked her when she so much as spent time with other people, sliced open half of El's face with a knife and then carved her initials in Sora's forehead, and generally was abusive and really, really creepy. But despite her lack of remorse for her actions, she's instantly redeemed and even ends up with Sora in the end.
Enigmatic Minion: Tsuki. It's hard to tell at first if she's helping or manipulating Sora, but at the very least Tsuki seems to have genuine feelings of friendship (at least) for her.
El himself, for that matter. Although he's presented as the Big Bad.
Every Scar Has A Story: Sora got her scar when saving a girl (actually from Tsuki, who went on a Psycho Lesbian Yandere war path) when she was little. She wears it as a badge of honor.
Eye Scream: Tsuki cuts Karin's eye when he tried to "sway" Sora from being a knight.
Faceless Goons: Most male students are drawn with their faces partly obscured, especially their eyes — probably to emphasize their monstrosity and to further dehumanize them. Most of the guys who were drawn with full faces are either complex, have good motivations, or are actually decent people- Akane, who interestingly enough gets some Character Development when he takes off his glasses and reveals his eyes.
Foreshadowing: Sora's near breakdown when she is forced to choose which girl to save makes a lot more sense when it's revealed that Tsuki forced her to make the same decision between her and El as a child, traumatizing her to point of repressing those memories.
Happiness in Slavery: Averted, Subverted, and Deconstructed. The female students are not happy. They are hopeless and miserable. The only reason they don’t resist is because the past situation was even worse and after such a steady diet of oppression and abuse most of the girls have come to believe they're as worthless as they're told. Might easily have been played straight with Sora’s personal harem as they are one hundred percent okay with being in Sora's custody — but differentiated from the Utopia Academy norm in that Sora tells her girls that she (Sora) will serve them by protecting and sheltering them.
Reiko appears to play this straight, then admits that there is no way she or any girl could love her owner, and says that she only acts as such to exert power through him.
Hopeless Boss Fight: Yes Sora, challenging one of the Student Council's top members (let alone one who is fanatically loyal to the president) when you've barely started is such a great idea.
Shoujou admits to El later that the only reason he was able to win was that Sora was so lost in rage that she became very easy to read.
How Do I Shot Web?: Averted. Exaclan has documentation, and Yuki has the foresight to make Sora sit down and read it.
And Inverted. Most the boys haven't read the documentation, which allows Sora to exploit a few loopholes to her advantage.
This goes Up to Eleven when Chapter 22 reveals that El reveals himself to Sora and tells him what's going on. All of the information he gives her overloads her and she faints, forcing her mind to process everything and retell it in the form of her younger self.
It's worth noting, however, that Sora displays incredible insight numerous times throughout the story.
Inherent in the System: Utopia Academy and the Exaclan game are designed to encourage the male student body to leap across the Moral Event Horizon (which they willingly do, the bastards — ormaybeNOT), and to encourage the female students not to fight back. Sora is determined to save the boys just as much as the girls.
Kick the Dog: Yuki starts the story as an abject demonstration of the abuses of Utopia Gakuen: hospitalized by her former master, abandoned by her then-current master, and then forcibly used against Sora.
Double Standard Rape Female On Female: Considering that the alternative of Sora's plan to free Reiko was beating her for thirty minutes straight, Sora's not-quite-consensual molestation of Reiko isn't really too bad as far as moral standards go.
My Gender Doth Protest Too Much: Akane is a guy. He also happens to be (so far as we know) as sweet and kind as Sora, just lacking a bit in the courage department.
Mysterious Protector: X. Though by all indications she's just as much of a victim as anyone else and she's forcibly working for El; it's all but outright stated she's Tsuki. Interestingly the series played with this trope when X was impersonated by a Villainous Crossdresser.
And it's revealed that El himself is protecting Sora... from Tsuki.
Not Just A Tournament: Whoever collects all six seals in Exaclan will... actually, never mind, the ending is too confusing to tell, but it's certainly not about rounding up a six-girl harem.
Out Gambitted: Upon learning that anyone she wins in a duel will be a target of even more extreme abuse than normal, Sora comes up with the simple expedient of recruiting a male accomplice. It works out badly.
Paper-Thin Disguise: El is able to gain Sora's trust by ruffling his hair and putting on an eyepatch.Justified, because she had never met him before in the first place, and the disguise doesn't fool others who know his identity.
Pet the Dog: Yuki slaps Tomoko, calls her an idiot for abandoning Sora's protection and warns to her to stay away if her own skin means so much to her, but still comes to Tomoko's rescue later on.
Pixellation: Played for humor in one of the 4 koma chapters; Koharu's rifle gets glitched up and turns pixellated during a thunderstorm. Hilarity Ensues.
Revised Ending: Chapter 24, which was added in the collected edition.
The Sadistic Choice: Although it doesn't actually happen, Yuki tells Sora to envison being forced to choose between her (Yuki) and Koharu; and no, Taking A Third Option is not a possibility. Sora has a Heroic BSOD at the mere thought.
And then there's the final chapter, in which Sora and Tsuki get married, and it's confirmed that Koharu and Yuki both had (or still have) genuine feelings for Sora.
Stepford Smiler: As the series gets darker, Sora is arguably one of these as she begins to lose faith in herself. Probably the worst moment is when Yuki refuses to help her get the rest of the girls back because of her poor health, and Sora gives her the most forced smile, when she looks like she's about to burst into tears.
Tsurime Eyes: Reiko. Sora even lampshades it in chapter 9.
Unlucky Childhood Friend: Tsuki got rejected rather brutally by Sora... Or so it seems. It wasn't an outright rejection so much as rejecting her cynical view of the world to help her for the better, and in chapter 24 Sora marries Tsuki.
Unwitting Pawn: Sora, dear, you are just a little too trusting.
Yandere: A male example, Shoujou seems to go frightening lengths for El (wanted or not), from listening in to conversations to holding Tsuki hostage. He actually doubles as a Cute Psycho as well to the girls.
And for a female example, we have Tsuki.
X Marks The Hero: Sora's forehead. Marked by Tsuki off all people.
Villainous Valour: The manga favorably compares Shoujou's faith in El to Yuki's faith in Sora.
0 reviews 