Review: THIGH HIGH: REIWA HANAMARU ACADEMY

This month we'll be looking at some the ways that manga plays with flipping sexes and genders.  Since March is also the time for the start of the new school year in Japan, this series seems doubly suitable to kick things off.

THIGH HIGH: REIWA HANAMARU ACADEMY (Reiwa Hanamaru Gakuen), by Kotobuki.  First published in 2019 and first published in North America in 2021.

PLOT:

Hanamaru High School is a place where handsome young men can enjoy their free and youthful days.  Alas, this is not the case for the uptight, prudish, and socially awkward class representative Kiritani.  Thankfully his friend Harumi is there to help him get over his hang-ups and maybe even help out some of the other lovely boys with their own problems.

STORY:

Intellectually, I get what Thigh High is trying to do.  It's trying to take a very common scenario - in this case "the everyday goings-on of cute girls in high school" - and giving it a sex change for the sake of comedy.  Notably, the only thing changed is the sex, as there are still a lot of character with typically feminine personalities and they continue to wear skirts, panties, and even bras.  They even wear ladies' one-piece swimwear, as we see in a later chapter.  I guess there's a certain novelty to the idea, but I'm not sure if it's novel enough to actually be funny.

I will say that it was smart to give this story a viewpoint character instead of it being a pure anthology, and Kiritani makes for a perfectly good one.  He's priggish and insecure enough to be silly without being irritating, and his status as class rep gives him a good narrative motivation to pry into the other students' business.  It does help that he has Harumi to help him, as Harumi's easy-going personality not only brings out Kiritani's better qualities but also allows him to serve as a sort of intermediary between Kiritani and the other students.

That being said, the whole thing feels very lightweight.  Most of these boys' problems are very simple or just a case of misunderstanding so the stakes are not particularly high.  The same goes for their personalities, which mostly consist of simple archetypes.  The humor is equally lightweight, to the point that it struggles to spur even a sensible chuckle.  The novelty of the gender-flipping isn't enough to give this story anything resembling substance.

ART:

I think we all know Kotobuki's real purpose with this series, though: to indulge in the fetish of handsome, well-built cis dudes in schoolgirl uniforms.  You can't say that they don't deliver on that sort of fanservice, literally from cover to cover.  There are a wide variety of handsome boys on display, many of which get opportunities to show off their thighs, arms, and pecs.  That's not even getting into the chapters that exist primarily for fanservice, such as the one where Kiritani is pressured by others to wear a bra during a clothing change on a hot day. 

 If anything, Kotobuki restrained themselves somewhat when it came to the framing of this fanservice.  There are no extreme first-person perspectives or low angles to better catch glimpses of panty-clad crotches or heaving chests.  Indeed, outside of a single two-page spread in the first chapter, there are no panty shots at all.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I feel like the whole premise would work better as satire if they embraced its shamelessness a little more openly. 

RATING:

If you're into this particular sort of fanservice, then Thigh High more than delivers on the art front.  Beyond that, there's not much to it beyond its gimmicky premise and its commitment to the bit.  It's not offensive, but there's not much of a point to it either.

This manga is published by Seven Seas.  This series is complete with 3 volumes available.  All 3 have been released and are currently in print.