The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

Nightschool

What's It About? 

There are things that lurk in the shadows. Things that, when the lights go out and humans relinquish their control of the world, emerge and wander the night. Dark things. Dark creatures. Alex Treveney is one such being. She is a Weirn—a magic user with a familiar, a being of pure pit called an Astral. Despite it being her time, though, her place to show the world she really is, Alex prefers to stay indoors, much to the chagrin of her sister, Sarah. Sarah works at the Nightschool, a high school where vampires and mermaids and wizards congregate and learn to harness their powers. Sarah would love nothing more than for Alex to enroll. It seems that the choice to be homeschooled is no longer up to Alex, however. Sarah has disappeared, and all traces of her seem to have vanished from the world. To find out just what foul magic is afoot, Alex journeys to the Nightschool and finally ingratiates herself inside. She must be careful, however. Hunters prowl the night too, humans that would love nothing more than to shackle her to keep the world safe. And there is a conspiracy afoot. A conspiracy that could threaten to swallow her and the world whole…

Nightschool is an original English-language manga series by Svetlana Chmakova. This collector's edition rerelease includes the first two volumes of the original run for $24.00 in a physical paperback. It is published by Yen Press.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Faye Hopper

Rating:

The thing I am most drawn to in the work of Svetlana Chmakova is the affable humanity at the center of her characters and narratives. It is this core of authentic, charming and emotionally affecting heart that makes Nightschool so endearing even when parts of its storytelling and worldbuilding are lacking.

Nightschool is a classic macabre YA fantasy in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of the legion of vampire romances that flooded Barnes & Noble shelves in Twilight's wake. In some ways, it is typical of its genre. There is a magic school, a secret underground society of mythical creatures, those who hunt them, and a young girl struggling to find her place and come of age. But what sells it (especially when a lot of worldbuilding details—what the treaty between the vampires and the hunters is, why the Weirns are hunted, what the Astrals even are–are under clarified) is its execution that emphasizes relatable, everyday emotions. While Alex might be a conventional protagonist, her anxiety about being a part of the world (she's been homeschooled for all of her life) and her feeling that she's intellectually farther along than her peers are well-articulated struggles that resonate. There are moments of subtlety, of moral ambiguity (like when the lead hunter Daemon darkly walks off, unsure of if he can succeed in rescuing his protegees, as the remaining hunters desperately cling to hope) that give the book real maturity, and make it so much more than its premise would imply. It is these moments, these insights that make the book work despite its sometimes not-all-there execution.

Chmakova's CLAMP-inspired art is the best prism to view the book through. It is at points rough. The paneling (especially in the actions scenes) can be under detailed and difficult to follow. The character designs are often indistinct, and I had some difficulty telling which character was which (especially since this is an ensemble cast where a good chunk of the ensemble doesn't have clear personalities). But the effort and passion are there. The creative energy is there (I love Chmakova's use of shadow and how she characterizes the various fantasy races through things like blackened eyes and dark familiars), such that the book does contain striking images (like when Alex stands victorious above the city night, her dark, conjured wings swirling about her) and real visual imagination. While there are things that leave me confused and critical, I cannot help but like the art overall; I cannot help but see its sharp lines and gothic edges as cool and successful. It is not perfect, yes, and it is let down by its illustrative deficiencies as much as it is buoyed by its soul. But if you can see the effort underneath it all, if you can see the talent of its author, like a gem that has not been fully carved out, I think you will eventually be as captivated as I was.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I adore Svetlana Chmakova's Berrybrook Middle School series, so it's a disappointment to me that even years after having tried to read it, I still can't get into Nightschool. Simply put, this (admittedly lovely) collector's edition, which combines the first two of six books, is the work of a creator who hadn't hit her stride yet – where Berrybrook is honest and charming, Nightschool is a little pretentious and derivative, not necessarily of manga, but of a whole host of young adult and middle grade fiction that was popular around 2009 when the series first came out. (That would be stuff like Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, Cassandra Clare's City of Glass, and Maggie Steifvater's Shiver, to cherry pick a few.) There's exactly nothing wrong with Chmakova seizing her moment and cashing in on a hot trend; the problem is that the story gets bogged down in genre tropes and an unwieldly storyline, as well as the fact that the art is still trying a bit too hard to look like “manga” rather than the more streamlined look of her later work.

The story is more or less attempting to mashup the genres of “school story” and “supernatural kids,” with very moderate success. Alex, the most recognizable protagonist, begins attending the night class at a New York City public school (why yes, Vampire Knight was being published in 2009, why do you ask?), which is made up of the city's paranormal students – witches, weres, the whole nine yards. There's also a brewing supernatural issue set to take the city, which a group of Hunters are working to prevent, and social drama between the students, and personnel issues among the teachers, and graveyards and just about anything else you can throw in that says “paranormal.” Mostly the plot buckles under the weight of all of the storylines its attempting to carry, which necessitates a very large cast. Things aren't quite up to being able to keep that cast distinct in terms of names and character designs, and the story gets confusing very quickly, which is a fast way to make readers lose interest.

I honestly came to this reading in the hopes that back in 2009 I was just suffering from a surfeit of similar titles. It's disappointing to realize that I wasn't, and that Nightschool simply isn't as good as Chmakova's later work.