After School Nightmare Chapter 39 Discussion

I absolutely adored it! No one could ever have guessed how it would end. (Unless you are japanese and you actually got the bird in the cage references.) I really hope to get other people interested in this manga, because I'm sure even a straight guy could manage to stomach 'two guys' kissing for the sake of this intriguing plot.

MoreThanLife said:
most.... epic.... manga.... ever....

I FCKING LOVED IT

first manga to ever really truly make me cry...

and to make me so frustrated that I bit my pillow until it ripped...

truly amazing...



that's how i feel , it kept me n my toes .plus my heart feels so weird i don't even know how to feel ,im messed up coz i just finished it this second , and after knowing



everything i want t read it again coz i stopped for a while and read it back in my head  and i was like hah :0 NO WAY ....WAIT AND THE ... HUH? OMG .. TT _TT i hope they wld find happiness , im so sad coz the guy part died ,i kinda liked him i wished that both of them wld had lived ,but that's what the story rly was about  .



and i was shocked about Sou's past and sister , that made me want to give him a hug lol



i loved this manga and no manga made me feel like this since i read the Deep Love series .that was deep lol  ,and a lil when i read Variant  



im just a bowl of emotions now damnit ,but  i don't know how to cry :( i wish i cld ,maybe that helps  ...anyhooo when i was reading this i kept thinking about it ..in school at home . and everywhere , i even gave my dog a hug coz he lokes like Sou in the dream  lol



well i hope they cld find happiness , all of them :3

ohhh man, i'm gonna have to think about this one and maybe re-read it when i have time before i score it (although the fact that it's re-readable probably says enough about it as at least a decently interesting manga)



it's been bugging me this entire manga and as big of an ikuhara fan as i am, i just like SENSED through little bits and pieces and (likely intentional) hints scattered throughout chapters, that this was going to not just be a half reality half dream fantasy but a full-blown, everything's-vague-and-a-metaphor Utena-esque type of ending. and for the most part, i was right, and i'm still unsure if that's what i wanted this story to be, but now that i'm thinking back on all the themes and meanings it really does make the most sense and i'm not sure why i wanted that typical everything gets solved and is normal and happy type of ending when it was so clear it wasn't gonna be that type of shoujo. it gave me that painful sort of feeling with the way it ended, an unresolved sadness i tend to feel about shows that stick with me for a while (and i'm sorry i keep on bringing ikuhara up but it's super similar to how i felt when i finished utena and penguindrum). there were certainly elements and plot lines that i don't think needed to be there at all for the sake of the true intentions of the story, but i really have to at least commend the writing for how carefully ahead of time twists were planned because the surprise factor paid off.



not at all expecting many of these specific twists to go the way that they did, especially the final reveal that mashiro's life at the school was all just a pre-birth purgatory-esque test type thing? maybe i'm missing some key parts of this, and maybe i'm supposed to be confused/ things were left open intentionally, but in my understanding all of the students (at least the ones who took part in the dream class) are all individual cases of having to make some type of choice or realization before birth, and i suppose that's why they forget their past experience in exchange for their birth, and vice versa as to why graduations caused other students to forget the 'alumni' since they're not in that world anymore. but really, mashiro's the only one who's decision makes sense, it's the ultimate sort of pre-birth stage where you're not male or female and somehow that fate is decided, and this is a fantasy imagining of that, i get that. but kureha and sou and the others? if the school setting is all a test and their memories are fake, what are their trials supposed to be? if kureha was never raped/ wasn't born yet to see her mother abused and hate men, why would those be her memories? and if sou wasn't born yet to a family that ended up neglecting him why would he conjure up a fake possessive sister to cope with something that hadn't really happened to him yet?



i guess my only theory that would make he other characters' lives and motives for being there that makes sense to me is this: somehow our fates and destinies are predetermined and whatever powers that be know them to be what will happen to the child in question. therefore this pre-life fetal purgatory whateverthehell test is created, with the future memories serving as a past that child thinks they already experienced, as a test to individuals who are known to have a rough part of life ahead of them, to see if they'd be able to deal with it and still live their lives happily/resolved. so essentially, to see if they're strong enough to be born. to be born in that world is to graduate, and everyone's past and darker/hidden problems are the same problems they would maybe experience in the future, so the whole point of the dream school is for students to be born with a strong enough will to survive life. for example the senpai/ president of the judo club, at the end of his journey when he graduated he came to accept that when he's born he's going to be pressured by his wealthy upbringing to behave a certain way and assimilate into this high society he doesn't feel he belongs in but must do to inherit his dad's company. the test was a countermeasure by this purgatorial world to see that, should he be born, he'd be strong enough to endure this without losing sight of his true self/personality dreams, and he clearly shows his realizations before he graduates.



and it makes sense that in mashiro's case, the memories are so few since s/he was described as a 'unique case' whose fate changed when her mother experienced the emergency c-section after the accidental fire and only one twin could be born, thus mashiro herself either decided to be born female, or simply realized that it was already destiny all along and she just had to accept it and let her male counterpart die/remain unborn or whatever happened there. since everyone else's fates weren't altered to mashiro's extent, their memories were full up to adolescence and their big decisions were usually of a personality or family related kind of theme. but mashiro didn't have those experiences, thus her big obstacle was her own existence and the gender she would have to live as, and being born as what was supposed to be a twin knowing you were born the day your sibling died and whether whatever twin survived was going to be strong enough to essentially live for the both of them. the more i think about it the more i appreciate this story and realize it was never half-assed to begin with, this was all beautifully done (..... IF i'm even analyzing this all as it's intended to be......). if we keep going off of this theory, then cases such as the girl who skipped three classes and disappeared are essentially why miscarriages happen in the real world - the child isn't 'strong' enough to be born, which is pretty fucking heartbreaking.i wonder how an abortion would look in this world, or a kid that's born with a mental or physical problem?



i guess now my only question is why, if this is a world for every other not yet born person with a difficult life ahead of them, why did the world and its inhabitants seem to crumble when mashiro was about to graduate? sou and kureha were just about ready to resolve their own problems and be born/reset so why would everything disappear with mashiro?? i'm gonna just assume that it's only like that from mashiro's point of view since we see a reborn sou on the train with all-female mashiro at the very end, so it must mean that he eventually made it to graduation too...



wow sorry that was longer than i'd expected and no one's likely to read it now that the manga's been long over, i basically analyzed my own questions for myself there. not sure if i'm completely off the mark but i don't think it matters with this type of genre of manga, where things are left so vague that it's practically inviting us to interpret its meaning on our own. definitely gonna consider re-reading this someday.

accela said:
...what the heck did i just read. x_x

Haha I rather feel that way too.



I really enjoyed reading this manga, though. With all the plot twists and surprises that were thrown at us. I did vaguely wondering about the passage of time when Mashiro seemed to be constantly on her period. And it's interesting to think that she killed her brother at the end. That both siblings were trying to kill each other during the whole story.

caroxab said:
havelock said:
so the one girl who dissappeared without graduating, was the on one who was miscarried, huh



but were the problems they were trying to solve the ones of their previous life, or something that awaits them when they're going to live?



SPOILERS



yes.. basically she wasn't strong enough to be born (if that makes any sense to you)...



i think the class was a kind of a test, to see who was strong enough to be alive/born (remember the part where the nurse asks ichigo if she/he has any recollection or memory of the past, before she had her first period.. and she realizes that she doesn't)

That's rather depressing to think about. No wonder the nurse was so desperate for her to come back to the class. It'd be really interesting to read this again after learning everything. I wonder if there's any significance to Thursdays in Japan when it comes to childbirth.



So.... does the moon represent the mother dilating...?

this has been on my plan to read list for something like three years now and i'm glad i finally got around to reading it. like someone mentioned earlier, i was really expecting graduation to be a far more ominous thing, so i'm relieved it seems to actually be the other way around. sou with glasses at the end looked trippy af though-- plus i was assuming since the last few kids were like "looks like we aren't graduating yeet" that they wouldn't be born, so what's up with him? i'll take it though. even if it turned out to be one long ass extended metaphor for twins fighting for life etc it was my first time seeing an intersex character in a manga and that was neat. will definitely be recommending this to friends just for the hell of it, good stuff

The story started good kinda dragged on since volume 3 but that ending i personally liked it was weird crazy but capped off the overarching plot so i found it to be a perfect fit to the series 7/10 ^^

This really was a great series.  Female Mashiro at the end looks much better than male/female Mashiro throughout the series.  This series has lots of potential for spin-offs to cover all the alternate universes that take place.  Too bad that seems unlikely at this point.



My biggest complaint is that some of the earlier graduations truly had no relevance in the plot.  Because everyone completely forgets the people who graduate, it felt like some large portions of the plot became unimportant or pointless.



Also, now that I finished the manga, I don't think the Horror genre fits this at all.  The beginning is only slightly creepy because you don't know whats happening, but everything becomes normal by the end.



EDIT:  This manga was one of the first manga I've ever read.  Four years later and hundreds of generic manga later, I decided to reread this work and I am not disappointed at all.  It is rare for a manga to have such a steady build-up and come to a clean conclusion.  The simple yet vague plot of this manga is one of the reasons I took on manga-reading as one of my hobbies.  I wish half of the manga I read are as interesting as this one.

Hmm... The author used two interesting concepts ( showing what people's real self is like + the purgatory before birth thing) but I'm not sure they worked so good together.I think she should've picked one and elaborate it more.



Overall it was okay, even if I felt like the romance part was dragging for too long. I really liked the reveal of armor's identity and the pseudo schizophrenia twist.

Hoho this was a pretty interesting manga.

I'd have given it 8+ if the story would have actually had any influence on the ending. I think that 10 volumes is too much in order to create a relationship, pull an "it was all a dream" sort of ending and mislead us.

caroxab said:
havelock said:
so the one girl who dissappeared without graduating, was the on one who was miscarried, huh



but were the problems they were trying to solve the ones of their previous life, or something that awaits them when they're going to live?



SPOILERS



yes.. basically she wasn't strong enough to be born (if that makes any sense to you)...



i think the class was a kind of a test, to see who was strong enough to be alive/born



just thought that some of the ones who graduated did it to run away from their problems, and at the other side: surprise surprise the very same awaits you here with armes wide open, no wonder i had a uneasy feeling watching 'em going through the door (even when not knowing whats behind it)

AND it kind of has the message if you're able to kill other in order to get the key you're strong enough to enter life. Oh well, its not like i thought infants actually were as inocent as everyone assumes..



caroxab said:


(remember the part where the nurse asks ichigo if she/he has any recollection or memory of the past, before she had her first period.. and she realizes that she doesn't)



i kind of thought it was the easiest way to let her start of with the way of thinking she had towards herself (honestly it seemed to me when she had her first period it was also the first time she noticed there was something missing down there to make her a real man)

Wow.. really nice! Nice ending.. though i was a little afraid that the romantic connection would be lost in those final pages!

But yeah.. i was like WTF.. throughout the whole chapters!

Luisa-chan said:
I wasn't expecting this kind of ending in fact, well I was a bit disappointed, I never thought that this this of before being born was the true point of the manga, loved everything about the story except the last chapter I guess...



I feel the same way. Whole manga was great and interesting until the last chapter. Although i'm not disappointed  by it, rather  surprised that the story could be ended like that.Still its a pity it  didn't say anything about other characters well-being.  Anyway i'm giving it 8/10