Picked this up fairly at random too, though I actually read quite a bit of it without even realizing what the plot was.
http://mangafox.me/manga/zekkyou_gakkyuu/
The narrator is Yomi, a ghost who sealed an unfathomable ancient evil giving a lecture to an unknown audience about how pitiful human beings died horribly. It's shojo manga style but there's nothing shojo about the story. Each chapter is its own story. It's like 95% survival horror and 5% of the time there might be some heartwarming ending, though that might be because after seeing all the main characters getting brutally murdered, just the fact the main character not dying can be considered heartwarming. The story usually follows this format:
1. Some girl is having problem in life (usually related to school).
2. She hears an urban legend that will invoke the spirit of Chuck Norris to fix all her problems.
3. Girl invokes the spirit of Chuck Norris to fix her problems, usually resulting in several people to be brutally murdered.
4. Girl eventually realizes that she made a mistake and asks for a second chance.
5. Girl is given a second chance and everything turns out to be okay.
6. The spirit of Chuck Norris crushes the the girl's soul and lets her know there are no second chances in life.
A 'good' ending in this would be say, older sister girl wishes to switch places with younger sister girl because the younger girl sister has all the attention, and the wish was granted. Younger girl (now in the older body) throws the older girl off the balcony in an attempt to kill her, but the wish runs out so the younger sister falls to her death. I think that's like about the 4th best outcome for the main character out of the 40 some odd stories I read so far, because at least she didn't die or become some kind of magical slave to another evil deity.
Out of the English translation I think only The Day I Become A Demon qualifies as excellent. The rest of the stuff usually attempts to have some kind of 'moral of the story' before the main character is brutually killed. Quite a lot of them the main character dies horribly through no fault of her own. If you're a super hot girl and you ignored the nerdy guy you'd definitely die, but even if you did not you're probably still going to die horribly anyway.
From this manga I come to appreciate how good the Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba line is. For the most part Screaming Class is basically your urban legend horror story and although there isn't much of a point to them, it's main source of conflict is the fact that various people gets killed horribly (and rarely from the main character escaping with her life intact). And despite that, it's actually pretty good and I consider it worth buying. But Yotsuba and Azumanga Daioh does the same thing with virtually no source of conflict. The characters in there are never fighting a matter of life and death (except when riding in Yukari's car) or supernatural forces. The closest thing to a stressful event would probably be the national college entrance exam the girls had to take but even that is handled like a normal event. It's not like you have people jumping off buildings for failing to get into the college of their choice. I guess there's a reason why Yotsuba is very high on the sales chart in Japan even though it's not even serialized in any major work. It certainly deserves the recognition and I'm finally going to back off from my stance of refusing to support a series that stars Chiyo-clone over Osaka.
http://mangafox.me/manga/zekkyou_gakkyuu/
The narrator is Yomi, a ghost who sealed an unfathomable ancient evil giving a lecture to an unknown audience about how pitiful human beings died horribly. It's shojo manga style but there's nothing shojo about the story. Each chapter is its own story. It's like 95% survival horror and 5% of the time there might be some heartwarming ending, though that might be because after seeing all the main characters getting brutally murdered, just the fact the main character not dying can be considered heartwarming. The story usually follows this format:
1. Some girl is having problem in life (usually related to school).
2. She hears an urban legend that will invoke the spirit of Chuck Norris to fix all her problems.
3. Girl invokes the spirit of Chuck Norris to fix her problems, usually resulting in several people to be brutally murdered.
4. Girl eventually realizes that she made a mistake and asks for a second chance.
5. Girl is given a second chance and everything turns out to be okay.
6. The spirit of Chuck Norris crushes the the girl's soul and lets her know there are no second chances in life.
A 'good' ending in this would be say, older sister girl wishes to switch places with younger sister girl because the younger girl sister has all the attention, and the wish was granted. Younger girl (now in the older body) throws the older girl off the balcony in an attempt to kill her, but the wish runs out so the younger sister falls to her death. I think that's like about the 4th best outcome for the main character out of the 40 some odd stories I read so far, because at least she didn't die or become some kind of magical slave to another evil deity.
Out of the English translation I think only The Day I Become A Demon qualifies as excellent. The rest of the stuff usually attempts to have some kind of 'moral of the story' before the main character is brutually killed. Quite a lot of them the main character dies horribly through no fault of her own. If you're a super hot girl and you ignored the nerdy guy you'd definitely die, but even if you did not you're probably still going to die horribly anyway.
From this manga I come to appreciate how good the Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba line is. For the most part Screaming Class is basically your urban legend horror story and although there isn't much of a point to them, it's main source of conflict is the fact that various people gets killed horribly (and rarely from the main character escaping with her life intact). And despite that, it's actually pretty good and I consider it worth buying. But Yotsuba and Azumanga Daioh does the same thing with virtually no source of conflict. The characters in there are never fighting a matter of life and death (except when riding in Yukari's car) or supernatural forces. The closest thing to a stressful event would probably be the national college entrance exam the girls had to take but even that is handled like a normal event. It's not like you have people jumping off buildings for failing to get into the college of their choice. I guess there's a reason why Yotsuba is very high on the sales chart in Japan even though it's not even serialized in any major work. It certainly deserves the recognition and I'm finally going to back off from my stance of refusing to support a series that stars Chiyo-clone over Osaka.
