Review: カーストヘヴン 1 [Caste Heaven 1]

カーストヘヴン 1 [Caste Heaven 1] by Chise Ogawa
My rating: 0 of 5 stars



Dropped after Chapter 1.

This manga is about a school that runs under a caste system. Each year they have this kind of "contest" where poker cards are scattered around the school, and whichever one you end up with determines your rank. Example: If you find the King card you become the absolute ruler of the whole school and can shit on anyone and everyone you please, or if you end up with the Joker card then you become a living ass-wipe. The premise of the book is how the tables turn when the previous year's ruler ends up with the Joker card this time around. This seems really interesting, no? And it would have been--If it was done right.

To preface my situation: I randomly started reading this because the synopsis sounds SUPER rad and interesting, but little did I know that this is a yaoi. I don't really enjoy reading or watching that kind of stuff. I enjoyed the Sunstone Vol. 1 series a lot (which is lesbian BDSM), but something about yaoi and yuri has just never really jived with my tastes. This wasn't an exception. However, the yaoi was NOT the main problem of the book.

Obviously, I only lasted a chapter so I didn't really see much of the series. But... The author got straight into business with this chapter, no dilly dallying. They set up the high school caste system and the conflict straight away. But, maybe too straight away? I mean, there was a rape scene. IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. Who does that? Apparently Chise Ogawa does that, that's who. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was a rape scene, if not it was definitely borderline. (I read this exactly one month ago so the details are a bit hazy.) So that was definitely... Jarring. Around there was probably when I realized what I had gotten myself into.

For people who are here for the yaoi, I'll give you more of the specifics on that. I know that a lot of yaoi recently have been more on the abusive side of things, and I also know that people have been recognizing the problems about glamorizing/idealizing this kind of relationship. Unfortunately, this seems to be another one of that kind of yaoi. From this first chapter that's definitely how things seem to be going (and have already gone).

But you know, a distaste for yaoi and rape (...) is really just a personal thing, so they might not bother other people who are... Into that. Though I'm sure there must be much better yaoi out there than this one, in terms of writer and story competence. This manga just felt... Sloppy in a way. Like, things would happen really suddenly and out of nowhere. The whole chapter was just so jarring in so many ways. The competition that sets up the caste system got really breezed through super-fast so we barely got to see any of the most interesting and unique thing about this manga. A huge disappointment. Also, literally every single character in this is an asshole. This doesn't necessarily have to be a problem, but it was. This is coming from someone who's favorite characters are literally ALL assholes:



Even though I had problems with essentially every aspect of this first chapter and firmly dropped it after finishing it, now that I’ve had some more time to ponder it, I feel tempted to pick it back up again. Solely because of how awesome that synopsis sounds. I want to keep reading in the hopes that the execution becomes better and that we’ll get to see more about this bizarrely interesting high school caste system. So this review may not be the last you see of me on this series………

*EDIT:* If you want to read (or watch) a series with a similar caste system run highschool, but actually done well, I recommend you try out Kakegurui. The system in that is actually better than in Caste Heaven because instead of a luck-of-the-draw-contest-type-thing that only briefly happens once a year that determines your rank within the school, it's a constantly ongoing gambling ring. So you actually see much more of this interesting premise than you see in Caste Heaven.

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