Manga Review - PhD: Phantasy Degree by Son Hee-Joon

I first got interested in Son Hee-Joon's PhD: Phantasy Degree (Tokyopop) when a sample of its storyline was included in one of the American manga publisher’s sneak preview books. A monster action comedy set in Hades? How could I resist?

The Age 13+ series is set around a school for demons, built on the side of a craggy mountain cliff. We meet our heroine Sang as she travels through the forests of Hades, seemingly on a quest to find said demon school. A red-headed teenaged human, Sang has apparently been traveling a long road to get to this part of Hades: "I'm so hungry," she says as she collapses onto the ground, "that I don't have any strength to move." Fortunately for our famished heroine, a werewolf shows up panting and happily lolling its tongue.

Though our heroine supposedly is too weak to move, she still manages to capture the creature. (We don't see how she does it, a cheat that Hee-Jon pulls more than once with Sang in this book.) "He's not really human, so it wouldn't really be cannibalism," San reasons, as she prepares a fire to cook the beast, but she's interrupted by the appearance of another supernatural creature, a vampire named Mordicus. In the time it takes for the reader to slide onto the next page (Tokyopop's edition, it should be noted, is packaged in traditional Western format, moving from left to right), Sang is herself trussed up by what turns out to be a quartet of teenaged monsters.

The foursome – which includes a mummy named Tyrannus and a short-horned demon named Dev – are ditching class during final exams. "You're a bunch of demon school slackers, aren't you?" Sang accuses, before slipping out of her ropes off-panel, and she asks the group to escort her into the school building. No humans are allowed, she told, so she gets Mordicus to bite her, transforming her into enough of a vampire so she's able to pass through the school's portals without any hassle – but still maintaining a vague measure of human-ness about her.

This damning humanity is picked up by others in the demon school: big-horned demon teacher Fatalis, who also teaches at the school (much like the fraternal relationship in Psychic Academy), the bodaciously shapely demon Notra, who has wings on her head instead of horns. (must be a flight-or-fight thing) and Katana, the leader of a trio of older demon bullies, who has it in for our quartet of "fourth-rate freaks." "Always a bunch of guys that think they're too cool for school," Sang notes, unable to hold back the quips even as they incite Katana and his buds. She then acts surprised when the bullies go after her along with the hooky-playing foursome.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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