Some series need a bit longer than others to get off the ground. Gakkyu Hotei: School Judgment turns out to have been one of those, and while it never really “takes off,” so to speak, it does by its third and final volume manage to become something better than it started as, finding a balance between serious and silly as it delves into its ostensible reason for being: the massacre hero Abaku Inugami just barely missed as a first grader. That case, along with the middle of three which make up volume two, make me wish that author Nobuaki Enoki had maintained a serious tone throughout the series, because when he's not goofing around with making light of cases for the elementary age set, the story actually becomes pretty compelling. That's really where the conflict lies: the age of the characters and the darker mystery that Enoki wants to write.

Volume two picks up with the end of the mysterious powder incident, and while the first half of the case was pretty serious, dealing with themes of addiction, Enoki isn't able to carry it through to a serious conclusion. While there is some creativity in the resolution, as well as nice clue-dropping enhanced by Takeshi Obata's serious artistic skill, the resolution sort of fizzles. Fortunately the next case is one of the two best in the series: two boys appear to have painted the exact same picture and each is accusing the other of copying him. The fact that this is a civil rather than a criminal case, the first of its kind in the series, certainly adds some interest, but what's most striking is how much more smoothly Enoki handles the storytelling. Rather than relying on Perry Mason-style in-court shenanigans (although of course those are there too), we see Inugami's former classmate and self-styled rival Sarutobi's unorthodox (and pretty darn illegal) research and Inugami's logical analysis of it and the situation. This brings everything to a conclusion that feels more plausible than previous cases as well as more meaningful, and by the third volume it is clear that Enoki isn't above putting messages in his stories for his younger readers. This one is handled a bit more subtly than the next, but overall it shows Enoki's growth as an author as he is better able to use the plot to do more than just reveal the criminal.

The third and final volume is absolutely the strongest. It focuses on a single case, the Bloody Session that Inugami, Sarutobi, and Kijima all survived as first graders, and this focus allows the story to really delve into what's going on. It is linked with a similar case – Reiko Shiratori is found unconscious in the rabbit hutch and it is assumed that someone tried to kill her – but ultimately the mystery of who hurt Reiko is the same as who massacred that first grade class years ago. Usual suspect Nanahoshi is of course under suspicion, but this also ties neatly, if a little coincidentally, into the same base incident, and his involvement serves to motivate Inugami even further. In this trial and its backstory Enoki is not afraid to cover serious topics much more seriously, wisely backing off on the humor that made parts of the first book somewhat distasteful. If the final message is a bit heavy-handed, it can be somewhat excused by the clumsy attempt to retell the Momotaro folktale to make a point and the fact that novice writers often make the mistake of writing down to a younger audience; the solution itself is pretty interesting and places blame squarely where younger readers will want it.

Unfortunately the story still struggles with its non-mystery content. The Momotaro references aren't quite developed enough to fully work, and there continue to be issues with sexualizing little girls. I'm not sure what they're feeding the kids at Tenbin Elementary, but all of the girls have much more adult bodies than most sixth graders and the story gets boob-centric enough to make some readers uncomfortable, particularly when the girls are mostly dressed in scanty bikinis for swim class. (Enoki actually wanted to make this a longer scene, but, he says, his editor interfered.) Later Kijima is referred to as the “Torturing Prosecutor” and drawn with a whip in a leather bustier and shorts combo, which seems a bit out of place on a twelve-year-old. Later when she is questioning Nanahoshi she suspends him from the ceiling with her whip wrapped around his body to emphasis his groin. While this will not make all readers uncomfortable – it certainly depends on your tolerance for underage sexualization – it still feels at odds with the courtroom drama the series purports to be going for.

School Judgment feels like an “almost” series. It's almost really good as it frames a school story as a legal drama, it almost handles the roots of the school legal system as a cure-all for failings in the educational system thoughtfully, and it almost manages to be consistently engaging. But almost doesn't quite cut it in the end, and ultimately the series falls a little flat. ¬