At the end of volume 1, I was pretty certain that despite the cliffhanger ending and the appearance of transfer student Haruto, there wasn’t much need for me to return to School of Horns again. However, I learned that volume 2 was the last one, that there was no other volumes in tow. So returning to see how Eru and Rihito would deal with Haruto was hard to pass up.
That…was a mistake.
School of Horns volume 2 caps what was mainly pretty boys (with Mone, who felt inferior to her big sister) just showing up on the pages in a supernatural school. In this volume, the Haruto problem is dealt with in a manner that doesn’t really seem well thought out, and it’s also far too typical where friendship is the only way to solve things. Note that isn’t actually a problem in manga, but it is when it feels as clumsy as this one was. This ultimately stalled its own momentum it had at the end of volume 1, and after resolving this, it goes back into prepping for exams mode.
Needless to say, Eru’s small horn situation, the types of statuses students could have (From Spades to Aces), any darker creatures in this work, etc…not explored at all. That’s just a lot cut from what I can only guess wasn’t a very strong work in the magazine because it pretty much wraps on a whimper. I’m not sure if Eru’s growth was correct, or if I’m sure if Rihito would be friends with Eru so fast. It all felt off in this volume, so I can’t help but be disappointed.
The only moments that weren’t bad was the chapter involving Mone and her older sister, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. She and her sister were also one of the few things drawn right, since the art isn’t all that great. When it’s just characters doing simple tasks the characters look fine, but any time there’s any sort of battles, it’s all static and we don’t see much of anything. Maybe doing a standard story might have made things work better instead of this.
So yeah, School of Horns will be a work that’s out there, with a nice concept that struggles to execute it in an engaging way. Hopefully the next work from Mito Aoi will be a lot more intriguing and engaging than this one.