Prison School’s officially over. Time to cry a lot.
I guess I’ll start with talking a bit about those last 2 episodes. I’m sure the fact that I knew what would happen in the last episode ruins the fun a bit, but I think we can all agree that the series was at its absolute best in episode 11. It was the peak of the manga’s first arc (fyi, the anime only adapts the first arc) and I’m so glad they totally pulled it off in the anime. There were so many little details and so much ~symbolism~ in the episode that really shows how much care and attention was put into it. Remember how Chairman said he needed blinds for ‘security’ in a previous episode?
I’m also actually a naughty, hormonal 12 year old because I laughed at the gross mushroom metaphor (if you can even call it that when its so goddamn obvious & crude lmao). Let it be known that Prison School has some of the wittiest dick jokes that actually also make use of the animation medium! The mushroom! It moved! It died!!
The best of the episode was no doubt the scene between Hana and Kiyoshi, and it pretty much sums up what Prison School is – a grossout, trashy and exploitative sex comedy at its most crude. For all the nudity and sexual content that Prison School has, it never really presents sex as anything actually sexy; in fact the humor comes from the spiteful, mocking attitude towards adolescent (morbid) curiosity towards sex. I also believe the entire anime was made for this single line (aside from all the Hana faces which I will now proceed to frame up on my room walls):
Episode 12 actually turned things down a notch to focus on the more ”’serious”’ portion of the plot; that is, the boys trying to escape prison. For all their crazy, stupid tactics (arm wrestling, butt wrestling, uniform smuggling) their final successful plan is actually very sane and brilliant, albeit the final reveal felt slightly anti-climatic to me, which was a bit of a shame. I think they spent too much time explaining their whole plan (through exposition, no less! Shame on you, Prison School!) and the episode kind of lost me for a bit there. I guess I just really wanted my butt jokes all the way till the end, but who can blame me?
Stay tuned for my overall series review.