Last updated 3rd of December, 2016.
Kangoku Gakuen, or in English Prison School is a manga known for the ecchi stuff, and was for me a surprisingly good manga.
The story happens in a school that was up to last year an all-girls school. Now, for the first time, there are male students too. However, their numbers are overwhelmingly... low, with only 5 boys vs over 1000 girls.
When the boys are caught peeking on some bathing girls, an old tradtitional punishment of the school is used to bring them back on the right track: for one month, they will be sent to the school's prison!
What follows is an actually really good story, that gets ignored by tons of people because of the overabundance of panty shots, sweating genitalia and other ecchi/sexual stuff, which makes it hard for some readers to remain motivated to keep reading (although others might like it). I can deal with some pantyshots, but showing panties and sweating thighs while the girl is just talking is a little over the top - even in my book.
The huge amount of "ecchi" content might throw of some people, but I would argue that the sexual content gives this manga lots of opportunities to create a lot of funny moments, and Prison School redefines the concept of "ecchi comedy": instead of the lame or cliché jokes you've seen tons of times already, like "trip and accidentally grab her boob or see her panties", we are served fresh jokes - although they won't always smell all that fresh, I imagine.
Although the actual plot seems to wander off in the background, behind all the jokes and obscenities, it is actually well thought out: it flows naturally, like the drops of sweat on the thighs of the vice-president, and leads us from jokes to dramatic moments and back to the jokes. It's actually quite hard to describe how it remains this good while getting buried in boobs...
The only problem I have at the moment is that the current arc has been drawn out for way too long already. This "battle" has been going on for over 30 chapters already, and it's just not interesting enough to warrant that monstrous length. It made me lower the score for the story by 0.8.
As for the characters: the characters are all unique, quirky, and interesting to follow around. Be it "ant-man" Joe, "masochist" André, the main character Kiyoshi, any other guy of "the five", the members of the USC, or even the director of the school: none of them ever gets boring, and they all bring something unique with them.
The "antagonists" that are introduced later in the story are less interesting though, which made me lower the score by 0.5.
Last but not least, there is the matter of the art: when a manga depends on nicely drawn boobs and butts, you need good art (well, "depends" might be putting it too strongly here, but you'll probably get what I mean). Does Akira Hiramoto deliver the art necessary for this kind of manga?
Of course he does! And it only gets better.
The only thing I really dislike is André's character design. I get that it's supposed to be funny, but it gets a bit boring after a while.
Overall: surprisingly good, with fresh sexy jokes. Recommend for all those who can stand (or like) a lot of ecchi.
