Afterschool Charisma: Volume 6

by Kumiko Suekane, 201 pages

Kai finishes his tale and his audience learns what happened to their predecessors who were, and weren't, successfully auctioned off at their expo, revealing the birth of the Strikers, the terrorist group who attacked the school.  But the truth is still murky and the conflicting roles of their teachers and directors, and even Kai, are anything but clear.

Dude!  This is some dark, twisty, hard-to-wrap-your-brain-around-it-but-fun-to-try business of complex hidden motives, histories, and personalities.  And I am eager for the next one.  The jerk Rockswell gets a whack in the head, which pleases me, but he just laughs it off, which is frustrating.  I want to know why he thinks everything's going so swimmingly and how he and Kuroe and Dr. Kamiya (two staff members, the latter of whom raised Shiro as his son) are all connected and what the heck is going on!

Afterschool Charisma: Volume 5

by Kumiko Suekane, 201 pages

Kai, older Shiro look-alike and lone survivor of the terrorists who attacked St. Kleio Academy, tells the surviving students about his generation of clones at the school and their struggle to understand and deal with who and what they were.

You want to like this Kai, but you're not even sure which Kai he is and we've only heard the first part of his story, so judgment must be reserved until more facts are in.  Sheesh, these people are all in need of some serious psychological help.  Also, for some of them (Rockswell), jail time.

Afterschool Charisma: Volume 4

by Kumiko Suekane, 205 pages

The clones fight--some successfully, some not--to survive an attack on their school during their skills exhibition and are confused and frightened to find those trying to kill them are earlier generations of clones like themselves.

This is a rough volume in that a few of the people you've gotten to know through earlier volumes don't make it out the other side.  And of those left, not all of them are stable (Hitler!) or adjusting well as they try to understand what's happened and why.  The next volume promises to explain at least a part of that when the mysterious Kai, one of supposedly non-clone Shiro's older lookalikes, reveals what little he knows of his own story.  I want to know, too!  And then the kids need to kick their school director's soulless backside until he recognizes their equal humanity.

Afterschool Charisma: Volume 3

by Kumiko Suekane, 199 pages

Shiro tries to process newly revealed, life-altering possibilities as his clone friends and the St. Kleio staff begin their skills expo. But those plotting against the academy, and some of those plotting within it, send the carefully constructed event--and the carefully constructed lives of those participating--into chaos.

Yikes! The Director, whom I didn't trust before, is now on my official heartless-villains-I-hope-suffer list, despite his goofiness. He may be good for laughs, but I fear for the physical and mental well-being of any character sharing air with him. He exemplifies that disassociation in which the clones are seen as valueless beyond their capacity to contribute to the pocketbooks of those with power. I might hate him.

I want to read the next book! Who's alive?! Who has escaped? Who's really up to what and how are they all connected?! And how has all this mess changed those who remain?

Afterschool Charisma: Volume 2

by Kumiko Suekane, 199 pages

St. Kleio Academy is an exclusive school whose students have been educated since birth to be the best they can be in their fields for the betterment of society (and the business world's bottom line). The pressure to excel is considerable, as every student, save one, has great shoes to fill--for they are all clones of history's greatest achievers: Freud, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Marie Curie, Mozart, Einstein, Hitler...among others. Theoretically, the students are meant to embody the best of their originals without following too precisely in their footsteps, but when J.F.K's recently graduated clone is assassinated while delivering a speech about looking hopefully toward the future, the others begin to fear they are more bound to their predecessors' fates than they'd believed.

Shiro, the lone non-clone and son of one of St. Kleio's professors, feels a little useless while his friends and classmates prepare for their yearly expo in which they display their developing genius to their future employers from the government and business communities. When the school's flamboyant director shows up with a young adopted clone in tow, Shiro is unhappily enlisted as babysitter (to the immature director as much as to his small charge). Meanwhile, a new fad has been spreading throughout the school as the clones, desperate to prove their independence from their originals, look to small key-chain charms of a sheep (appropriately named Dolly) for divine protection from all things unpleasant--including their oppressive destinies. As the clones' devotion to Dolly takes on an increasingly creepy tenor, those responsible for J.F.K.'s death reveal that they've only just begun.

The cold disassociation almost every non-clone but Shiro seems to feel towards the clones, who see themselves as fully human individuals, is frightening. They're just tools to be pampered and made use of until they break and are replaced, only they don't know it and for the most part trust the people shepherding them through life and their studies. At this point, I'm not sure whether the greater threat originates from within the school or without. But with the twist at the end of this volume, you can be sure I'll keep reading till I find out.