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.