Here Is Greenwood

Here is Greenwood (ここはグリーン・ウッド) is a 9-volume Japanese manga written and illustrated by Yukie Nasu and six-episode anime OVA revolving around the activities of four boys in Greenwood Dormitory at a fictional prestigious Japanese all-boys' private school named Ryokuto Academy. The manga was serialized in Hana to Yume and published in English by Viz Media. It has also been adapted into a live-action television series.

Unlike most anime, the episodes appear to be manga canon, as certain episodes refer directly (through narration giving the volume number) to events in the manga. The manga storyline is somewhat self-referential, as several asides show that the characters are fully aware that they exist in a manga. Yukie Nasu appears frequently as herself, usually with a capital "N" on her head, to explain away certain loose plot threads. For example, in a story featuring a baseball game taking place in late autumn, one of the characters asked why they weren't playing soccer; Nasu's character appeared and explained that she didn't know the rules for soccer.

In North America, the OVAs were released on VHS in 1996 by Central Park Media under its Software Sculptors label. It was released in 2004 on DVD, with a new English dub, by Media Blasters.

Plot
The manga and OVAs begin with Kazuya Hasukawa's belated arrival at Ryokuto Academy (a little over a month into the start of the term thanks to being injured in a car accident, a stress-induced ulcer, and a freak series of mishaps that delayed touring the academy and completing the admissions process) and his assignment to the former insane asylum and current dormitory called "Ryokurin-ryou"&mdash;commonly called by its more easily pronounceable English name, Greenwood, and known for its bizarre types. These include two heads of dormitory and school, Shinobu and Mitsuru (they are roommates. There is a large Shinobu and Mitsuru yaoi fanbase, but the manga and OVA never truly unambiguously specify their sexual preferences), the student who shares his room with his motorcycle, the Christian fanatics, etc. Although he lived within commuting distance of the school, he has signed up to live in one of the dorms to get away from home, where his brother Kazuhiro (who raised him when the two's parents perished) has recently married Kazuya's first love, Sumire, and taken a job as Ryokuto's school nurse.

By the time Kazuya arrives, there is only one room with a space left for him&mdash;with Shun Kisaragi, a "pretty girl" who for mysterious and unexplained reasons, must attend the all-boys school. Student Body President Shinobu Tezuka and Head Resident Mitsuru Ikeda (the two elder students who are assigned to mentor Kazuya, and who live together in Greenwood as well) tell Kazuya that they felt he was the only person they could trust to share a room with Shun. However, three days later, 'Suka-chan' (as he is quickly nicknamed by Shun) happens to walk in on Shun in the men's bathroom ... using the urinal. After a brief chase through the dormitory, Shun admits that 'she' is really a 'he' who looks precisely like a female, and that the rest of the dormitory was not only in on the joke, but were actually placing bets on how long it would take Kazuya to find out.

Subsequent to that profitable (for the bookies Shinobu and Mitsuru, at least) episode, Kazuya teams up with Shun and Mitsuru to defeat Shinobu's older sister, Nagisa, who has nursed a grudge against Shinobu since childhood, and seeks to humiliate him at least once.

Another episode records an inter-dorm competition for a substantial prize purse, in which Greenwood bands together and develops a fantasy film called, "Here is Devil Wood". (The OVA's ending theme provides the popular phrase "We are the No-Brand Heroes", frequently adopted by clubs, web sites, and users.) The movie is a hit, and wins the popularity contest.

In the 4th episode, Mitsuru is haunted by the new ghost (that is, not one of the normal Greenwood ghosts) of a cute girl who wanted to go out with a guy. The complications that ensue nearly wreck Greenwood, before Mitsuru is tricked by the ghost into kissing her. Just when she seems to have found peace and pass on to the next world, she returns with a number of other ghost girls to haunt the four main characters.

The final two episodes deal with the budding and halting romance between Kazuya and a girl named Miya Igarashi. Through several tribulations, including defeating a vicious girl's gang, they finally come together, as the series ends in a montage of flashbacks set to the series' music.

Characters
The story of Here is Greenwood is centered around the lives and times of the following four characters:

Kazuya Hasukawa
 * Kazuya is an orphan. He was raised by his older brother, Kazuhiro, who attended Ryokuto academy. Hasukawa idolized his brother and wanted to enroll at Ryokuto to be more like him. At the start of the series, we see him enrolling into the school, realizing his dream, but he is very late due to a series of freak accidents. To make matters worse, Kazuhiro has just married Kazuya's first love, Sumire! Unable to live in the same house as the newly-weds, Kazuya moves into the dorms. Little does he know what terrors await him there!
 * Portrayed by Izawa Yuki in the Live action.

Shun Kisaragi
 * Shun is Kazuya's easygoing roommate. Although Kisaragi resembles a cute, tomboyish girl, he's actually a guy. Shun is the oldest son of the Kisaragi family, who run a chain of traditional Japanese inns. The females in the Kisaragi family inherit the company, but it has no connection with Shun's girlish figure. In fact, Shun is heterosexual; he likes girls, and when he was a junior high school student, he went together with a girl. Shun is very self-confident and proud of his beautiful long hair, and he knows he is so cute. Because he thinks it is the best way to be cool, he does not hesitate to dress like a girl. He can makes sound decisions and is a man of action, and no character believes that Shun is actually feminine.
 * Shun has a younger brother named Reina and an infant sister named Yui.
 * Portrayed by Suzuki Hiroki in the Live Action.

Mitsuru Ikeda
 * The President of Greenwood dormitory, and best friend of Shinobu Tezuka.
 * Portrayed by Miura Riki in the Live Action.

Shinobu Tezuka
 * The smartest student living in Greenwood dormitory, and best friend of Mitsuru Ikeda.
 * Portrayed by Sato Yuuichi in the Live Action.

Manga
Here is Greenwood Volume 1: (coming soon)

Here is Greenwood Voume 2:

"Headache Nemesis" Part1-Part2-Part3

Volume 2 of the manga begins from the cliffhanger left behind in the last pages of the previous volume&mdash;the three part "Headache Nemesis". This story introduces Nagisa Tezuka, Shinobu's jealous and psychotic sister, bent on disgracing and destroying her younger brother for years of torture and defeat in their unending sibling rivalry. Nagisa kidnaps Mitsuru, in an effort to both seduce the pretty-boy, and to finally see her brother kneel for the sake of his best-friend. While all of this is going on, Kazuya Hasukawa is physically exhausted and in the midst of a high fever. Shun, who was there when Mitsuru was kidnapped, finds himself the only one who really seems to care about rescuing Mitsuru. Kazuya, however, finds himself feeling guilty and hurt by the loss of his de-facto mentor and friend. As such, he refuses to submit to his cold, and promises to rescue Mitsuru. Shinobu breaks into Nagisa's apartment to rescue Mitsuru (along with Kazuya and Shun), only to have Nagisa's henchmen hold a knife to Mitsuru's face. Mitsuru cuts his own face on the knife, rather than have his best friend kneel before Nagisa. This goes on to enrage Kazuya, who systematically beats up each and every henchmen in a fit of rage&mdash;only to discover that Mitsuru's face can heal within seconds of being cut. The three-part story ends with Hasukawa collapsing from exhaustion and fever, only to awake and find himself both happy to see Mitsuru safe, and distraught to realize that now his daily torture would continue unabated&mdash;that things were back to normal.

The ending of this saga is also the first time that an important plot hole is introduced. Although technically a year has passed, none of the characters have aged or moved on in their schooling. Yukie Nasu addresses this with comic brilliance by breaking the fourth-wall and introducing herself to scold Kazuya for pointing out holes in the plot of the manga &mdash; a comedic technique never used in the OVA series, but very often used in the course of the manga.

"Boy meets Boy"

The next story in the volume deals with two characters who live in Dorm room 117 of Greenwood: the masculine farm-boy Tatsuro Fujikake and the feminine Yoshiki Watanabe. The story takes place before the main storyline in volume 1. The two encounter each other in a crowded train, where Watanabe is being groped by a strange man, until Fujikake intervenes and saves him, only to find that Watanabe is actually not a girl but a pretty boy. The two part ways, only to find themselves staring at each other as Mitsuru (the dorm-head) introduces them to each other as roommates. Fujikake and Watanabe meet the other eccentric characters of Greenwood, and as time progresses find themselves becoming closer and closer. Fujikake finds himself, to his own anguish, falling in love with Watanabe. Fujikake tries everything possible to avoid Watanabe, his own roommate, going so far as to beg Mitsuru to exchange his room with the "sick-boy" in room 210 (the yet-to-arrive Kazuya Hasukawa). The story ends with Fujikake and Watanabe embracing as Fujikake admits his love, and months later as they ask a clearly uncomfortable Hasukawa to ask his older brother, the school nurse, on advice about the specifics involved in the intimacy of their relationship.

"The Japanese Summer is Here"

This story begins as the boys of Greenwood dorm find themselves dying of heat from the unending Japanese summer. This story arch can be seen more as a "filler" which the narrator and author, Yukie Nasu, admits exists to reintroduce the cast of Greenwood to the reader after the brief side-story ("Boy meets Boy"). The story reintroduces each of the boys along with birthdates and bloodtypes as Kazuya tries to find some desperate escape from the heat.

"Poolside Man"

A handsome lifeguard finds himself inexplicably attracted to a beautiful girl, lying by the community pool, only to find later that it's a guy&mdash;our very own Shun Kisaragi.

"The True Love of a Brother" Part1-Part2

Shun and many of the boys of Greenwood have left the dorm this summer vacation, leaving only Kazuya, Mitsuru, Shinobu and the other misfits whose family problems burden them to stay. After being forced by Mitsuru to take the responsibilities of dorm president, due to Mitsuru's leaving for a mysterious family emergency, Hasukawa finds a young girl who has sneaked into the dorm. It is revealed that the young girl is actually Shun's younger brother Reina (also cursed by Shun's gender-bending genes). Hasukawa inadvertently becomes responsible for Reina's care, becoming a hard-handed figure to sweet Reina. Reina is then picked up by Shun the next day, and reveals that the reason he ran away was that he didn't want Shun's inheritance taken away due to the birth of a new baby girl&mdash;since Shun's family passes their wealth through the maternal line. Hasukawa implores Shun to heavily discipline Reina as an older brother should, only to be lost in the long-forgotten memories of his loving brother gently raising and taking care of him. At the end of the manga it's revealed that Mitsuru is actually the oldest son of a Buddhist Temple-family, and as such, may inherit it as a future monk&mdash;something Mitsuru so far seems silent about.

Here is Greenwood Volume 6: "Cloned valentine" Side story in which Shinobu comes across a clone of himself, made by aliens.

"A dangerous league" A baseball showdown between Mitsuru and an old classmate.

"Spring has sprung" Kazuya Hasukawa is named the new dorm head.

"The ogre comes in spring" The Greenwood dorm gains new students.

"What's a school trip" The Ryokuto Academy second year students go on a trip.

"Find the prince! (part one) (part two) (part three) Mitsuru is recruited for a TV advertisement and bumps into his big brother.

Live action/drama
The drama was adapted in 2008, in 13 half-hour episodes. It was broadcast by Tokyo MX, between July 2, 2008 and September 24, 2008.

Theme songs:
 * Opening theme: Dream Runner by access
 * Ending theme: naissance by Tomatsu Haruka

Cast

 * Izawa Yuki as Hasukawa Kazuya
 * Miura Riki as Ikeda Mitsuru
 * Sato Yuuichi as Tezuka Shinobu
 * Suzuki Hiroki as Kisaragi Shun
 * Okuchi Kengo as Hasukawa Kazuhiro
 * Fukui Yukari as Hasukawa Sumire
 * Kato Koki as Fujikake Tatsurou
 * Kawamoto Ryo as Watanabe Yoshiki
 * Nakada Yuya as Sakaguchi Hideya
 * Horie Ryuta as Aoki Kunihisa
 * Ikkei as Tochizawa
 * Saito Ryo as Katori
 * Oka Kazuki as Kaneda
 * Aoki Keita as Habu
 * Nagao Hiroshi as Furusawa Shinichiro
 * Kyohei as Tomaru Yoshitake
 * Kubo Sho as Fuse Naoshi
 * Sakujima Ichiro as Hashimoto
 * Ogata Ryosuke as Tsuji
 * Kawagishi Ginji as Iwashita
 * Koshida Keisuke as Urata