is a shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Tōru Naomura. It follows the story of Himoto Sora, a transfer student with a sense of justice and dreams of becoming a knight. Upon arriving at Utopia Academy, she learns of a virtual reality-like game played by the male students in which they use girls as weapons in battles for status and treat them as commodities. Seeing one of these girls being abused, she steps in and unwittingly becomes the first female participant of the game.

Sora and her Weapons

The lone female participant in the Exaclan game and is tasked with overthrowing male dominance

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...

. She is honorable, but not very bright. Wishing to be a knight and to protect the princesses, she even tells X, when asked to “possess and protect”, that there is no way she would own a princess.

Sora's first princess. She is wholly devoted to Sora and plans to help her. She is very fond of her, often becoming absorbed in vivid fantasies about her. She is one of the six "stars" and her weapon is a long, dual-barreled rifle.

Sora's second princess. She was the first girl Sora observed in a battle, when Sora first arrived at Utopia Academy. She was afraid to stand up, but was given hope when she saw Sora and Koharu. She is physically characterized by her long, twin braids. Her weapon is a dagger and is considered rather weak, but it later transforms into a katana

Katana

A Japanese sword, or , is one of the traditional bladed weapons of Japan. There are several types of Japanese swords, according to size, field of application and method of manufacture.-Description:...

 (thanks to Tsuki's hacking skills) and gains a symbol.

The first girl that Sora gave to Karin. She did not want to be in the minority and could not handle being bullied so she asked Sora to release her. But L tells Mitarai to torture Tomoko until the very last moment before the final stage of the warning penalty. Later she is released by Karin and once again possessed by Sora after being rescued by her in the woods. She is one of the six “stars” and her weapon is a spear.

A girl previously owned by Sumita of the student council. Sumita approached Sora and fought her, but let Sora win. Reiko did not want to be Sora's possession, so after confronting Sora, she was released. She went back to find Sumita and go back to him, but was caught by Shoujou and became Tougyu's possession. Sora eventually found out, and decided to free her by using the warning penalty (though being hesitant to physically assault Reiko, she resigned herself to feigning a sexual assault

Sexual assault

Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....

). It worked with the help of Sumita, who ordered Tougyu to release Reiko to avoid the final penalty. Sora commented on how beautiful Reiko was and how somebody with eyes like could not possibly be as selfish as she pretended. After arriving at Utopia Academy, Reiko had approached some other girls and asked for their help in defeating Iwahijiri; when they told her to do it herself, she came up with the plan of sucking up to Sumita, becoming his wife, then changing the school to save the girls. She is one of the six "stars" and her weapon is a flail

Flail

A flail is an agricultural implement for threshing.Several tools operate similarly to the agricultural implement and are also called flails:...

.

A girl who was initially depicted as being madly in love with Sora after being rescued by her though this turned out to be an act. Hiyo has an older sister who always fought against men, resulting in injuries that forced her to drop out of school. Reiko mentions Sora was a lot like Hiyo's sister, because she was reckless and had similar ideals though this earns Sora Hiyo's contempt at her success. Eventually the gang finds out Hiyo stole the record of all the saved girls, ordering Tougyu to attack them. It later turns out she was manipulated by him to avoid the same fate as her sister. After Tougyu incapacitates himself, she becomes Sora's weapon. She is one of the six "stars", and her weapon is a large axe.

Student Council

El

The president of the student council. He is said to be cruel and cold-hearted, but this is only a persona to achieve harmony between the two genders; his real name is Karin, the heir to the company Iwahijiri. He is physically characterized by his mask, or when he is Karin, his eye-patch. He possesses one of the “stars”. he has placed all his hopes in Sora and after revealing this to her, she is knocked out by the revelation as Karin is a kind and caring person who even taught her how to save the girls and taught her and Akane how to fight. He is also older than he appears, and merely posing as a student.

The vice-president of the student council. He wears a pair of black glasses. He does appear to have a kind side, as is demonstrated when he gets Tougyu to release Reiko, and in an omake

Omake

means extra in Japanese. Its primary meaning is general and widespread. It is used as an anime and manga fandom term to mean "extra or bonus". In USA, the term is most often used in a narrow sense by anime fans to describe special features on DVD releases: deleted scenes, interviews with the...

 chapter depicting him anonymously leaving a gift for Reiko while she is hospitalized.

A homosexual who is madly in love with El.

As a child, he too idolized the Knight who Sora aspires to be, and when he first started attending Utopia Academy he wanted to rescue the girls who were being oppressed. However, he was caught by the school's staff and brainwashed to view everyone as trash. The one person he cares for is El, who he calls his "god".

Always with El, but has some sort of connection to Kawazu. As shown in the 'Continued' chapter, Haruka is a woman, and Kawazu's mother, and thus only posing as a student, like Karin.

All talk and no power, although he secretly hates the systematic misogyny

Misogyny

Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...

 in the school. It is later revealed that he is Kuchinawa's son. He is distantly related to Tsuki through his father.

The first enemy that Sora defeated, and has lost several times to Sora. He seems to be in love with Koharu, yet sees her as a mere object to obtain.

He is insane and has destroyed many girls. He briefly had the ownership of Reiko and has tortured her badly before Sora rescued her. Sora believes that he "saved" Hiyo by directing her anger away from Iwahijiri, so that she would not be destroyed as her sister had been.

Others

Sora's closest and best friend. She is a mysterious figure, the brain behind Sora's brawn. She is owned by L and claims that this allows her to collect information about Exaclan, but in truth she is secretly the sub-chief of Exaclan and may be responsible for Sora being able to participate in Exaclan. On two occasions she disguised herself as "Ix", the princess of the legend; in this guise she wears a mask with a flower ornament and a long golden wig. Her weapon seems to be a blade that appears to be made of an extreme energy and is the most powerful weapon seen thus far, though this (as well as the fact that "Ix" was able to be used as Sora's weapon despite Tsuki's being owned by El) may be due to Tsuki's position in the Exaclan system and ability to rewrite the code of the game. Tsuki is determined to monopolize Sora as her knight, because she is the only one who understands her, and so convinces Sora from their childhood that she should only save the girls, because they are princesses. It was revealed that she is the one who originally wounded Karin's right eye.

One of Sora's allies. He seems to have some feelings for her. Wore a pair of glasses to 'hide', as Karin put it, but has now gotten rid of them, declaring that he's done hiding. Rather kind, if physically weak.

Exaclan

is a virtual game in which male players possess females, who contain weapons. To use the weapons, the male players put on their gloves and remove the weapon from the girl's chest. A battle is held between two players and goes until one player or his girl faints, or he admits defeat. Despite being a virtual game, with no blood or the like, the players and weapons (girls) still feel pain. The player that wins the battle is given possession of the weapon of the loser.

The game is also set up so that the weapons can only be harassed by their own possessor. Should another person try to harass a possessed weapon, a penalty will kick in. For fifteen minutes, a headache will effect the weapon, the harasser, and the owner of the weapon. The second stage, which also lasts fifteen minutes, a greater headache effects the weapon, the harasser, and the owner. At the end of the thirty total minutes of “warning”, if the harasser does not stop or the owner does not rescue or release the weapon, the final punishment will be activated, leading to total social ruin.

To win the game, one must collect all six "stars". The stars are weapons that, when used, display a bugged symbol consisting of a star and several Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

code snippets. Sora has five stars, while El has the last one. There is more to it, including reaching the "Apple", but the details have yet to be revealed as of chapter 19.