Hollow Fields

Step one: put his soul in a box.

Hollow Fields is an OEL Manga series written and illustrated by Australian artist Madeleine Rosca and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. Spanning three volumes, the first was released in June of 2007, with the final volume out on January 6th, 2009. Hollow Fields placed Rosca among four winners of the first ever International Manga Award in Japan.

It follows the adventures of a girl named Lucy Snow as she attends Miss Weaver's Academy for the Scientifically Gifted and Ethically Unfettered (also known as Hollow Fields); where steam-powered teachers called Engineers teach students various aspects of mad science. Each week, the student with the lowest grades gets sent to the windmill, whence no one has ever returned. She barely manages to avoid detention with the tutelage of the mechanical box Dr. Bleak and soon decides to investigate the mysteries of the windmill with her new friend, Claude McGinty. All the while, Lucy must try to make nice with the other students, some of whom are out for blood.

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Tropes Demonstrated:

• Alpha Bitch: Summer Polanski.
• And I Must Scream
• Artificial Human
• Big Red Button: Summer's death machine falls apart once the huge screw on its top is gone.
• Bio Augmentation: One of the classes at Hollow Fields.
• Blue Eyes: Lucy.
• Bomb Disposal: Miss Weaver's test for Lucy.
• Boarding School of Horrors
• Child Prodigy: Nearly All the Students
• Clockwork Creature
• Clock Punk
• Cool Toy: Owned by Lucy.
• Companion Cube: Except this one really does talk.
• Creepy Child: The Windmill Children
• Dead Big Sister: Claude's older sister was sent to the Windmill for poor grades, and Claude's desire to not end up like her is what motivates him to escape. She has lost most of her soul as a result of the experiments performed on her, which includes her memories of her life and her brother.
• Death Trap: Summer builds one of these to get rid of Lucy and Claude.
• Doomsday Device
• Eating Lunch Alone: Lucy and Simon.
• Empty Shell
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Summer in the Remnant Room chapters, along with a Parasol of Prettiness.
• Enfant Terrible: Summer Polanski
• Extranormal Institute
• Hair Decorations: Lucy Snow wears an enormous red bow.
• Evil Weapon: Stinch's Crook
• Eyes of Gold: Summer Polanski and Miss Weaver before her body was replaced.
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Giant Equals Invincible: Averted
• Girl Posse: An Elementary School version.
• Grave Robbing: It's an actual class.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Summer is very often this.
• Grotesque Gallery
• Hospital Hottie: Miss Ricketts
• Hot Teacher
• If I Can't Have You: Summer claims that it's Nothing Personal, but if Lucy hadn't teamed up with Claude, she wouldn't have activated her Death Trap on them.
• Immortality Immorality
• Late for School
• Mad Doctor
• Mad Scientist
• Mecha-Mooks
• Mood Swinger
• My Little Panzer: Summer's rabbit, and Dino, after some alterations.
• Ninja Maid: Miss Notch
• The Noseless: The art style makes noses appear almost never, especially with the children.
• Nonuniform Uniform: Lucy wears stripped red and black tights/leggings, where most of the other girls wear plain socks, tights and knee/thigh-highs.
• Plot Coupon: The key to Hollow Fields.
• Plucky Girl: Lucy.
• Sadist Teacher: Mr. Crouch is the most obvious example, but most of the Engineers fall under this.
• Ray Gun: Specifically an Ivy-Ray
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: All the Engineers have these by the time Lucy shows up, though at least some of them had different colors once.
• Redheaded Hero: Lucy Snow.
• Room 101: The Windmill.
• School for Scheming: Hollow Fields itself, and an occasionally mentioned rival school called Great Gears.
• School Nurse: Miss Ricketts.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules
• Spooky Silent Library
• Steampunk
• Stranger in a Strange School
• Woman Scorned: In the flashbacks, Miss Weaver is revealed to have been Dr. Bleak's wife. He didn't respect her as a scientist, and in order to further her own goals and get him out of the picture, she put his soul inside a clockwork box.
• You Gotta Have Purple Hair: Summer.