Gakuen Alice

Title:  Gakuen Alice
Mangaka:  Tachibana Higuchi
Length:  26 Volumes (Ongoing)
English Translation?  Sort of... Tokyopop released 16 volumes before they shut down.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Fantasy/Comedy/Romance/Action

 How did I hear about it?  It came highly recommended by my otaku friends.

10 year old Mikan Sakura's best friend Hotaru is leaving their little village to attend the exclusive Alice Academy in Tokyo.  After six months of not hearing from her friend, Mikan runs away to Tokyo to try to find her.  She finds herself barred from the Academy and learns that it is only for special students who have abilities called Alices.  Hotaru is one such skilled student.  Since Mikan doesn't possess an Alice, there's no way she can attend the Alice Academy.  The teacher who explains this to her, tries to use his own Alice on her to help persuade her to leave the school grounds and is very curious when she is unaffected.  He decides that she does indeed possess a rare kind of Alice and invites her to become a student.  Reunited with her friend, Mikan discovers her own powers and those of her new classmates.  However, she almost immediately makes an enemy of Natsume, one of the most dangerous students in the school.  Though things seem like fun and games at first, Mikan will learn that there is a much shadier side to the Alice Academy.

This manga was very nearly in my Top 5.  There was basically one plot point that forced me to edge it out, but it's probably a close #6.  When I first learned the ages of the main characters (10 at the start, now 12 in the current arc), I was a little hesitant to start it.  I thought it would be kiddy, and I couldn't imagine getting wrapped up in the affairs of tweens.  Fortunately, I was very wrong.  At first, GA was sometimes funny, sometimes cute, and sometimes sweet.  I was won over pretty quickly.  Then, the story deepened, and I couldn't read it fast enough.

Mikan is a decent heroine.  She's funny, inelegant, and very loyal to her friends.  Hotaru is great.  She's sarcastic, with a deadpan delivery of her lines.  However, she truly loves Mikan, and I love how beautiful their friendship is.  My favorite character was easily Natsume, Mikan's enemy-turned-love-interest.  Which, by the way, if you had told me before I read this that I would completely swoon over a love story involving tweens, I never would have believed you.  Mikan's and Natsume's romance is sweet and age-appropriate, but also beautiful and a little sad.  Natsume has led a very difficult life.  Having an extremely powerful Alice, he's in high demand by those who need some serious dirty work done.  Many in class fear him (except for his best friend Luca), and Natsume takes advantage of that to work his kindness in his own way.  He often takes the blame for things that happen because he knows that no one has much of an opinion of him anyway, and it will save someone else from having to look bad.  I adore Natsume.  Not all of the cast are tweens though.  The Alice Academy has an elementary division, junior high division, and senior high division, and there are important cast members from all age groups.  Also, some of the teachers play important roles, one in particular.  Narumi-sensei is the teacher that initially met Mikan outside of the school and determined that she does have an Alice.  He is immediately very taken with her and assumes a sort of brotherly/fatherly role with her.

As I said earlier, I was hooked on this manga right away for its humor and style.  It's also very imaginitive.  Some of the students have very standard Alices that have appeared as super powers in many other manga, such as fire (which is Natsume's Alice), mind reading, or teleportation, but some of them seem to be quite original.  For example, Hotaru can invent just about anything, and Narumi can manipulate human pheromones.  I loved learning what sort of powers everyone had and seeing how they could be employed.  Let's just say that GA had one of the most interesting sports festivals of any school manga I've read!  As good as it was before though, this manga eventually entered an arc that took it to a completely new level.  As you learn what's going on behind the scenes, who's the real villain, and the truth of what happened to Mikan's parents, the series loses its humor to become enveloped in a drama that ran me emotionally ragged.  Also, and I don't think this is too terribly spoiler-y, I have never feared for the life of a fictional character the way I do for **** (name deleted to prevent maximum spoilerage, haha).  The series is in its final arc now, and lemme tell ya, it's intense.  The scanlations are a couple of chapters behind, which is driving me crazy.  I've read some summaries though, and that is helping me to stave off my withdrawal.  As the series wraps up, I'm plagued with questions like "Who will live?  Who will die?"  I believe it's the sign of a great manga when the mangaka has you biting your nails over what's happening.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, there was one major plot twist that I didn't completely agree with, but other than that, this manga is brilliant.

If you haven't read Gakuen Alice, then what are you waiting for?  Don't be scared off by the ages of the protagonists.  This isn't a kiddy series, and I believe Tokyopop gave it a T rating (I think).  I'm on the fence about collecting it.  It's one of my favorites, so I feel like I need to have it in my collection.  However, it may never be published beyond the sixteenth volume here in NA.  There are a couple of other series that were left high and dry by Tokyopop's unfortunate closing that I've collected, but there were considerably fewer volumes of those.  The 16 volumes of GA are starting to get a little pricey.  I guess we'll see about that.  Please, someone PLEASE, relicense this series!  It stopped releasing right before it started getting to the really intense parts!  It saddens me to think that one of the most beautiful chapters I've ever read may never be in my collection to peruse at my convenience.