Gakuen Alice

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Gakuen Alice (or Alice Academy) is a comedy and drama manga, written and drawn by the author Tachibana Higuchi and which has one hundred and eighty-three chapters published from 2002 to 2013.

The story has as its central theme a school for children and young people with superpowers called Alice. At first the story squanders a fun comedy between children, specifically between Mikan Sakura and her friend Hotaru Imai and troubled schoolmates. But then it takes a more dramatic turn of dark secrets that are part of the academy's history and which are closely linked to the protagonist Mikan Sakura.

The author develops well all the characters ... that surround Mikan, making us connect with them. In addition to addressing topics such as unity, loyalty among friends, love and resilience in a very strong way. What makes the story special among so many comedy shoujo with children.

April 03, 2023, Monday

This story felt like it had potential early on but at some point got lazy and didn't trust its audience to any really deep and meaningful character development. When I say this, I really mean just for the main characters. Suprisingly, some side characters get some decent development but for the most part things feel forced. Granted, this is geared for a younger audience so perhaps I'm just too old for this. But my age most definetly is no excuse for that horrifiying excuse for an ending. The end dropped the series by at least a star. I always save at least 2 stars ... to be based on the ending and this manga lost both for that lazy ending. Ugh, this manga had some very cute art, premise and characters going for it. But it had to break every law in their world last minute for that out of left field ending.

This is going to be long, but here we go...

I was in middle school when I found this manga for the first time, I was in convenient store with my dad, seeing the book shelves, usually there would be no manga nor comics in convenient store, but I saw this, it was volume 5, just one sitting alone on the book shelves, so I bought it, without thinking. At the time I was in a phase where I loved reading comics, no matter what comics, and I didn't care that it was not volume 1. When I read it, I fell in love with it, ... the characters are unique and fun, the drawing style is also endearing, the first character I loved was obviously Hotaru, and the way the mangaka makes herself appear occasionally as a random mob character was so funny too, there are so many cute details regarding the manga, every page seemed to be made with care, the little comedy actually made me giggle, and Mr Bear is the cutest thing ever.

Since then I made it my mission to find all the volumes, oh but I was in for a struggle, this series is so hard to find even if I live in a big city, whenever I go to the book stores I made sure to try to find any volume I can get, over the years I only managed to get random volume in random order, and I didn't want to read any of them unless I find the first volume or completed all the volumes. Fast forward, decade later I found out that it has anime adaptation, I didn't want to watch the anime because I thought I would prefer to read the manga instead, but eventually I gave up and just watched the anime, it was disappointing of course because the anime adaptation doesn't adapt the entire story, so at that point I nearly give up, I could've read online on internet but I don't want to, because their image quality is out of date at that point and the first language I read it as is my native language instead of english, so it felt too different. At this point I actually already have a way to make money for myself, but I never wanted to buy random copies online because I didn't want used books... but eventually I gave up, and I just decided to buy whatever volume I can find available online, some of them are used library books and some are dirty, but in the end I managed to complete the set and have all the volumes.

So I started reading them from the beginning, reading it when I was a kid and reading it to completion when I'm an adult is so different, most things I felt when I read it for the first time are still there, the cute details and all, however I also notice many things due to the experience of me reading other manga after all these years, here are the things I don't like about it:
1. The panel arrangement is messy, unlike other manga these days that are pretty tidy and simple, this manga have a messy panel arrangement, sometime you wouldn't know which dialogue is supposed to be the first and sometime some panel is from left to right instead of right to left.
2. There are too many texts, there are many manga that are like this, bunch of texts in one bubble or square and sometime all of those filling up the entire pages more than the drawing.
3. There are too many extremely tiny texts, if you are a perfectionist who don't like to leave anything left unread, this is hell for you, sometime I had to use zooming feature from my phone camera to be able to read these easily.
4. Too many multiple different sets of sentences overlapping each other on many pages, sometime you will find 3 different sentences being cut and scattered all over for multiple pages, for example you will see dialogues sentence, flashback sentence, and feeling/emotion sentence at the same time being written word by word all 3 on the same panel/pages and each set of sentences are separated by each other for multiple pages/panels.

So, all those elements, are especially a torture for me who unfortunately, developed OCD after all these years, if I read this manga when I was a kid like when I found them for the first time, I probably wouldn't need to struggle reading it and would've read them faster and probably would've liked them more than now. However, I struggled, and those stuff I don't like about just makes it harder and made me take so much longer time for me to read it, I had to read the sentences repeatedly making sure I didn't read them in the wrong order.

So anyway, regarding to the story itself, as I read it, volumes by volumes, eventually I notice that the whole thing is a bit stupid, here are the things I don't like about it:
1. There are so many moments of characters just staring with their jaw dropping, every single time any character say even the slightest shocking or sentimental things, you will find a lot of pages of just these drawings of characters staring while having surprised expression.
2. Adults listen to the children and treating them like they have equal maturity as them, yes I know the main characters are children but eventually whenever they want to do something stupid and selfish it's annoying that the adults just lets them and supports them every single time instead of realistically stopping them and scolding them.
3. The ending... well now, I'm a person who can accept even the ending of Game of Thrones tv series, but this one... is stupid, I'm not saying it's rushed or cut short or anything, because if the mangaka chose a different conclusion she could've made a decent and reasonable ending with the same amount of chapters/volumes.

Regarding the ending, with the story as is now, it is seemingly rushed for sure, it feels forced, definitely. However, I actually read all the 1/4 pages, the mangaka did say that the story is going to end since several volume before the last one, and few volume before the last she did say it that it's going to end, so the amount of chapters/volume is set from the beginning and she most likely planned this since the beginning, the problem is the way she chose how to end the story, the way she laid out the story arc is also inefficient and stupid if she knew how many chapters/volumes she is going to make beforehand.

Now, first of all I'm going to say that with ending like this, this manga is just not worth to read at all if you expect a satisfying or even a decent ending, the only time where it's worth to read is if you have childhood memory with this manga and just curious how the story ends up going, or whatever sentimental attachment or value you have with this manga.

NOW THE SPOILER PART, I'm going to talk about the ending, first, I don't see any problem with the flow of the story from beginning until few chapters before the end, the story could work, it's all fine.. until the moment whether or not Natsume should actually end up alive or should remain dead, and I think making him alive is a mistake, because here is what could've happen with only the same amount of chapters left but with natsume being dead as the ending:
Hotaru still went to bring Natsume's body into a time trip space, Mikan still going to have her memory wiped out while not knowing whether or not Natsume survives, but inside the time trip Hotaru decides to give up and not save Natsume and just let Mikan go forget everything without grieving until the end, and all those time Hotaru just hide and just lie to give Mikan hope the same way happened in the manga, just to give Mikan a peace of mind before she forgets everything, so Hotaru should've seen the future first, it could be accident made by Nodacchi or whatever, but Hotaru should've known the future first and decides not to save Natsume after all, and the future went on and the grown up Mikan ends up with Luca instead, just as he promised Mikan that he would meet her again and just as Natsume told him that if he is gone Luca should be with Mikan, it still could happen with the same scenario of kidnappings and everything just like in the manga, except without Natsume being alive, but with Hotaru and Luca being there, and Mikan still getting her memories back by taking a tiny piece of her own nullification alice and remembers about Natsume and finding out her first love during childhood being gone is another part of bittersweet moment of her growing up, like usual she would grief and move on just like how it happened so many times throughout the entire series, after all she graduated from her childhood and Natsume should've stayed as part of only her childhood, it would've made sense that way... but it seems like the mangaka doesn't want to kill Natsume off, so maybe she should've not kill him off in the first place then? like he could still get stabbed and dying to trigger Luna soul draining Kuonji or have him saved by longevity alice to make him live long instead of him being actually dead-dead and then get saved by time trip, because Hotaru being gone and Mikan starting off another adventure as the ending is just... so unreasonable and pointless, there is no morality here... at least if the ending was Natsume being dead, the moral of the story would be Mikan growing up and living on again and again getting stronger mentally.

TLDR, I have sentimental attachment to this manga, but objectively, detached from all the sentimental bias, this manga is not that great and not worth reading due to the disappointing ending.