Gentlemen’s Alliance † 7

Arina Tanemura – Viz – 2008 – 11 volumes

I hope you like drama, because that’s what you’re going to get here.

The first helping comes courtesy of Haine and Takanari.  At this point in the story, we can pretty well expect that she’s going to have feelings for both of the twins.  So there’s that.  Both Haine and Takanari do something they shouldn’t, and Haine says something hurtful to stop him.  Of course there’s lots of drama, and lots of making up, and everything is super shoujo happy.  There’s not too much to say or analyze in this part, because… well, it could come straight from a shoujo textbook.  It’s still great though, and in the context of the story, it makes for a very compelling read.  Haine makes for a good heroine, which is good news for this story since it needs all the great characters it can get to make the story work.

Speaking of good characters, Mao-chan is spectacular.  He doesn’t even have much of a role, but in order to get information out of Maguri at one point, he transforms into the Postman, then gets angry when Maguri is lovestruck.  This was funny for all sorts of reasons I won’t explain for fear of spoiling things, but I love that the story is capable of jokes like this.

But the real meat of the volume was an Ushio story.  The Ushio story.  The one that’s been coming since the beginning of the series.  Ushio is a bit of a martyr, a looming dark presence over the mostly happy characters in this series, and while I do like her, I knew it would be ugly when she finally confronted Haine about her feelings.  This story lasts two chapters, and is carrying over into the next volume.

I like that this series manages to be good at both drama and shoujo fluff.  The dark bits with Ushio and Takanari are very dark, but they don’t take away from the comedic portions, and even during the most depressing stories, most of the characters find time to crack a joke (while being approached by a strangely-dressed Maguri, Haine starts to worry since he’s the only student council member that hasn’t stolen a kiss from her).  Again, it’s just an excellent example of shoujo manga, a series that does everything right and supports itself with great characters.  I’m hoping to polish it off this week.