Gentlemen’s Alliance † 8
Posted: June 9, 2010 Filed under: Gentlemen's Alliance † Leave a comment »Arina Tanemura – Viz – 2008 – 11 volumes
Don’t you just hate it when you get a volume of shoujo manga that’s full of short stories? Arina Tanemura is bad about this, but I imagine fans do want to read her short stories sooner rather than waiting for a collection. Still. There’s only three chapters of story in here. There’s a short chapter about Ushio, a couple gag chapters about the pets, and a longer short story unrelated to the series. It could be worse, but I really just wanted to press on with the story.
And the story is still addictive. Ushio works through all her dark personal issues and comes out on the other side, but I’m a little disturbed by the way Haine has to trick her into it by giving her exactly what she wants. I did like that Ushio wasn’t shy about forcing her feelings on Haine, and that the relationship between them was treated just like any other, but I hated that we saw it for all the wrong reasons. I know they don’t really exist outside the 70′s and modern moe, but I’d love to see a shoujo manga featuring a nice female couple. Tanemura seems more than capable, especially after the Maora/Maguri coupling went down with relatively little fuss (aside from Maora) in this series.
With Ushio out of the way, Haine can drama things up again by saying she’s doing all the things she tells Ushio not to, like dwell on the fact she hates herself and letting her past and depressing family history hold her back, et cetera. Drama like this just does not fit the sunny Haine very well, and I’m sad we’re going through a bunch of non-romantic drama in the near future. On the plus side, it looks like we’re going to get to see a lot more of sukeban Haine, and that’s my favorite part of her character. There’s a funny scene where her former gang members try and come back for her, but it looks like not-so-funny stuff will be coming up soon. I’ll still love it, because there’s just something about Haine dressing as a yanki after seeing her in that super-girly uniform that makes me smile.
