Gentlemen’s Alliance † 1

Arina Tanemura – Viz – 2007 – 11 volumes

With all the announcements about the end of this series lately, I thought it was about time that I got all my volumes off the shelf and read it straight through.  I don’t know if I was waiting for the end of the series or what, but I’ve been collecting it since the beginning and haven’t read any of it.  As a side note, the first volume (or at least the first printing of it) has a nifty poster inside.  I like that.

I’ve read all of Tanemura’s other series, and I was a little surprised by this one.  I hadn’t read any plot summaries of it, so all I knew was that it involved a female main character and a student council at an elite school, which describes an awful lot of series.  I was surprised when I was reading that it has no fantasy or supernatural elements to it, something that all her other series have in common.  I kept waiting for that to come into play, but then she came right out and said that this was the first time she wasn’t writing that type of story.  I’m a little disappointed, since I do like that element of her work, but I’m still interested to see her take on straight shoujo.  She is one of the absolute queens of girly, romantic shoujo series in my mind, and seeing a straight romance with no adventure elements will be interesting.

The main character was a little strange.  Haine, an adopted daughter in a rich family going through a rough patch, does odd jobs around her rich people’s school in order to help her family make ends meet.  She’s chipper and upbeat, and seems to get along with everyone.  Turns out she’s a reverted yanki (kind of a street punk) and when she lets her true colors show while trying to protect everyone, she is ostracized.  Later, she is drafted onto the student council on the whim of one of the members, which is good for her since she totally has a crush on the president, the super-elite Shizumasa.

There are fairy tale themes, like the fact that Haine has been in love with Shizumasa for years because of a children’s book he wrote when he was very young, and also because he showed up a time or two when she was at her lowest and cheered her up.

Shizumasa is a bit of a sour puss, though.  In fact, this first volume had two good, hilarious twists right in the first chapter:  The first sour girl that Haine runs across while doing maid-like chores at school… well, you think she’s going to bully Haine for being poor.  But no, she’s her best friend (there’s a bit of a yuri tinge to her, in fact), and she naturally has a sour disposition.  The other good twist is when Shizumasa tells Haine that he’s gay and dating one of the other members of student council.  I loved that it nearly shut down the entire series right then and there.

Shizumasa occasionally has flashes of nice boy through his dark moods, but for the most part he seems to hate Haine.  Hating Haine and being gay don’t stop Haine from chasing him as a potential boyfriend, though, and she continually shows up to plead with him, unfazed by his constant rejections.

Stuff happens by the end that reverses some of it, but there are implications that Haine’s position might be machinations of one of the other members of student council.  I’ll keep an eye on her.  Also in this volume: the truth about Haine’s tragic background, both in her family and as a yanki.

It’s a good first volume, but the plot of the series hasn’t quite emerged yet.  I’m curious to see where it goes with all this girly stuff.