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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane In return for a business loan of 50 million yen, the prestigious Kamiya family gave their daughter Haine away to the Otomiya family. Haine, now an Otomiya, is appointed to the student council of the exclusive Imperial Academy, a private school for the aristocracy. Even though Haine is of proper lineage to be on the council, she finds herself struggling to find her place among the many secrets of its elite members, especially those of the president who holds her heart--Shizumasa Togu, aka "the Emperor." As is often the way with review copies, I read this volume without being at all acquainted with the series. Taken on its own, I can't say the story here really jumped out at me, and having no idea who most of the characters are didn't help much. (Unfortunately, one common limitation in manga is that even when the volume comes with a who's-who section, they're often not comprehensive.) But even given that starting point, I think I preferred this to the other Tanemura books I've read. The characters' emotions are better-developed than those in Short-Tempered Melancholic (unsurprisingly, as that's a volume of one-shots) and more believable than those in Time Stranger Kyoko. There's a lot of complicated backstory hinted at in this volume, some of which involves supporting characters who I never quite figured out (although the bonus story at the end helped quite a bit in one case), but the main plot is pretty straightforward: the heroine, Haine, has feelings for both the student council president and his identical twin brother. It's probably a sign of having read too much shoujo that I find this situation straightforward, though: the president, Shizumasa, is too sick to attend school, so his twin is taking his place. On top of that, Haine is not only the only person who knows about the switch, but also possibly the only one who knows Shizumasa's brother, Takanari, exists at all. The bulk of this volume's plot is devoted to Haine and her attempt to figure out her relationship with the boys, but there's also a subplot brewing that involves her best friend, who seems to have rather a lot more boyfriends than normal. That's developed fairly late in the book, so I won't go into it here, but I will say that it seemed more interesting than everything else that was going on. Very little of the original premise about Haine and her family (as described in the back cover copy) had much to do with what was going on in this volume, so I can't speak to how this connects with earlier volumes. For some reason, I also like Tanemura's artwork better here than in her other series. It's still very recognizably her work, but other books have given me more of a feeling that the art is cute for the sake of cuteness, while here the cuteness is more incidental. The level of detail is very high, which is one of the things I like about her style; occasionally it gets distracting, but for the most part I appreciate it. Volume seven of The Gentlemen's Alliance † includes four pages of translation notes. Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Other Arina Tanemura titles from VIZ include Time Stranger Kyoko, Full Moon, I.O.N., and Short-Tempered Melancholic. Comment on this review of The Gentlemen's Alliance † v7 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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