Gakuen Alice Manga Volume 7

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Mikan and company learn the location of the hidden tunnel and discover that Hotaru’s brother Subaru and fellow high school student Sakurano are the ones with the secret. Mikan convinces them to allow passage and before they leave, Tono gives Mikan a gemstone on a necklace. Mikan, Natsume, Luca, and Tsubasa arrive in a wood having passed through the magical tunnel. Their presence is detected by the fleeing Z members who believe the Alice’s in the forest will take care of their pursuers.

Mikan discovers Pengy, Hotaru’s mechanical penguin, in her backpack where it has consumed her supplies of food. Natsume wants to get rid of it but Mikan wants to keep it. With the help of Tono’s stone, Mikan is able to use her Nullification Alice to protect Luca from being petrified by an Alice trap. Mikan learns that the stone was created by Tono and contains a bit of his Alice power. When she promises to exchange stones with Luca, Natsume is irritated since that is the equivalent of being boyfriend-girlfriend.

With only two days to find a cure for Hotaru and restore Inchou’s Alice, the group presses on. The first night, Tsubasa discovers that Natsume is coughing up blood. Natsume forces Tsubasa to promise not to reveal what he’s learned as Natsume has had this condition for some time since he’s been working for the academy.

As the Z members make it to their hideout, Mikan’s group is still in pursuit. Mihara, a member of Z who’s waiting on the other Z members, notes they are still being pursued despite the traps in the woods. Yuka, a female member of Z who’d been fleeing, is stunned to hear that children are pursuing them. Mikan’s group manage to make it into the facilities hidden entrance where a trap catches Mikan and has her in a cell with a skeleton that moves. Upon learning Natsume’s identity and that Mikan has a Nullification Alice, Mihara and the others are very interested. Yuka decides to speak with Mikan to get the girl to give them information.

Thoughts/Review:

A lot of stuff going on with this current story arc, which initially has some struggles carrying on for this volume of the manga. Outside of the first chapter though, things flow much better.

The way Yuka reacts combined with other clues, I’m going to guess that Yuka is Mikan’s mother and not a time traveler as I previously had stated as a possibility to her identity. If so, Higuchi-sensei isn’t hiding it too well, but then again, that is likely not her point otherwise she wouldn’t have introduced the character already.

I’m guessing that Pengy and Hotaru are connected since Pengy’s antenna sometimes seems active and Hotaru in the hospital reacts to events happening with Mikan.

More interesting than Natsume’s continued crush on Mikan is his illness. Coughing up blood is never a good thing and the academy seems intent on working him to death then, considering how powerful Natsume’s Alice is and the negative consequences of that.

I’m going to guess that Narumi-sensei will end up encountering Mikan and company and help free them from Z. Again, not a wide guess, but it seems to be where Higuchi-sensei is going.

Not much in the way of humor this time, which is not surprising considering the current story arc. I suppose Pengy’s arrival and Hotaru’s connection with the robot are the funniest stuff, but they only made me smile and not laugh. That’s not a problem, just an observation.

Now to TokyoPop — they’ve gone cheap. It appears that in order to cut the costs of printing the manga, TokyoPop is using cheap paper. The manga volume feels wrong in my hands — there’s no firmness to the volume as has been the case in previous volumes. Instead, the book feels limp and just very, very wrong when holding it. There is some minor bleed-through on images where a lot of ink is used (dark background, dark clothing) thanks to the cheap paper.

Another TP manga came in the same shipment and it too feels cheaply made and limp. As such, I don’t think I scored a bad book but rather TokyoPop’s cost cutting measures. *_*

So story wise, things are moving along and printing wise, things are going downhill and cheap with no manga cost reduction.