学園アリス manga review
Gakuen Alice Manga Volume 15

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SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The sports festival goes and Luca is happy to win an event in front of Mikan. With Luna having Natsume figuratively tied up, Luca and Mikan end up having lunch together. During the scavenger hunt competition, Natsume wears a mask and grabs Mikan as his item was to get someone he liked.  When the task is discovered, Mikan’s classmates consider it to be a love confession and though Natsume runs off, Mikan is sure it is him and gives chase, only to lose him.

Mikan changes into a boy’s costume for the cheering contest when Luna comes up with the now unmasked Natsume. Luna indicates that she’s been with Natsume the whole time, causing Mikan to question whether Natsume had been with her earlier or not. To make matters worse for Mikan, Hotaru appears to be getting close to Luna.  During the cheering contest, Mikan’s team loses their male uniforms in favor of bee costumes and appear to fly.  However, for some reason, Mikan falls out of the sky and is nearly killed.  Persona launches an investigation and accuses Mikan of staging the event for sympathy and cites proof that Mikan has used an Alice ability, thought to be her Nullification Alice.

The school slowly appears to be turning on Mikan, who struggles to stay strong.  Natsume borrows the mask he’d previously used from another student and races to Mikan to comfort her, letting her know without words that Luna had been lying.  Mikan’s Special Ability comrades are still there for her and in the next competition, Mikan is the cavalryman for her team to grab headbands from other cavalrymen from other teams. Nobara is there and she wants to talk to Mikan but still can’t face her after their previous encounter.

As the competition starts, several teams immediately act strangely and target Mikan’s team. Meanwhile, Yuka gets word that her former classmate and current assassin Luna, is in Mikan’s class and has likely targeted Yuka’s daughter.  Since Luna’s Alice allows her to steal the life from others and place a measure of control on them, it is speculated that the headmaster is using Mikan as bait to lure Yuka out in addition to taking Mikan out.

Back at the cavalry competition, Mikan allows herself to get caught up in the emotion of things and proves to be pretty good at this.  However, when multiple folks suddenly target her, even supposed allies, Mikan has an Alice power erupt which removes tiny Alice stones from all of them, returning them to normal. Luna is not happy with this turn of events and as people begin apologizing to Mikan for their ugly behavior to her of late, Mikan is convinced that Luna was behind it all.  With Hotaru’s encouragement, Mikan goes after Luna’s headband but when Luna goes to block it, Mikan’s Alice activates and Mikan ends up unconscious as does Luna.

Thoughts/Review:

Since volume 16 arrived in the mail the other day, I figured I better sit down and read volume 15. ^_^;

Of all the volumes to date, this one has been the most difficult for me to read.  For some reason, I found the who sports festival stuff to be rather tedious for the most part. Yeah, we had some stuff where Natsume shows he cares a great deal for Mikan and that was nice even if we already knew it.  Luca and Mikan having lunch together reminds us that there’s a love-triangle going on.  However, I just found myself uninterested in reading about the preparations or the actual competitions themselves.  Even when Mikan falls out of the sky, it was merely a tiny blip of interest in what I otherwise found to be a sea of boredom.

That’s not to say the volume is a loss.  For starters, there’s Yuka and the revelation that Luna is not a kid but rather an adult Yuka’s age.  That makes her even creepier as a character.  Also, through the briefing Yuka gets, we now know why Mikan is being targeted so heavily.  It makes sense to use Mikan as bait if you want her mother to come out and though Yuka has done a pretty good job of divorcing herself from Mikan, their previous encounter (or is it “encounters?”) makes Mikan better bait than she otherwise would have been.

Mikan having some sort of new Alice power whereby she can extract implanted Alice stones from people certainly makes her a more interesting character.  Not only can she nullify other people’s Alice abilities, but she can take them, at least in part.  I guess that’s how she healed herself from Persona’s power because she subconsciously extracted Persona’s applied power within her and turned it into an Alice stone (assuming I’m understanding the whole Alice/Alice Stone process, which I’m not sure I do).  Certainly, her extracting the effects of Luna on the others had similar results.  Question is, did Mikan attempt to nullify and extract Luna’s Alice, causing them to both pass out?  Good thing volume 16 in sitting on my desk, waiting to be read so I can find out.  ^_^

So, while I found parts of this volume to be tedious, other parts were rather interesting and I do want to know what happens next.