From the back cover:
The school cultural festival is approaching, and the special guest is Reo, a former Alice student turned Hollywood superstar! But Reo is involved in some awfully shady dealings, and when his plans suddenly start to involve Natsume, it’s up to Mikan and Sumire to save the day!

Review:
I never thought I’d be giving a B+ to something featuring a school festival and a kidnapping perpetrated by a bishounen idol, but there you go. I guess I’m just a sucker for the combination of ominous facts about the Academy and warm, fuzzy friendship scenes between its students that this volume offers.

It helps that Higuchi uses these silly scaffoldings to reveal more about Natsume’s situation at the school. Being classified as a “dangerous” ability-type means that he’s prohibited from participating in the festival, and even as Mikan is orchestrating something that the “special” type can do to show the other students that they aren’t rejects, she’s aware of Natsume’s exclusion. Later, after she and snobby classmate Sumire have gotten themselves kidnapped while trying to save him, she overhears the kidnappers talking about Natsume’s tragic background and the real reason the dangerous class exists: to do the Academy’s dirty work.

My favorite chapter, though, is mostly fluffy. Mean Professor Snape Jinno denies Mikan a visit to Hogsmeade Central Town, an area on the Alice Academy grounds full of shops owned by Alice artisans, but manages to wrangle permission and then puts on a street performance to earn enough money to buy some candy. Put like that, it’s lame, but when she gives the leftovers of her candy to Narumi-sensei to give to her grandfather when he sees him, it means that she’s decided to trust him (despite the warnings from other students that no adult is trustworthy) when he says he’s going to contact her grandfather and let him know that Mikan is okay.

As we learn more about the Academy, Narumi-sensei’s urgings for Mikan to make friends, and how these friends will be her strongest allies at the school, take on a new meaning. We get a nice contrast between scenes where Mikan and Sumire finally seem to have become friends and scenes where Natsume is being urged to do his “duty,” suggesting that this band of kids might be called upon at some point to mount a rebellion. Interesting stuff, indeed!

From the back cover:
Young Mikan is the newest student at the mysterious and prestigious Alice Academy, where the most talented and powerful students in the country are united, but for what purpose…?

Mikan is officially admitted into Alice Academy, but things still aren’t exactly going smoothly. Natsume still bullies her, her class ranking couldn’t be lower, some of the teachers are outright hostile, and she has been forbidden to contact anyone outside of the school! Will she be able to find true friends at the academy?

Review:
Quite a lot happens in this volume and nearly all of it is interesting. Aside from getting more information about the organization of the school—including the importance of star rankings and ability-type classes (which are totally like Hogwarts’ Houses, by the way)—there are more indications that the adults at the Alice Academy are not to be trusted and that for Mikan to come there of her own free will might’ve been a huge mistake, particularly since she’s being watched because of the Alice of Nullification that she possesses.

Mikan is also improving in the likability department. She still has her annoying moments, but she’s at least trying to be more mature. Hotaru helps, too, chastising Mikan when she’s whining about not being able to see her grandfather and reminding her that everyone else there is enduring the same sort of isolation from their families.

My favorite characters are Natsume and Luca at this point, even though the former is almost always behaving violently. I love Luca because he’s conflicted between loyalty to his friend and his attraction to the more upbeat world-view that Mikan offers. Natsume is appealing because he’s been denied any chance at real camaraderie by being labelled “special” and “dangerous” by the school. What’s more, while everyone’s relaxing after a game of dodgeball that Mikan organized, Natsume is tapped by a professor to go out on an “urgent mission,” further denying him any of the simple joys of childhood.

So, yes, it’s getting better and darker, too. Definitely don’t stop with volume one if you’re interested in this series.

From the back cover:
Young Mikan runs away to Tokyo following her best friend, Hotaru, who has been enrolled in an exclusive, secretive private school for geniuses. But it turns out that Alice Acdemy is a lot more than meets the eye. Whether it’s Hotaru’s gift for inventing gadgets, the cranky Natsume’s firecasting ability, or Professor Narumi’s control of human pheromones, everyone at the school has some sort of special talent. But what ability, if any, does Mikan possess? Mikan is going to have to rely on her courage and spunk if she’s going to stay in school, or even stay alive!

Review:
I watched a little bit of the Gakuen Alice anime several years ago, so was familiar with the general premise as well as the events that take place in this volume. I’m not sure why I didn’t go farther with the anime, but I think I might’ve had difficulty with some hurdles that also present themselves in the manga: unlikable characters and too many gags.

Our main character, Mikan, is spazzy and selfish. I might’ve liked her more to start with if Higuchi had resisted the temptation to draw many outlandish reaction gags as Mikan learns more about the Alice Academy and its peculiar occupants. In the second half of the book, while traversing a dangerous patch of woods on campus, Hotaru finally tells Mikan that she needs to stop behaving so childishly. Probably I was supposed to sympathize with the heroine there, but really all I could think was, “Thank you, Hotaru!” Thankfully, Mikan does get more tolerable around that point, as well.

Hotaru has some problems with likability at first, too. We are told that she agreed to go to Alice Academy in exchange for money that she then used to keep the school where she met Mikan financially afloat. She also was cold to Mikan on her last day in an attempt to cause Mikan to forget about her rather than nurture sad memories. That’s well and good, but the problem is that we are told these things and not shown them. It’s not until the second half of the volume that Hotaru actually exhibits some real warmth towards Mikan, even deigning to smile a little when Mikan’s Alice is finally revealed. So far, though, she does seem friendlier in the manga version.

Something that I didn’t pick up on very much in the anime is the hint of something more sinister going on at the school. Natsume is being caused agony by something, though whether it’s the dangerous nature of his powers or something else is not yet revealed, and both he and his friend Luca seem to sport mysterious scars. This is definitely the most intriguing aspect of the story right now.

Gakuen Alice is published in English by TOKYOPOP and seven volumes have been released so far. The series is still ongoing in Japan and eighteen collected volumes have been released as of March 2009.