Gakuen Alice manga recap/log part 4 (finale)

Resuming my log/recap of the Gakuen Alice manga... Jeez, this manga has turned entirely into a soap opera now... At first the story was light hearted and fun, like the anime, but now the story has become such a clusterfuck of complex relationships and heavy emotional moments... it's like woah, I can hardly even handle this...

Gakuen Alice manga recap/log part 3

Resuming my log/recap of the Gakuen Alice manga. This is dragging a lot longer than I expected... hard to believe there's still like close to 100 chapters left.

9/09/2016

Natsume tries to rescue Mikan from this dangerous ability class..

Gakuen Alice manga recap/log part 2

Resuming my log/recap of the Gakuen Alice manga. This is after I started and got near the end of the Gakuen Alice anime, but at this point the manga's story has deviated a lot from the anime and isgoing a lot further than where the anime ends at.

8/28/2016

Mikan somehow fully recovered by using an alice stone she was carrying... everyone theorized that Mikan had some sort of Alice-stealing powers, but she couldn't replicate it after she woke up...

Gakuen Alice high session 6 (finale)

Episode 23 - The Circus is Here
a boring episode where they go to see a circus at central town, which is really pointless since these kids can all do more amazing things than the circus performers... seeing these people/animals perform inspired Mikan to try to tell the other students not to use their alices in a sport competition, she got in trouble for saying that... Luca seeing one of the lions being mistreated reminded him of how Persona treats Natsume.. there was some backstory where Natsume's house caught on fire and he lost his family..

the episode ends on a cliffhanger where the circus ringleader, an ex-Alice student, is about to tell Luca what exactly this academy is forcing Natsume to do..

Episode 24 - Mr. Narumi's Lie

Natsume is being forced to use his alice to help out the military or something... all of the alice gakuen graduates eventually blend into society as people high up in power.. Narumi is one of them.
"The Dangerous ability class is just a name the academy made up to hide activities they don't want the outside world knowing about."

The circus leader also tells Luca about this woman who was fighting to free the academy students... he and Narumi were with her, but Narumi betrayed them.
flashes back to when Mikan was talking to Narumi, asking if people would be better off without their alices..
"Not at all... But you know... when I was a student, there was someone who said the same kind of things as you... they didn't say anything bad, but they criticized the academy."

Luca beats up Persona to save Natsume from being drugged and taken on another mission.. they lock themselves up in a classroom, not letting anyone in until they can guarantee Natsume's safety.. Narumi shows up and tries to reason with them.. Mikan believes him when he says that he'll make sure Natsume is safe, but Luca doesn't trust him at all.. Luca turns out to be right (although they really seem to want you to think Narumi is actually trying to help but can't)...
The whole class hates Narumi now and they refuse to attend..

Gakuen Alice high session 5

Episode 19 - Raise the Curtain, Snow White in the Sleeping Forest

The physical ability class is doing a play that's a combination of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.. Luca is embarrassed because Narumi made him play as the princess.. but then he gets even more embarrased when some people from other classes have to take over some roles because of a sticky ball accident.. and Mikan takes the role of Prince..

also Natsume plays as a cat to help out the kid playing a dwarf who is now stuck to his hand... he gets jealous seeing Mikan and Luca practicing together..

the queen (played by Sumire) has really good acting in this... the crowd is disappointed at Mikan replacing a girl they were looking forward to seeing though... after a cringey musical scene with Luca singing.. the queen sends a magic biting apple to bite the princess..

during the prince's scene, Sumire comes up to whisper to Mikan that the script has been changed and they have to ad-lib the rest of it now... The queen gains whiskers and cat ears and starts swordfighting with the prince... and suddenly someone throws a bone past them to get the queen to go chase it.. after that, Narume holds up a sign telling Mikan she has to kiss Luca for real to make the audience believe it more... she hesitates a lot, and Natsume throws an apple at her head to quickly end the scene.

Gakuen Alice high session 4

Episode 16 - Win in the Maze. The Magic Lamp

The Alice Festival finally starts... it takes a while for the special class's "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" RPG attraction gets any customers.. Narumi, Luca, and Sumire are the first ones to come and try it. Luca and Sumire are dressed as the March Hare and the Cheshire Cat... Luca is just entranced by Mikan's cuteness in her genie outfit...

Luca loses to the doppleganger girl.. Narumi gets through the raindancing guy easily using his pheremone alice, then runs into Mikan at the goal, who says he can't pass unless he can get her off this flying carpet within 30 seconds without touching her. Dogcat girl runs into the laughing alice guy, and figures out a little too late that she's supposed to use the earplugs she was given..

now there's more and more people showing up at the RPG because of other people who keep replaying it... Natsume shows up to it too, and scares the lineup away while he's there.. Mikan comes out and greets him, and he pulls on her genie top and makes her cry...

it turns out, they made the prize for winning this RPG, that you get to keep someone from the special class as a slave for the day or something... Natsume gets jealous of Tsubasa when Mikan starts crying in his arms.. now he wants to beat this RPG and make Tsubasa his slave.

Natsume's first challenge was a girl who hides inside the mirrors that are placed on the walls.. Natsume was given a special beetle thing, and by holding it, he made it so that girl was holding a reflection of it, that scared her out and let Natsume pass.. The mind-reader kid also got passed the mirror girl by talking about how she has a crush on him...

Natsume got passed the guy with the inanimate object possession alice, by making his real body hot and forcing him to go back into his body... mindreader kid won by embarrassing him as usual.

Natsume made it through another challenge by using flames to write on a high up chalkboard... then he was challenged by his new rival, Tsubasa.. Natsume has to touch him within 30 seconds.. "But being able to move is your first priority... since I've already caught your shadow."

Tsubasa is light Midna/twilight people... Natsume threatens him with fire, even though injuring is against the rules.. but actually what he's doing is using a stronger light source to move his shadow out of Tsubasa's control... he gets to Mikan, while the mindreader is still stuck at the chalkboard...

Natsume tries throwing his cockroach on her, she doesn't care about it. then he starts acting like he's in pain... either he's acting really good or it's real... Mikan isn't sure either, and starts recalling that lesson about the alice levels.. wonders if Natsume is in the level that makes his powers shorten his life span..

At the end, Natsume just had to pick a lamp to get a slave.. he used the mindreader to figure out which one was Tsubasa's. except the mindreader kid assumed he Mikan's lamp instead... "I saw her face in your mind just now, so..."

Gakuen Alice high session 3

Episode 10 - How Exciting, Central Town

the "Central Town" episode... even though Mikan only received 5 rabbits as her allowance, she is really excited to go shopping around because she's lived in the country her whole life.. but the mean teacher says she can only go if Natsume goes with her.. she has to beg him to take her, making it look like she's asking him on a date... also Natsume introduces that weird little kid Youichi. He has the Evil Spirits alice, a dangerous class ability... the kid convinces Natsume to go to Central Town for his own reasons...

There's all sorts of really cool things that Mikan can't buy... a mirror that shows you in whatever you want to wear, pillows that let you dream about whatever you want, a juice-making flower... Mikan is about to use her 5 rabbits to buy some ice cream, but then she sees some boys about to buy a talking apple, and the apple is saying it doesn't want to be eaten.. so Mikan interferes and saves the apple by buying it...

Then she forgets about the ice cream when she sees Luca and You-chan eating some cotton-candy-like stuff called Howalon. he says eating it makes you really happy... You-chan is about to give Mikan the last piece, but he just teases her with it... Iinchou and Hotaru offer to lend her some money, but she remembers her grandpa lecturing her about never borrowing money from people.

Mikan tries to make some money buy offering massages to people.. this one really big muscular guy shows up... "I'll do all I can, but I'm only good with normal shoulders, so your muscular ones might be a bit..."
then she tries shoe shining... the giant bird shows up wearing giant shoes...

Next, Hotaru, Iinchou, Luca, and You-chan help Mikan put on a street performance. it's really cute/hilarious... she successfully sells the matches that were used in the performance for 1 rabbit each... even the girl in her class who was always mean to Mikan comes and buys one. Mikan shares her Howalon with everyone who helped her...
"It's thanks to everyone. This melting taste is like everyone's hearts melting into one."
she's so happy, she goes and gives the last piece of howalon to Natsume...

This was one of the cutest episodes of the series...

Episode 11 - Alice, I'm in Special Training

Gakuen Alice manga recap/log part 1

I started reading this at 11/24/2015, before I started watching the anime while high.

Hotaru, Mikan's best friend, suddenly went away and transferred to Alice Academy in order to help out her home town/school's funding... she has a very useful power (called an "Alice") that allows her to instantly manifest inventions of thinks she is interested in. Mikan is miserable about this and eventually decides to try to get into Alice Academy herself to be with Hotaru.

Mikan meets a a very weird teacher, Mr. Narumi, who has the pheremone alice... he realizes right away that Mikan has a unique Alice because his power of attraction doesn't work on her...

Natsume, the fire conjurer is a bad kid who is rumored to have murdered people.. and when Mikan gets involved with him, he finds out that she can block his powers, and that makes him start to become tsundere about her... he also takes her panties off the first time they meet.

Luca, Natsume's friend who is secretly an animal lover, seems to be very loyal to Natsume out of empathy for his situation or something, but isn't really a bad guy.

I'm really loving the character personalities in this...

Got to the end of chapter 16... I'm still finding a lot of stuff is coming back to me. Mikan got assigned as a "no-star" rank by a jerk teacher who just hates the fact that she has the nullification alice. Then Mikan meets the students in her own alice class (the special leftover class that doesn't have a theme) who are a lot more laid back and rebellious...

There's this big plot where Natsume gets kidnapped by a celebrity who visits the school.. Mikan and that girl who Mikan calls "Curly Perm", who's the biggest Natsume/Luca fan, both see the kidnapping but the teachers don't believe them, so they escape school to try to rescue him themselves. It's revealed that Perm's alice lets her grow whiskers and gain the abilities of a cat and a dog. The kidnappers find out about Mikan's alice, and they conclude that she must be related to "that woman", and it seems like she's as important to them as Natsume... but they manage to escape by Natsume threatening to blow everyone up, and then Mikan comes back and tries to stop Natsume from killing himself, and later Mikan wakes up in the hospital and Narumi awards her with a 1-star rank upgrade.

Gakuen Alice high session 2

Episode 6 - I'm With The Good-For-Nothing Types

Mikan runs into Natsume on her way to the combination class. Narumi explained the 4 (5) different alice ability types to her, and that she was in the good-for-nothing "Special" class... only Mikan called it the "good-for-nothing" class though. She heared from the mind reader that Natsume is in the "Dangerous" ability class...

Natsume grabs her and covers her mouth while hiding behind the bushes... he's hiding from this older masked guy... then some middle school students show up, they hate Natsume because they don't like that a dangerous guy like him is one of the privileged "principal students".. they mention that it's because he's Persona's favorite that he gets special treatment. Natsume gets mad and threatens to burn these guys if they tell Persona where he is... then one of them grabs Mikan's hair to threaten Natsume.

Then she meets Tsubasa, a middle school guy in the special class. He gets back at the bullies with his shadow manipulation alice, and then he introduces her to the rest of the special class who are mostly older students. They are all very friendly and hold a big celebration for Mikan joining them. Their teacher is a weirdo who frequently "trips" on his time travel powers, and the few times Mikan met him already, he vanished before he could explain who he is. This red haired girl, who I guess is Tsubasa's girlfriend? has a doppleganger ability.

Gakuen Alice high session 1

Episode 1 - The School is Gone

oh wow, I forgot how cute this opening was.

the first ep covers the time when Hotaru had to transfer to Alice Gakuen in order to save her old school from being shut down... and then 2 years later Mikan learns about Hotaru's reason for leaving, and she runs away to go and meet her, and the teacher sees her and notices his powers didn't work on her, so he lets her take the entrance exam. pretty much the same as the manga so far... Mikan has a wierd Osakan accent.

Episode 2 - Welcome to Alice Academy

Mikan is in a room alone with an unconscious Natsume... some biology teacher comes in and explains to her that Narumi is a weirdo but not a dangerous guy, and says that Natsume IS dangerous and she should press the emergency alarm if she sees him open his eyes... then Natsume wakes up and threatens her to tell him who she is...