The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross manga review

One of my favorite pics.

In between spending over $200 to pay someone to NOT diagnosis my and feeling sorry for myself I decided to do finish a series I had sitting on the shelf. I have quite a few mangas I bought back at AWA that have yet to be read and I figure I need to get to it before a year passes by.

Also sorry for the TMI. My first paragraphs seem to do that often. I guess I can’t help but sharing and venting. In any event WOOHOO for overpriced doctors and procedures.

ANYWAY first on my list to get completed was The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross. I have been reading it faithfully since the very first manga hit American shelves but I have been slacking lately. Well slacker no more!!!! Here is my take on the series complete with pretty pictures!

There will be spoilers for the entire series. And since I lied about not being a slacker I am ganking Wikipedia’s synopsis. Of course it barely covers the first couple of volumes but should give everyone a brief view into what this series is about. Now on with the show.


“Haine Otomiya, a 15-year-old high school student at the elite private Imperial Academy, was apparently sold to foster parents for fifty million yen. A one-time gang member, Haine reformed when she met Shizumasa Togu, who told her to live life how she wanted to. She fell in love with Shizumasa and entered the Imperial Academy to try and win his love.

Now, Shizumasa is the Emperor of the school. Being the president of the student council and the only member of the gold class, he is the one who everyone looks up to. Through various circumstances Haine is tricked by Maora, a student council member, into becoming his bodyguard and joining the student council. However, Shizumasa claims not to know her and is unexpectedly cold towards her. Haine then discovered that Shizumasa has a twin brother named Takanari. Shizumasa was ill so he could not attend so, therefore, Takanari has to fill in as Shizumasa. Shizumasa won the game to see who was the when he was a child so Takanari was known as Shizumasa's "shadow".”

When I first started reading The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross (or Shinshi Dōmei Kurosu) I was really drawn in to the over emotional characters. I was angry at their ability to let things spiral out of control when things could have been squashed if people had just been honest at first. I was blown away by the beautiful art. I rolled my eyes at how far this manga went in terms of Elitism and how wealthy families treat each other/outsiders.

But reading the entire manga in one (okay two sittings, I needed to sleep) I am a bit…X_X. I am sure the X_X parts bothered me before but now I am really starting to question if it’s okay to like this manga as much as I do. Not trying to be a Debbie Downer, just calling it how I see it.

Everyone's dream: Being forced into marriage and rape.

Haine’s mother was raped. One could argue she had unwanted sex for her entire marriage (16 years). But there is no denying when Kazuhito became Emperor he raped Maika at the beginning of their relationship. He forced her into a relationship and marriage. While Maika might not have fought him off and screamed no it was still against her will. Her eyes spoke the truth and she was in no position to deny him. Her family used her as a money tree and Kazuhito used his power to capture another man’s lover. Also I think it was a dick move that Itsuki didn’t fight for his lover but instead encouraged her to go along with this forced marriage. HELLO do you see what a crazy person Kazuhito is?! He became Emperor to steal a girl who was NICE to him. He forced your lover to have sex with him. How are you okay with this?

I FORGIVE YOU FOR THE PAST 16 YEARS!!!

But that was all in the past. There is more rage for the future! Maika realized in volume 39 she no longer loved Itsuki and had fallen in love with Kazuhito. At this point she had been married to him for 16 years! I am not sure what is worse, falling in love with your rapist or having sex with your rapist for 16 years and then realize you love him. It boggles the mind. I realize that arranged marriages are common in some places and are practical for some cultures and blah blah. But I think everyone can agree there is a difference in having sex with a person you feel indifferent about and having sex with someone who raped you.

Yeah I want to take a chainsaw to your stupid self too. What exactly will she LOSE?!

If I was one of their kids I would be scarred for life. Maybe I am being a little dramatic but I really don’t find it romantic that someone would plot and steal a woman like that and 16 years later she falls in love with that rapist. Same goes with my yaoi manga. I am really not into the rape victim finally deciding that he loves the rapist and all is okay. Doesn’t jive with me.

So putting aside the fact that Maika was rapped and Ushio was probably raped (but the age of consent laws are fuzzy so we will just go with WTF!!!) let’s focus on the violence against women. I am going to be a big hypocrite here and say that when a woman strikes a man it doesn’t MOG bother me as much as it does when a man strikes a woman. In reference to anime/manga the majority of slapping occurs when the boyfriend/love interest/dude says something shitty/does something shitty and the woman reacts out of anger. Reading that makes me think…oh yeah that is kinda bad but compared to relative size of the participant I am willing to give the woman more slack.

Such classy rich people.

Ignoring that I am a hypocrite Haine got pushed around/threaten/slapped a lot in this manga. Oh and forced into kisses/sexual situations against her will. Takanari, who is supposed to be the sweeter of the two brothers, liked to corner Haine against walls all the time. To me that is the ultimate sign of abuse. Yes Maguri actually slapped her and that was truly uncalled for but what Takanari was doing was instilling in Haine that he had power over her. Maguri’s slap was a onetime thing (which was totally wrong and he should have never done in the first place) while Takanari was showing Haine she was powerless against him and at any time he could force her to listen to him and comply with his demands just because he was a man and bigger than him. A lot of the times the violence was in front of another person/a group of people and no one did anything to stop it. -_- Really ruins the manga for me.

So I guess I really am being a Debbie Downer. But I am being realistic and honest. A story can have interesting characters and drama and beautiful art and still have problems. The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross has problems. I think if Kazuhito married Maika and NOT raped her and she slowly over time grew to love him I would be okay with that. Then their children would have been married out of love and Kazuhito wouldn’t have been such as asshole. Granted him using his parents money to steal her away from Itsuki was a shitty ass move and either way he would have forced her into a marriage without her consent. I would just have felt better about the manga had the characters not been so content with their “happy endings” that consequences for these actions never took place.

If anyone is still reading this I am not trying to bash The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross. I was really hooked on this series and do still think that there are positive aspects to the manga. I still think it is a good read just not something people should be screaming about being the poster child of romantic relationships. If anything it is a story about messed up people with messed up views on love. I am just admitting that the story wasn’t as wonderful as I originally thought once these issues came to life.

Sometimes I hate men too.

I do like how Ushio’s story was untold. That might sound weird as Ushio was pretty broken and used men as play things but her actions and personality really made sense to me. Ushio did not have healthy relationship with boys. She is not someone to be modeled after. But why she was doing all these harmful things makes sense. While you want to shake the girl and tell her she is worth so much more that tryst in the school’s clinic you understand why she has all this pain in her heart. Ushio was unloved for most of her life so she sought out unhealthy relationships with boys only after she was rejected by her one true “love”.

I do think it was a little pervy that the doctor fell in love with her/she finally chose him. But given that she was 16 and in Japan that is the ROMANTIC age to fall in love with your teachers and it is not THAT bad meh. Meh. I think the Ex-Emperor would have been a better choice but we needed to see more twin drama and why the Togu family really sucks. Anyone was better than the Uncle right?

Ushio was a very complicated girl. She grew up with no love in her life. She found a ray of light in Haine and depended on her to brighten her life. When her light was taken away suddenly Ushio’s life became worse off, almost like Ushio would have been better not knowing Haine at all. While she said she hated boys she really was lonely and was looking for a way to connect with people, despite the fact she had Haine in her life. But after Haine and the others go to the root of her problem Ushio was able to stop the destructive behavior and was able to love herself. Once she accepted herself she was able to love another person and stop obsessing over her light. To me I don’t think she was in love with Haine but rather in love with the idea of Haine.

Aw. Such a cute couple.

This manga was pretty gay friendly. Some might say that is unrealistic, that everyone was on board the gay loving parade and that at least SOMEONE would have objected to Maora’s cross dressing and Maguri’s vocal homosexuality. But putting that aside it was nice to see their love as a normal love. They weren’t portayed as side dressing or token characters, they were front and center the entire time. I also liked how they had problems in their relationship. Yes it was a bit cheesy that Maora went through all the trouble of being a girl to be with Maguri but Maguri had decided to embrace his sexuality this making Maora’s efforts in vain. But I like how once they became a couple there were still “problems”. Maguri didn’t stop having crushes over night and Maora still wanted to express his feminine side. But the group was a little incestuous wasn’t it? XD

I wish the words weren't messing up this picture!

I guess we can’t have a The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross post without talking about Haine right? She is the main character after all and she had the most problems. I gave her a little flack about not being able to choose between the two twins at first. But then I realized she was in love with the idea of a person and she felt as if she had to be loyal to the person she thought she was idolizing. Takanari and Shizumasa really had her confused the entire series with their actions and words. So while Haine might look wishy washy she really was confused on that fact that the two important events in her live were caused by two different boys. I am surprised that she still clung to Shizumasa as long as she did as I would think that the time spent with Takanari was more important that the brief memory of Shizumasa.

But Haine was really screwed up. I don’t like characters who dog themselves and say they have all these faults. There was nothing wrong with Haine wanting her father’s love but hating him at the same time. There was something wrong with her wanting to buy her way into her new family but she is not at fault. It’s not her fault Ushio was obsessed with her. She thinks so ill of herself yet she calls the twins kind? It boggles the mind how much internalized hate these girls have towards their natural reactions to crappy situations.

Oh look we get a happy ending...

Shizumasa and Takanari were nut cases. But to be fair they were raised to be nutcases. That really doesn’t give them a right to spread their nutcaseness around but meh. I guess Shizumasa was more of a nutcase and Takanari gets a little bit of slack as his life was crap. What bothers me is Shizumasa’s insistence in being with Haine. They did have a magical (yet very random…) moment when they were younger. But that was it. I am sure Shizumasa had either forgotten all about that or kept that moment to himself. He was so obsessed with a girl he spent so little time with it makes no sense why he would put his happiness over hers. Of course none of this makes sense as he wants to DIE anyway. He wants to die happy with Haine but what about Haine after the fact? She picks Shizumasa, he dies, and now she can never be with Takanari? Shizumasa is toxic. He hurt his brother and Haine is terrible ways and now he is getting redemption because he feels guilty? This is me rolling my eyes.

You two make me not like twins as much :(

Takanari was a jerk to Haine but besides the PUSHING and CORNERING I can understand his anger. He was living a fake life and now he had to be paired up with a girl who is in love with his brother (or the idea of his brother). Personally I don’t know why Takanari was so pissed in the first place. Okay so that moment in the garden was important to Haine. But he could have said NO I am going to show Haine that I am worth knowing and I will make her love me instead. Granted he did that eventually but his intial rage towards Haine was misdirected.

The Togu family sucks. Instead of stopping the tradition of NOT SLEEPING WITH YOUR SIBLINGS they make a stupid tradition on finding rocks in the woods and locking up the loser twin. MAKES TOTAL SENSE!

The Elitism in this manga is really crazy. Host Club is left in the dust as even rich kids are judged and ranked according to wealth and social standings. Parents pay for their kids to become silvers. Different uniforms and classrooms separate the IMPORTANT and the only so important. Without money there was little hope of moving up in the school even if you were super smart. And in a school where connects are made for life and sometimes you attend classes with kids who will be your business partners it is important to be on top. So…slightly more depressing than Host Club. Also yes, let’s make a garden for only ONE person. That makes economical sense.

See ya!

So in closing everyone was crazy and had problems with being accepted and explaining their feelings. Relationships were overly complicated but you tend to forget that with the beautiful art. And while there are some REAL problems with packaging rape as some bizarre form of love/beautiful romance there are other issues that were done correctly, like gay equality and Ushio looking for love in the wrong places.

Do I feel the same way about the manga now verses when I started reading it? No. It was fluffy and slightly dramatic when I first started reading it. Then issues like rape (not rape itself, but acting like this can turn into romance) brought me down a bit. I still like the manga but not MOG crazy devoted to it like other titles. Anyone into shojo manga should read this title but keep in mind some of these people make Edward Cullen (I had to goggle him since I didn’t know the last name XD) look like a sane and perfect boyfriend.