Sleep Is For the Weak

Rated 16+ for all kinds of sexually charged situations; official series website

Somebody call Social Services - the young students of this manga are being sold, beaten, and assaulted by their parents and teachers. Children as young as middle-school-aged wander the city, hitting each other with lead pipes and being picked up off the street by whatever shady character happens to be walking by. The adults who should have the youth’s well-being at heart abuse them, ignore them, or pit them against each other in what basically amounts to school-sponsored favoritism and bullying. Won’t someone think of the children?

The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross (yes, that symbol is stupidly part of the title) contains in a few short volumes enough pure shoujo drama for four complete manga series. There’s a childhood-friend-turned-love-interest, a stepbrother-turned-love-interest, and a possessive, pseudo-lesbian best friend who could be interpreted as yet another love interest. There are no fewer than three creepily sexual male teachers. There’s a gay boy and a boy cross-dressing as a girl, and multiple counts of long-lost siblings. The main character herself is a privileged rich girl, a hard-working poor girl, and an ex-thug turned straight arrow – all at the same time.

There are some really fun, interesting ideas in here that could make for great shoujo reading. A few of them actually succeed – in particular, the plot twists related to the main male character (which I won’t go into for the sake of avoiding spoilers) were unexpected and surprisingly cool. But the mangaka tries to do so much at once that every plot point ends up feeling underdeveloped, and for a present-day high school story, the situations that the characters find themselves in are almost completely unrelatable. A good example of this is the elaborate school system the mangaka sets up. It’s easy to believe in a school where rich kids get ahead, since that actually happens in real life from time to time. But a school with color-coded badges representing how much money a student’s parents donated to the school? A student body that looks down on bronze badges and practically worships the gold badge president who has actual, serious administrative power over his classmates? The elaborate school hierarchy is one of the more annoying shoujo cliches that has become common recently, and it represents everything lame about bad shoujo manga – it’s a cheap, easy way to create angst for the main character and to make her love interest seem unattainable, but it achieves those things at the expense of believability.

Almost all entertaining shoujo love stories exist a few steps away from reality. But Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross takes a few steps away from reality, then a few more, until the human interactions no longer resemble real life in any way. Unrealistic is okay, but unbelievable is not. Shoujo manga in general is known for its focus on character relationships, but Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross is so caught up in creating melodrama that the people don’t act like people anymore, and that’s the worst thing a character-heavy love story can do.

Educated impression: This one is kind of a toss-up. Melodrama addicts and non-picky shoujo manga fans will probably really enjoy this series, but everyone else should pass. (NotHayama)

Additional initial impression: Arina Tanemura is a prolific mangaka who combines big-eyed shoujo prettiness with surprisingly hard-hitting, edgy plots. Although I completely object to her stuff running in little girls’ magazines in Japan, as an older shoujo reader I tend to love her stuff because it’s both SHOCKING and SHINY. But this manga is just too ridiculous to work. The plot twists are still totally shocking and shiny, but they’re not worth the groan-factor. Stick to Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne or something. And modern shoujo - STOP TRYING TO ONE-UP EACH OTHER WITH YOUR SCHOOL HIERARCHIES. This manga’s school system is just as elaborate and terrible as S.A., Vampire Knight, La Corda D’Oro…please stop. For the love of God, please. (Lianne)

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