#The Gentlemen's Alliance

[engshoujosei]

The Gentlemen's Alliance

11 volumes

Licensed by Viz Media

In return for a business loan of 50 million yen, the prestigious Kamiya family gave their daughter Haine away to the Otomiya family. Haine, now an Otomiya, is appointed to the student council of the exclusive Imperial Academy, a private school for the aristocracy. Even though Haine is of proper lineage to be on the council, she finds herself struggling to find her place among the many secrets of its elite members, especially those of the president who holds her heart - Shizumasa Togu, aka "the Emperor." Haine has been in love with Shizumasa Togu from the day she read the picture book he wrote as a child. She enrolls the Imperial Academy to be close to him and is accepted as a member of the student council. But with that, dark secrets start to reveal themselves! Why does "The Emperor" act differently? Is Haine really in love with Shizumasa? Why did her father sell her and why doesn't her mother write to her anymore?

Status in Country of Origin

11 Volumes (Complete) 7 Bunkoban Volumes (Complete)

Tags:

Absent Parent/s

Adoption

Amnesia

Angst

Appearance Different from Personality

Aristocrat/s

Bisexual Character/s

Bisexual Love Triangle

BL Subtext

Boys' Love as a Subplot

Confinement

Ex-Delinquent/s

Family Drama

Girls' Love as a Subplot

Hidden Past

Homophobia

Hypocrisy

LGBT Character in Non-Yaoi/Yuri Manga

Love at First Sight

Love Polygon

Mistaken Identity

Prestigious School

Secret/s

Social Hierarchy

Stolen Kiss

Student-Teacher Relationship (side couple i think)

Student Council

Suppressed Feelings

Unethical Teacher

[kyumi234]

kazu dickhead rant pt.2

Throughout the manga, I noticed that the author sprinkled in tiny hints here and there that Kazuhito loved his daughter “all along” and was just too fucking shy to show it. This is supposed to redeem him in our eyes, but honestly it just makes his character even MORE frustrating. Because of his lack of showing affection towards his daughter, Haine lived most of her life thinking that she was unloved and unwanted, that her own father willingly threw her away for money. This not only causes her extreme emotional distress and a tendency to violence later on, but ALSO makes her insecure enough to believe that she needed to earn money from part time jobs and give them to her stepmother in order to ���keep her place” in the family.  

I mean the only nice gesture he ever did in her childhood was giving her a fucking book. Also, even tho he sent Haine away for adoption cause he thought she would be unhappy with him, HE DOESN’T EVEN BOTHER ASKING HER WHAT SHE WANTS, IF SHE WANTED TO KEEP LIVING THERE OR NOT. IT’S LIKE HER OPINION DOESN’T EVEN MATTER.

ALSO, IF HE ACTUALLY LOVED HER, WHY DIDN’T HE MAKE MORE OF AN EFFORT TO ACTUALLY SHOW IT OR IF HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SHOW IT, WHY COULDN’T HE HAVE JUST ASKED MAIKA OR ANY OTHER FELLOW PARENTS AROUND HIM WHAT HE COULD DO TO SHOW AFFECTION! 

MAKING YOUR PASSWORD THE NAME OF YOUR DAUGHTER OR SENDING A LETTER TO HER PRINCIPAL TALKING ABOUT HOW MUCH U CARE FOR HER, ISN’T GOING TO MAKE HER THINK, “AWWWW MY DAD FUCKING LOVES ME,” UNLESS U ACTUALLY LET HER KNOW ABOUT IT!!!

All of that dramatic reveal about him actually loving Haine all this time only makes him look like a coward who doesn’t even have the guts to tell his daughter that he loves her upfront.

Hell, he couldn’t even express his love towards Maika like a normal human being except forcing her to be his girlfriend AND wife.

[phantomthiefjeanne]

Hot Meta Take: For all its flaws, you can’t deny that The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross/Shinshi Doumei Cross is really well-plotted and -paced.

The 1st chapter is WEIRD. You’re immediately thrown into this high school setting that’s so out there it’s practically otherworldly; they make the hierarchies in Hana Yori Dango seem tame and realistic. The main character randomly yells ‘you should fall in love with me!’ to the male lead before these few introductory pages are even over, and though her feelings have been pretty clear thus far, it’s a pretty high emotional jumping point to start a 12 volume romance at. How did we get here, for the little details that we’re given about her and Shizumasa’s history to mean so much to her? The immediate answers that we’re given in these first chapters seem shallow at best and nonsensical at worse amidst all of Haine’s screentone-heavy monologuing over her immediate, fluttery feeeeelings rather than the rationales justifying them.

But then!!!

But then, more complex answers are drawn out, and these answers always come at a strategically impactful time. A point that still stays with me after all this time is Haine later explaining that her out of the blue confession in that first chapter was spurned out of a ‘wager’ she’d made with herself: if she found ‘Shizumasa’ in the hanging gardens after all, as the closest match around to the magical garden he’d written about as a child, it meant that he was still the boy whose writing she fell in love with way back when. Her desperate-seeming confession morphs into the second line of a reciprocal couplet, the answer to the riddle Takanari had inadvertently sent out to the world when he’d mentioned the Garden (as if he was waiting there for this response, like a princess in a tower), so that her boldness no longer comes off as one-sided as it originally did. Obviously, it was never one-sided on actual-Shizumasa’s part, since he did explicitly tell her to come find him after all. But now we have Takanari, being returned feelings that he didn’t realize he’d had in the first place.

(And I can write a whole book on how, while Haine is presented as the Cinderella of the story, we see here that it’s actually Takanari who’s put on a disguise to charm a prince(ss) before the clock strikes midnight. The picture book and the garden are his glass slippers, letting Haine trace her feelings back to him, so that she can see past the evil stepbrother twin, Shizumasa, trying to step into Takanari’s shoes. Through the picture book, and the garden wager, she’s able to find the right one after all; it just took a few extra years of searching after the ball.)

Through elaborations like this one, or the “Can I fall in love with you?” flashback to Shizumasa we get elsewhere too, Haine’s cutesy confession becomes deeper, and less of a throwaway line, strengthening Haine as a character. Before, you really think she’s just silly/impulsive enough to blurt out her feelings like this, which might be true, but this ‘wager’ really is complex and matches the high EQ Haine herself explicitly states she has. It’s also a huge sucker punch to Takanari at just the right time: for him to realize it was truly HIM, the boy who wrote the storybook, Haine was confessing to all along.

“You should fall in love with me,” Haine said in that first chapter, but it’s only as him AND us readers reflect back on this way later in volume 3 that we actually do fall in love with her: her feelings and even her general personality actually run deeper than this line would initially suggest. A lesser series would have revealed its hand too early and bogged this first chapter down by including Haine’s way convoluted reasoning for this wager, or ultimately explained her original train of thought at a less resonant point in the story.

Withholding information and dramatic flashbacks aren’t necessarily rare occurrences in shoujo or the Asian dramas SDC shares so many of its tropes with a lot of the times these devices are used for evil rather than good, but I think it IS a rare treat to see such an affecting and satisfying payoff, like we do here. No line goes to waste over here at SDC; everything is essential, no matter how ridiculous it all is, and unlike, say, Sakura Hime, it actually pays off later.

[whiteflamedkitsune]

Hey Shinshi Doumei fans....

Srs question: When Maora was Maora, he was SHORTER than Haine BUT when Maora started dressing like a boy again he was suddenly TALLER than Haine.....HOW!?!?

[arinatanemura]

Haine Otomiya: titles

[animefangirl22]

She'll be fine. She is strong after all. But people who are strong, are never without wounds. Weaklings will run away before they get hurt... But for those who are strong, the depths of their wounds will increase with their strength.

Kasuga Togu, Shinshi Doumei Cross, Chapter 37

[kyumi234]

I just need to rant for a second

So the other day, I remembered reading The Gentlemen’s Alliance manga vol.9 in middle school and.....is it just me, or does NO ONE notice how fucked up the things Kazuhito did to Maika is? LIKE HE LITERALLY FORCED HER TO BE HIS GIRLFRIEND AND WIFE EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW THAT SHE ALREADY HAD A SECRET BOYFRIEND.  FORCEFULLY KISSED HER WITHOUT CONSENT. HAD HIS OWN SERVANTS WATCH OVER HER SO SHE WOULDN’T RUN AWAY. SENT HER OWN FUCKING DAUGHTER FOR ADOPTION WITHOUT HER CONSENT. DROVE HER MENTALLY INSANE.

What really pisses me off was at the end of vol.6, we see Kazuhito lying next to Maika, asking himself, “If you were as strong as Haine, would this not have happened?” or something like that. (”that” referring to her sanity completely shattered by his stupid actions)

And that.....has to be the stupidest question I’ve ever heard.

ANYONE, NO MATTER HOW MENTALLY STRONG THEY WERE, WOULD BE COMPLETELY DEVASTATED AND MENTALLY AFFECTED BY THAT SHIT. WHAT, DID U THINK SHE WOULD BE FINE WITH IT?

Then all of a sudden, we learn that Maika also has feelings for Kazuhito too. Even after allllll the fucking shit he did to her, for some reason, she’s now “in lurve” with him. Bitch what? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE. 

Sigh.

Honestly, for me, the only good thing I can remember from vol. 9 was the art. That’s it. 

Also, the “being in the light” metaphor was kinda cringe. No offense.

[phantomthiefjeanne]

Have a good one! 

[morekawaiithanu]

Shinshi Doumei Crross Ch 27

[arinatanemura]

If you dropped your slipper on the staircase, take off your other slipper too. Then turn back, and once the magic has worn off, use your real face, and jump into the arms of the prince. It’s okay even if I’m rejected. It’s better than telling a lie. I will be fine because I always enjoy my life no matter what! I believe in that and continue to live my life. To be alive… is something that I love very much.

[loires]

Goodbye, Cinderella. If you dropped your slipper on the staircase, Take off your other slipper, too. Then turn back. And once the magic has worn off, use your real face, And jump into the arms of the prince.

Shinshi Doumei Cross, Tanemura Arina

[cartoonprince]

Maguri ♥  

[allanimemangaquotes]