Gakuen Alice Manga Volume 14

学園アリス manga volume 14 review <-- BUY FROM RIGHTSTUF! ^_^

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: 

With the recent events that have happened at school, the administration questions Akira and has Shuuichi, Subaru, and Shizune assigned as student teachers in Mikan's class.  Mikan's class gets a new student named Luna, who's apparently frail of health and uses this to get her way.  She immediately begins separating Mikan from her classmates, first by getting to sit next to Natsume and then by starting rumors about Mikan to make it seem as if Mikan is doing certain bad things.  Thanks to Luna, things become a bit strained between them.

With the school's athletic event coming up, Mikan is training with the others as Luna continues to stir things up.  Luna confronts Mikan in a storage shed after causing a disturbance where Mikan threatens Luna, implying that she knows Mikan's mother.  The disturbance has the "moral police" grab Mikan but in fact, she's rescued by the somatic class rep in disguise.

Meanwhile, Tsubasa meets up with Luca, Natsume, and Hotaru, telling them to let himself and Tono take care of Mikan even though Tsubasa is hiding the fact that he's been transferred to a different class-type from Mikan.  Tsubasa meets up with Mikan and catches up with her before Natsume confronts Mikan on what happened between Luna and Mikan. 

Thoughts/Review: 

Well, leave it Higushi-sensei to bring in a new character and a new twist.  It seems to me that Luna is part of the administration's effort to place Mikan under more control since Mikan has had an unexpected influence on the school as a whole but specifically her homeroom and her special class.  I was thinking about how ostracized Mikan was at the beginning and now, those who'd not liked her or had picked on her are now pretty close to her.  Heck, Natsume has gone so far as to really care about Mikan deeply.  So, if the administration did something to Mikan, that might cause a bigger problem than it solves.  Therefore, you send in someone who can gain sympathy of Mikan's classmates and then sew descent to cause folks to turn on Mikan after which the administration can make their move on her to "solve the Mikan problem."

I do wonder what Luna's Alice is.  Natsume certainly recognized the threat Luna poses and I wonder if that's her Alice or something else.  Her ability to manipulate would seem to be a skill more so than a power, but it could be an Alice ability.  There's something odd about Luna as well.  She seems to know Mikan's mother and she certainly seems to have a personal vendetta against Mikan.  She called Natsume a brat at one point when Natsume said something that didn't please her.  So maybe her Alice is something that makes her look younger than she actually is.  That would make her a good operative for the school to use.  I guess we'll see though.

While this volume was pretty interesting on the whole, I admit that the last chapter is losing me as the school is engaged in the sports festival/event.  Well, there was the whole thing about Luca silently pining for Mikan but otherwise, I'm just not engaged.  I'm guessing something will happen with Luna again as I can't imagine that plot thread just being dropped.

On the TokyoPop side of things, it is pretty standard fare and nothing different from what we've seen before. 

Anyway, I'm glad TokyoPop has been releasing these on a somewhat accelerated schedule as I'm eager to see what happens now that Luna has been introduced.