{"id":3123,"date":"2009-07-03T01:21:40","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T08:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/?p=3123"},"modified":"2012-10-06T01:39:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T08:39:42","slug":"gentlemans-alliance-cross-volume-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/2009\/07\/03\/gentlemans-alliance-cross-volume-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentleman’s Alliance Cross Volume 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students at Imperial Academy are lining up for the \u201cConfess Your Love\u201d rally, during with students announce the name of the person they love to the entire student body in hopes of winning over their beloved\u2019s heart. Maora wants to confess to Maguri, but Maguri already has plans to confess to Shizumasa!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>By Arina Tanemura
\nPublisher:<\/strong> Viz Media – Shojo Beat
\nGenre:<\/strong> Romance
\nRating:<\/strong> Teen +
\nPrice:<\/strong> $8.99<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019ve got a score card and have read the last three volumes, this volume will seem like a jumbled mess to you too.<\/p>\n

Imperial Academy is having the school festival, and one of the events give students an opportunity to confess their love for another student in front of the whole student body. Confessions and attempted confessions run amuck. But the focus of this volume is on the ball, held on the second day. Haine, the heroine of the story, must attend as she is the Shizumasa\u2019s \u201cgirlfriend\u201d, but she has nothing to wear, and she won\u2019t ask Shizumasa for help. The mysterious postman comes to her rescue and helps to create a beautiful gown for her. She goes to the ball, and dances with Shizumasa, but, like a Cinderella, she runs away from her prince, unable to continue the charade. Shizumasa follows and they share some private moments that ends in a kiss, which is caught on film and printed in the school newspaper the next day. But, Shizumasa, who sent his Shadow away to attend the ball with Haine, becomes too weak to continue and the Shadow returns. He is angered by the photo and declares that Haine is no longer his platinum. But, he is secretly hiding feelings for Haine that as Shizumasa\u2019s Shadow, he can not have.<\/p>\n

So, did you get all that? This series is shojo in the truest sense of the word. The relationships between characters are complex, and at times just plain convoluted. Without a chart to keep track of who likes who, even when it\u2019s really Shizumasa and not his double Shadow, there\u2019s no way you could keep up with what\u2019s going on. It took reading several sections over and over to finally get it all. If I had been reading from the beginning, it might not have been so bad, but I doubt it.<\/p>\n

Tanemura-sensei\u2019s art to nice to look at, but the characters all look too much the same. I was constantly getting Haine confused with other characters. It isn\u2019t easy when it\u2019s just the hair style that differentiates between the female characters. But, males aren\u2019t much better. And to be honest, I don\u2019t find any of the characters in this series very likable. There wasn\u2019t one that really warmed up to me, which if one had, I would have been more forgiving of the lack of differentiation.<\/p>\n

This volume pretty much sums up what it is I don\u2019t like about a lot of shojo manga. Lots of overly dramatic teenage angst over who\u2019s in love with who this week. Really there\u2019s a lot better Shojo out there like Yurara<\/em>, La Corda d\u2019Oro<\/em> or Beauty Pop<\/em>, that are smart and enjoyable to read. Do yourself a favor and get one of those titles instead.<\/p>\n

Review copy provided by publisher.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students at Imperial Academy are lining up for the \u201cConfess Your Love\u201d rally, during with students announce the name of the person they love to the entire student body in hopes of winning over their beloved\u2019s heart. Maora wants to confess to Maguri, but Maguri already has plans to confess to Shizumasa! By Arina Tanemura Publisher: Viz Media – Shojo Beat Genre: Romance Rating: Teen + Price: $8.99 Unless you\u2019ve got a score card and have read the last three volumes, this volume will seem like a jumbled mess to you too. Imperial Academy is having the school festival, and one of the events give students an opportunity to confess their love for another student in front of the whole student body. Confessions and attempted confessions run amuck. But the focus of this volume is on the ball, held on the second day. Haine, the heroine of the story, must attend as she is the Shizumasa\u2019s \u201cgirlfriend\u201d, but she has nothing to wear, and she won\u2019t ask Shizumasa for help. The mysterious postman comes to her rescue and helps to create a beautiful gown for her. She goes to the ball, and dances with Shizumasa, but, like a Cinderella, she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[83,99,110,120,121],"class_list":["post-3123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-viz-media","tag-manga","tag-older-teen","tag-review","tag-shojo","tag-shojo-beat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/files\/2009\/07\/Gentlemens-Alliance-4.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2umma-On","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3153,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3123\/revisions\/3153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}