“No, dear friend, I am not going to tell you that I have loved you with that passion and those transports which one no longer feels, it seems to me, after thirty, and I am already a long way past that age.”
“When I imagined quitting smoking, I imagined “settling down,” not because I associated quitting with a more mature self-care, but because I couldn’t imagine moving through an array of social spaces without the cigarette as bridge or exit strategy.”
“We met at the wrong time. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Maybe one day years from now, we’ll meet in a coffee shop in a far away city somewhere and we could give it another shot.”
“Chasing after a guy who’s not interested in you will rip the hell out of your self-respect. Better to face facts now because the longer you put it off, the harder it’ll be.”
We're at the penultimate part. The part I post tomorrow will be the last of Natsume's essay. He's absent for about twenty or so chapters, which is a really long time actually. Back when those chapters were actually coming out, I was suffering.
Today we'll talk about the very final chapters of Gakuen Alice, which might be a bit underwhelming, but that's just the nature of the ending.
Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Nine
Natsume woke up some time after Mikan left the academy. They didn’t have a near miss, which does diminish the tragedy just a bit, but he still came to only to find out that his fiancée was gone, expelled from the academy for having lost her alice. On top of that, she has no memories of anything that happened at the academy, including him.
For four long years he couldn’t see her. That’s a longer time than he’s actually known her. The alice stone she inserted into his dead body had somehow modified his alice shape somehow, so he has a longer lifespan than he did before, but he has no idea how much longer he’ll last. All he knows, for four years, is that he has to make it long enough to see her again.
She may have forgotten him but he will never forget her, and it’s no doubt that he was miserable for all those years. There must have been solace in friends and classmates, but the sadness would persist.
But now the time has finally come to see her again. He, along with a group of familiar teammates, are sent to protect Mikan. He can watch over her, see what she’s been up to, what she looks like now, see her smile and chat and walk around, even though she has no idea he’s watching.
Ahh... Mikan... long lost beloved...
One can only imagine the melancholy feeling of finally being able to watch the girl he loves laugh and talk, but knowing that she has forgotten all about him.
The kidnappers spring into action so Natsume can come out of hiding and go protect his girl. They all reveal themselves when the threat is gone: Goshima has been in disguise as one of Mikan’s friends to make up for the fact that he helped contribute to her mom’s death, Narumi helped knock out the enemies, and Natsume is holding Mikan in place so that she doesn’t run away.
To be entirely honest, I really don’t know anybody who’s a fan of Natsume touching Mikan’s chest here. It’s one thing when he’s a little kid doing it, but he hadn’t done anything like that in quite some time before he died, and he’s older now. It’s not just that it’s a bad thing to do anyway, and that with Mikan freaking out and overwhelmed as she is in the moment it would only make her feel more on guard, but it’s also deeply out of character at this point. Sorry, Higuchi, but them’s the breaks. Sexual harassment humor is OUT!
My opinion is that he could have teased her or done something actually funny to lighten the mood or to offer a hilarious break from Mikan’s romantic inner musings without any groping at all, but I’m not the one writing this story so who cares what I think.
@tardytothepardy mentioned that it would have been nice if he had maybe mentioned her hair being down. After all, that could have still rubbed her the wrong way without being harassment. It could have been funny while also being really sweet knowing their history. Instead, we get the fact that Higuchi really doesn’t think Natsume would have matured at all from an eleven-year-old.
In any case, Mikan freaking out prompts more teammates to come out of the woodwork, namely Tsubasa, Tono, and Ruka. The arrival of new people, who are a bit gentler with Mikan and express enthusiasm at taking her home, actually further distresses Mikan, who decides to run for it.
She of course doesn’t get far, because Natsume appears in front of her to stop her.
Aww.
Now’s the time for sweetness. Natsume entirely changes tactics, and pulls her in for a hug. This is the girl he’s loved for around six years, who promised him forever and entrusted her heart to him, who he would walk through hell for, who he died for. He couldn’t see her for four years and now she can’t even remember him. She’s panicking and running away from him, and it hurts that the girl he wanted to be with forever doesn’t want to be around him at all anymore.
But it doesn’t matter that the unthinkable happened, that she is wary of him now, because he promised already on Christmas so long ago that he would never stop loving her.
He hugs her, because he hasn’t touched her in years and because he’s missed her so much, living in misery with little reprieve all this time, just waiting and biding his time for this moment. He hugs her because she didn’t instantly remember him and hug him first.
And then he starts yelling at her, because he’s taking it personally. He never stops hugging her, but now he’s shouting too, because what on earth was she thinking when she forgot him? He had woken up without her, just to find out that she was gone and he wouldn’t be able to see her. He would have to work hard to see her again, to live long just another year and another. He tells her--or rather yells at her--that he’s been trying hard to live long enough for this particular moment, and here she is running away from him. It’s quite rude of her to forget all about him, just like that!
It really isn’t logical, because everyone knows--Natsume included--that Mikan had no choice in the matter. But all these years have built up feelings of misery and frustration and they shifted when she didn’t instantly recognize him. Tono says as much too, that he’s probably just hurt that she didn’t remember him specifically at once. Their bond should have been enough to shake her and wake her up, but it wasn’t, so obviously he’d been right to think she didn’t love him as much as he loves her.
Somehow this doesn't freak her out too much, to have this stranger screaming incoherently at her. That's funny.
This is all just insecurity. He expects that to be the reason and then when things like this happen, he takes them as proof that he was right to be insecure instead of realizing that the memory-erasing alice might just be effective. She was able to forget at all, which probably means that she didn’t love him enough to remember. He’s acting this way because his self esteem is still so low that he has convinced himself that her love is lesser than his.
And then he says that it doesn’t really matter if she forgot her memories or the alice stone, because she’s still his. He said he’d never give the stone back, and that didn’t just mean the physical stone. He would never give up on their love, even in the case of heartbreak and implausibility. She gave him her heart, and he wants to keep cherishing it. It’s a given, after all, that he is hers: always has been and always will be.
She hugs him back, despite still not remembering him, and I wonder if that felt like agreement or requited love. She’s not yelling back or running away anymore. She just hugs back, and they stay like that for a moment.
Good times, good times.
Then Mikan notices a flicker that breaks their hug. It’s the pebble alice stone from so long ago. He’d held onto it, and always would, because Mikan had always been precious to him, even when she couldn’t make a proper alice stone and felt ashamed of her abilities. Hotaru’s hope was that returning the stone to Mikan would prompt her regaining her memories. He returns it to her, and she quickly absorbs it.
He watches anxiously as her eyes well up with tears. She says her name and smiles, and it’s the first time she’s smiled for him since Christmas several years ago. They share another happy embrace, both happy to be finally reunited after so long.
True love is untouched by the grand expanse of time.
After so long, suffering because the girl he loved the most was gone and decidedly wasn't thinking about him too, he can see her eyes light up with recognition and the first name she says is his. He wanted to be the first one she remembered, and he got his wish.
They aren’t alone though, and soon enough everyone else invades on his special moment with her, so that she can remember them too.
Chapter One Hundred and Eighty
Mikan hasn’t entirely regained her memories. There’s still a great deal of things that are left mysterious to her, like her parents and even Hotaru. Mikan needs to be taken somewhere safe for her own protection, because she will be the target of people who want to use her since her bloodline is full of powerful and rare alices. They also need to locate the elusive Hotaru who has disappeared from everyone’s memories, and Mikan is instrumental to that.
Even more people appear, and Shiki shares that they were supposed to wait a little for Mikan to agree to come with them before they returned the alice stone, but Natsume got impatient and did it all at once.
I will never stop thinking about how Natsume's outfit looks just like Shiki's outfits from his time in Z. Either Higuchi just loves short sleeved turtlenecks and long gloves or Natsume is dressing like this on purpose... Is it possible that maybe Natsume has somewhat started to trust or even like a teacher at the academy? Oh, I can only hope...
Mikan now has the choice to either live with at the academy or to live as a normal person and lose all her memories again. This question being up in the air of course makes Natsume nervous, but soon he can exhale.
She makes her decision to go with them, and Natsume is happy to be reunited for good this time.
Natsume and Ruka have graduated early so they can have more freedom. They also want to help find Hotaru, since she saved Natsume. They owe her, so they have been working tirelessly to find her.
Yeah, I cropped everyone else out. So what? This is a NatsuMikan essay, not an "every character in Gakuen Alice" essay.
There isn’t a lot of Natsume to analyze in this final last-ever chapter of Gakuen Alice, and that does make me sad, but there was enough last chapter… I suppose.
Conclusion
I actually don't like these last chapters at all. Like, at all. I hope that didn't come across too much in the analysis. I'll just say it here instead. This reunion is rushed. Natsume's anxieties are barely touched on and there's no conversation with Natsume after she remembers him. After ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE CHAPTERS of loving and shipping them, the last chapter neglects them and the chapter before didn't do them enough service. If this "arc" was stretched into several more chapters, then Mikan could have several more meaningful reunions as well as this chat about the elusive Hotaru without leaving things unsaid.
There are important conversations to be had, loose threads to be tied up, arcs to be completed (ahem, like RUKA's especially), and in the end, if you walked away from this manga feeling overall underwhelmed and even disappointed, you're not alone.
COME ON. We have a long arc of death and memory loss and sacrifice and then the story is wrapped up in two seconds with little every single character ever on a beach? There's no relishing the narrative potential of amnesia, the depth possible in each important reunion, Mikan having to adapt again to the world of Alice. Having so many memories come back at once must be overwhelming and yet none of this is touched on. Sometimes I like to forget these chapters exist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'll be covering Kageki in the next part. I love Kageki a lot for all the NM moments, but they are side characters in the spinoff and I'm spoiled. I would very much like more of them. I guess that's what fanfiction is for (write fanfiction, please).
I absolutely agree with all you said about this finale it is just,,,, *so* underwhelming, and so rushed! And it will never not make me angry to see the way Natsume acts here, it is so awful and weird and regressive and gross and just fucking *bad*. The world would do good to completely forget this whole mess happened 😌
(Like seriously did anyone talk to Natsume about how to react when he was able to interact with Mikan for the first time in years? I'm just imagining something like:
Ruka(i firmly believe it'd only be ruka who could bring this up to him) : so we're about to see Mikan again for the first time in years, and will actually be able to talk to her. What are you planning on saying?
Natsume: lmao tiddy
Ruka: No--
)
I kinda feel really bad about Ruka though, because of how much he worried about being in the way (i always kinda wondered if he felt unimportant) and he's like barely in this whole chunk in the end. I mean, it was really considerate of Hotaru to notify him of the mushroom earbuds before she left otherwise he'd basically have no real purpose here. He just stands off in the distance, is there even a reunion hug between him and Mikan? I don't remember there being one, but I feel like there should have been one. They are friends, after all.
There are a lot of things that I found weird about the finale, and one of them was definitely that seemingly seconds after Mikan agreed to go back, which was moments after getting her memory back, her entire class from AA just exploded onto the beach, streaming out from nowhere and rushing towards her. I cannot imagine how fucking overwhelming all of this would be, and it probably happened in the span of maybe 20 minutes? Give the girl some time to breathe, jfc!
Then that whole weird part that never fails to bother me where apparently Nobara and Persona are a thing??? Huh?? Excuse me?? Fuckin,,,, pardon?? Where in blue blazes did that come from? That just does not seem right to me, idk. (They also seemed to have a baby but I think that might have been Luna? I honestly would rather that it was Luna than a child they had together)
This finale really deserved a couple more chapters to flesh everything out. I personally was kinda miffed that there was like a single tiny panel showing Natsume's reaction upon waking up in the hospital and finding Mikan gone, I feel like that should've been a bigger thing. A lot of things in this section should've been bigger things, smh my head.
(also thank you for letting me be part of this essay i am very honored 🥺✨)
yeah to all of that.... its so rushed and not great... ruka and mikan do have a lil reunion and they hold hands but its not as dramatic. ruka has the build up for a fantastic story arc so im kinda angry that it was left hanging like that. i think an ideal continuation to the story would have ruka front and center, to be the main person to save hotaru bc natsumes alice is killing him and mikan has very little left. he can finally prove himself and see his own worth and save the day while also doing something to repay the person who saved his best friend.
the end is just too overwhelming and tbh i just wanted to get past it. i wish i didnt have to end the essay in such a lackluster way but eh! i cant do anything abt it
TOTALLY SATISFIED with your analysis and honestly dismayed with the last chapters.
I agree that it's all rushed. I mean, ALL. There was not much depth with how the characters were presented on the last chapters, like Natsume and Mikan, or even with Jii-chan.
There's a very beautiful potential plot for Kazu and Jii-chan's convo there, but it's wasted!
Also, aside from Mikan's reunion with Natsume, Ruka's reunion should've made more sense than just sparkles and moes.
Ultimately, yeah, I agree. the groping is just lazy writing, SORRY HIGUCHI but ITS TRUE in all sense. Our boy Natsume is possessive af and he did those antics before, but you could've at least gave him more depth than just a "grumpy cat with perverted tendencies", right? He went through hell for Mikan, for God's sake, he cherishes his girl! Sure he'd like to do those stuff with her, but I doubt that someone as passionate as him would still publicly grope his beloved publicly. What's the sense of dying for her if you just want to humiliate her upon seeing her again!?
I don't think he's the kind who says "you're mine" and treats her like an object to fondle publicly. So Higuchi, that was absolutely a no-no. You've made him soooooo mature for his age, only to ruin it with this one childish, foolish antic.
Yeah, I like that you also pointed out Natsume's fashion sense here. I mean, what the hell is those gloves for!? You want to touch her with your bare hands, for goodness sake!!!!
But then... too much to explore.... too much unwritten good plots.
Well because of these cliffhangers I was already brewing fanfictions for Hotaru's absence X Ruka's efforts, and a lot more.
Thank you so much for your great analysis!
my teacher just called thomas edison a genius of using “shared knowledge” and “putting together other people’s ideas” and my inner STEM student is fucking FUMING
“oohh well he was innovativee-” stealing all your ideas from nikola tesla and privatizing inventions he wanted to be publicly accessible doesnt make you a genius it makes you a dead cunt i wish was alive so i could kill you again
the only innovative thing he did was sending armed goons to strongarm anyone who wanted to use a movie camera to give him a cut of the money, which is quite literally why the movie industry moved to california because the cost of sending said goons cross country was prohibitive
Old dude came in the shop and when I said "lemme know if you have any questions" he goes "what was the name of Alexander the Great's horse," thinking he was so funny. I told him Bucephalus, and he was so disappointed. Like his whole day was hanging on beating me at trivia. He says "you're only the second person who knew that" and I said "well, probably the third if you count Alexander the Great." He left without buying anything, and did not say goodbye. I think I honestly hurt his weird little feelings! Sorry I'm a bitch, old man!
I had one of these once, bookshop customer randomly challenged me to name, quote, ‘the only word in English where two u’s are next to each other’, and when I immediately said ‘vacuum’ he looked disappointed and when I pointed out it isn’t even the only word with two u’s next to each other in English and offered ‘continuum’ as an example he looked like I’d just punched his ribcage out his back like a Mortal Kombat character
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
origamiaround
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
areudirty
dededos
gummygunk
