Fruits Basket is almost over, and Tokyopop is looking for the next big shoujo title. It’s about a kid at a magic academy (honk if you’ve heard that setup before) but it sounds like there may be a few original twists. I’m looking forward to checking it out. More after the cut.
Discover the Alice That Lives Within! TOKYOPOP Proudly Presents…
GAKUEN ALICE
Japan’s Hottest Shojo Manga Series Since Fruits Basket Hits U.S. Stores December 2007
Los Angeles, CA (November 2, 2007)―TOKYOPOP, the leader of the global manga revolution, is thrilled to announce the release of Japan’s hugely popular shojo manga series, Gakuen Alice. From the same Japanese publisher that originally released TOKYOPOP’s best-selling manga juggernaut Fruits Basket, Gakuen Alice, created by Tachibana Higuchi, has sold more than three million units in Japan alone. Now, for the first time ever, TOKYOPOP brings U.S. audiences the irresistible and adorable story of the magical adventures of Mikan and her “Alice” at the Alice Academy.
Young Mikan runs away to Tokyo following her best friend, Hotaru, who has been enrolled in an exclusive, secretive private school for geniuses. But it turns out that Alice Academy is a lot more than meets the eye. If Mikan wants to stay by Hotaru’s side, she has to pass the strange “entrance exam” AND face the even greater challenge of befriending her very odd new classmates. Whether it’s Hotaru’s gift for inventing gadgets, the cranky Natsume’s fire-casting ability, or Professor Narumi’s control of human pheromones, everyone at the school has some sort of special talent. But what ability, if any, does Mikan possess? Mikan is going to have to rely on her courage and spunk if she’s going to stay in school, or even stay alive!
According to TOKYOPOP Senior Editor, Lillian Diaz-Przybyl: “What’s great about manga is that it can capture little bits of reality and reflect familiar and compelling aspects of human nature, even in bizarre, fantastic situations. On the surface, Gakuen Alice is a fun, charming school story about cute kids with special powers, but it’s also full of bullies, angst-filled pasts and mysterious adults. Ranging from classroom torment to adorable giant animals to devoted friendship and loyalty, Gakuen Alice captures the joy and terror of school all in one brilliant and entertaining package!”
Gakuen Alice will be supported by an aggressive marketing and promotional push that includes a highly interactive and innovative online campaign complimented by anime and comic convention promotions.
Find your own Alice when the first of fourteen volumes of TOKYOPOP’s much-anticipated Gakuen Alice manga series arrives in stores nationwide this December!
This is indeed a delightful and entertaining series, if the manga is anything like the anime episodes I saw at a convention a couple of years ago. Now that I think of it, this series would be likely to appeal to many “Fruits Basket” fans, since it also consists largely of a depiction of school life with recurring fantasy elements.
As with “Fruits Basket,” “Gakuen Alice” has an ultimately upbeat tone and a cheerful, determined female protagonist, despite the occasional bout of angst and the ominous background fact that, as with the shapeshifting Sohma family members, the fate of the paranormally-talented students at Alice Academy is not in their own hands. (Once enrolled, the kids can’t leave the premises until they graduate, even for vacations, and a number of them were forcibly dragged there against their will by the government in the first place.) But the “Gakuen Alice” kids are much younger than the main “Furuba” characters, at least at first. In the anime, Mikan seemed to be only twelve, at most, when she initially enrolled at the school, and her friend Hotaru had reluctantly transferred there a year earlier. The storylines tend to be more like a middle school version of Harry Potter crossed with the more school-centric type of X-Men story than the teenage romantic mishaps that many fans primarily associate with the shojo genre.
I had no idea “Gakuen Alice” was allegedly so hugely popular in Japan, and, if this is the case, I’m a bit surprised TokyoPop has taken so long to make this announcement about it, since I’m pretty sure I saw it listed among the manga they had picked up in some news article nearly a year ago. Perhaps they were uncertain how to deal with the fact that Mikan actually seems to have a crush on her unemotional junior mad scientist friend Hotaru, even though both of them are girls—a fact which technically qualifies the series to be classified as (very G-rated) yuri, or girl/girl romance.