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everythingsinred · 1 year

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Mikan (pt. 2)

Hi again, friends. Yesterday we were introduced to our main character, specifically what makes her tick and then the first two chapters of the story. Today, we'll complete Mikan's first day at Alice Academy and reach the peak of the "enemies" part of NatsuMikan's enemies-to-lovers relationship.

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Chapter Three

Mikan formally meets the other representative, Yuu, who is sweet and willing to answer any questi

ons she has.

She thanks him, but suddenly Narumi’s test doesn’t seem so easy anymore because everyone around is kinda weird. How is she supposed to get along with kids who fly or have super-hearing? Hotaru and the others aren’t alarmed by the alices, like they’re no big deal, but Mikan only found out about them today! She’s overwhelmed and awe-struck and somehow she’s the one who looks weird as a result. Mikan being the odd one out is something I’ll explore in deeper detail later, but it’s important that she feels like a stranger in a strange world. Our Alice in Wonderland is stunned by what she sees, new to everything that Class B has grown up with.

Go easy on her, Hotaru. It's her first day!

Mikan is struck out of her reverie by Hotaru, who crushes her spirits instantly by telling her that she doesn’t want to be associated with her. She’s trying to get an award, after all, and Mikan is a magnet for trouble.

Instant whiplash, going from being shown rare affection by the person she came here for to being immediately abandoned and dismissed. Mikan came here to start their friendship from the beginning, and here’s Hotaru telling her they’re as good as strangers. Mikan might sum this up as “weird” behavior, but what she means is that it’s hurtful and inconsistent. She came here for Hotaru, after all! She tries to focus on Narumi’s test instead, hoping that this moment will pass, but it’s a bizarre conundrum to be in.

Mikan is introduced to the class by the substitute, but the kids refuse to hear him out, instead bullying him and throwing things at him. Mikan is gradually less and less confident in her ability to fit in with everyone. First, this school is full of unpleasant people, like Natsume. Second, it’s also full of freaks, and third, she’s the only one who seems freaked out by the freaks, which makes her look like the freak. Fourth, Hotaru has just shunned her. Fifth, the class is apparently more powerful than the teacher, which means that things are bound to get rough. It seems like the world is stacked against her.

She’s assigned a seat in the back and she makes her trek there. She passes Nonoko, who kindly greets her and gives Mikan a much-needed spark of energy. Not everyone here seems to be a violent, rude weirdo.

Meetcute number 3! Oh... nevermind...

By the time she takes her seat, she is back in fine spirits, determined to pass Narumi’s test. She cheerfully greets her new deskmate, but just her luck: it’s Natsume.

Mikan’s spirits are crushed once again. The absolute worst part of her day has come back to mock her. She’s already on shaky ground and he just has her falling all over again, which might be why she reacts so strongly despite her test to get along with classmates. Obviously, what he did would inspire rage in anybody, but her mood wasn’t that positive to begin with.

She jumps back and starts yelling at him. Their energy doesn’t match for most of the conversation: he speaks in flat monotone and she’s screaming (that’s pretty much the case for all their arguments). His apathy only pisses her off more. There’s nothing worse than trying to call out somebody who honestly doesn’t care. She forgets all about Narumi’s test and argues with him until she’s forced into the air by a new classmate, Mochu.

She’s getting farther and farther away from passing Narumi’s test.

The kids in class call Natsume “Natsume-san,” and he’s the ultimate boss. Nobody insults Natsume, nobody talks back to him, nobody disrespects him, without being bullied by his lackeys. He and his best friend even have a devoted fan club, headed by the biggest bully around, Sumire. Mikan was thrown unawares into an unfair hierarchy. She upset the balance but she didn’t even know there was a balance to begin with. Just one more reason that the world is out to get her.

Alice didn’t have a blast in Wonderland either.

The only person standing up for Mikan is Yuu, who is shy and whose word doesn’t seem to carry very much weight. He’s definitely not influential like Natsume or loud like Sumire. He just gets ignored.

So much for befriending her classmates.

Mikan just can’t win. She’s eventually let down, but then she’s accosted with the question of her alice. When she doesn’t answer, Koko reads her mind and reveals that she can’t answer. She doesn’t know what her alice is and that only irritates her classmates more. Sumire ends up going on a tirade about the superiority of alices to non-alices, and Mikan is hurt, because nobody challenges her. Hotaru is still ignoring her, and Mikan can’t help but feel like that’s maybe how she’s been viewed this whole time, even by her best friend. She’s an outcast again, because she’s not special like the rest of the class. This isn’t a topic that reappears the way it does in the anime. Mikan doesn’t fixate on this once she discovers her alice. But the basic premise of it, that she’s not as special and that she can’t do anything useful like these new, strange people around her can--that’s what gets to her. Even after Mikan finds out her alice, she feels too useless. Feeling like Hotaru always viewed her as inferior, as someone beneath her, only makes her feel worse.

But Mikan doesn’t linger on that. Narumi told her she was an alice, so she must be! She continues to fight until she is suddenly faced with the real danger of physical violence. Hotaru has no choice but to finally intervene, saving Mikan from getting socked in the face.

It’s finally revealed that Hotaru was trying to behave in order to win the best student award, which comes with prizes like meal vouchers and a weeklong trip home. Mikan is overjoyed that Hotaru rescued her and that she was doing her best to visit her too. For a few chapters, we have only seen Mikan’s side of things. Their friendship has seemed tragically one-sided, so finding out that Hotaru missed her too, so much so that she put in this effort to win the award and see her again, helps us understand that glimmer that Mikan likes so much about her.

Mikan tolerates the coldness because moments like this make it worth it.

Mikan is not a masochist. She doesn’t like being hit. She didn’t like that passing moment of hurt, of being a stranger in Hotaru’s world. She doesn’t like the insults or feeling not good enough. She loves Hotaru because of moments like this, because sometimes her best friend will let a little bit of fondness slip through the cracks to reassure her that their friendship is not one-sided. Mikan isn’t a masochist, she just understands Hotaru better than other people.

(This is important because Hotaru was only wishy-washy for, like, fifteen minutes. From now on, Mikan knows that Hotaru is her friend and is on her side. Natsume will be wishy-washy for about a hundred chapters.)

This joy of finally restarting their friendship just like Mikan wanted is cut short by Natsume, who has just found out about her tentative enrollment. He wants to make a deal: if she can make it through the Northern Woods safely, he’ll accept her as an Alice. She accepts eagerly, ready to prove herself. Mikan doesn’t back down easily. She sticks to her guns. If Narumi told her she’d be able to properly enroll after fitting in with her classmates, then she’ll agree to anything in order to achieve that.

Having forced Hotaru to accompany her and with Yuu gladly at her side, Mikan is ready to enter the Northern Woods. Yuu wants her to be careful. Natsume gave her a difficult task and the Northern Woods is full of “weird things,” like, say, a teddy bear that chops wood.

What matters here is that Mikan has no idea what she's signed herself up for (she continues to go through life like this for a long time).

Chapter Four

Mikan is fascinated by the moving teddy bear and doesn’t pay much attention to Yuu’s warnings. As a result she gets slugged and Mr. Bear beats the shit out of her. Hotaru saves them and it’s only when they’re making their escape in a little giraffe car that Mikan finally learns what Hotaru’s alice is: the alice of invention. Mikan is very impressed, so Hotaru points out that Yuu has a cool alice too: Illusion.

Mikan is a child who wants to be an adult without realizing the consequences; Natsume is a child who is already an adult in every way except for agency. There's the root of a solid thought there but...

Hotaru coldly scolds Mikan for involving her and Yuu in a game like this, when she herself has no idea what her alice is and can’t protect herself. Mikan approached Bear, after all, ignoring Yuu’s warnings and the fact that Natsume wouldn’t have sent her to a safe place for her test. She’s careless and it could get all three of them hurt. Though Hotaru says it in a mean way, there is some truth to her words: Mikan agreed to the game hastily and then involved her only two friends even though she had no idea what she was setting them up for.

Mikan stole her grandpa’s money but felt like she was making a sacrifice. She accepted a dangerous challenge from Natsume without considering the consequences and put her two only friends in danger as a result. She’s rash and careless, but these qualities have the potential to hurt the people around her, like right now. She doesn’t even know what her alice is, so how is she supposed to be of any use on this trip?

She'll carry this throughout the manga, even after she finds out her alice.

Mikan feels guilty about this, and she also begins to have another complex: insecurity about her alice, or currently lack thereof.

Mikan is impressed by every alice she sees, and she will continue to be impressed by others’ alices. She lacks a spark because she’s ordinary. Sumire’s earlier unchallenged tirade is still in Mikan’s head, combined with the knowledge that she put two people in danger just so they could protect her, so she is haunted by her ordinariness, but also her uselessness.

Of course, Hotaru and Yuu assure her that they want her to win too. But that insecurity will follow her for a while throughout the manga. Mikan’s biggest desire in the manga is to be strong enough to sacrifice something, to be able to protect people. She wants to be like Hotaru, to be able to make grand gestures for the people she cares about, even if it hurts her, but so far she’s only forced others to make sacrifices for her, even if she didn’t do it knowingly.

But she immediately changes the subject to ask about Natsume (she never stops being intrigued by him, even when she hates him), and it’s time for one more session of scaring Mikan. Though Yuu is hesitant to gossip, Hotaru jumps right in: Natsume is incredibly powerful, hates the academy, only has one friend, and is frequently gossiped about. He’s even rumored to be a murderer, which is not a rumor that is shared lightly. Mikan has started beef with somebody who has maybe killed before.

Mikan can’t help but feel like she’s messed up in a huge way. Troublemaker and repeated escapist is one thing. But pissing off a potential murderer is not something she can brush off. She’s been warned all day about him, that she should stay away from black cats, that he could hurt her in a serious way. She comments on his eyes--that although her first impression was that his eyes were fiery, his stare is in fact cold. He seems emotionless, calculated, cruel. Not a great impression that he’s leaving, that’s for sure.

"Oh no I pissed off a guy who could kill me!"

This relates to my earlier point of Misaki being the only person to explain things to her: people either withhold information, keeping her in the dark about important subjects, or they don’t know much to begin with. That’s why Mikan’s knowledge about Natsume is only a little bit about fact and a lot bit about speculation and rumor.

Mikan is only pulled from her concerns by more pressing matters: Giant Piyo has just woken up in the woods and he’s scared and hungry.

They run for their lives but the truth is that Hotaru’s alice can’t save them now. There’s only one option, and that’s to ask for help from Ruka, who has the animal pheromone alice. Unfortunately, Ruka is Natsume’s best friend and would never willingly help them. So the only thing they can do is trick him into coming to the Northern Woods.

Chapter Five

Now that they have Ruka trapped, they just have to ask him to get rid of Piyo for them. Mikan is friendly about it, but Ruka is tied up and was just tricked, so he’s not keen on cooperating until Hotaru threatens to use a tranquilizer on Piyo instead.

So Ruka finally complies, but only if they promise not to watch. Of course, they all do anyway. Yuu comments that Ruka is mysterious too, like Natsume, because nobody has seen him use his alice. They only talk to each other, so nobody else knows much about him. Mikan wonders about what Ruka’s “true self” must look like, and her questions are answered when Ruka embraces Piyo. When someone shows you who they really are, believe them. Ruka acts cold and standoffish, but the truth is that he’s a soft boy who loves animals.

Piyo is eventually taken away by his keepers and Ruka is devastated that the three of them watched even though they promised not to. Hotaru blackmails him into sticking around so he accompanies them, albeit in a sour mood.

Her ability to deduce is fantastic. That's why she's so stubborn. That's the only thing that can keep her from becoming too powerful.

Mikan teases him, but the truth is that she much prefers his “true self” to the facade he puts up. She asks him why he puts it up in the first place and wonders out loud if it’s because he’s trying to be like Natsume. She hit the nail on the head, but that just annoys her.

Mikan shows off her intuition and empathy here, but only for a moment. She’s able to connect the dots and see that Ruka is pretending to be someone he’s not, and even assumes correctly that it’s because he’s trying to emulate Natsume. She understands a lot about him from what little she’s been shown, and that understanding comes with compassion. She thinks he’s a great guy with a kind heart, even if he’s been hiding it. But her empathy doesn’t extend to Natsume. Once she learns that Ruka is doing it for Natsume, she speaks dismissively, calling Natsume lame and manipulative. It makes sense that she doesn’t have the same compassion for him, after everything he’s done to her and all she’s heard about him, but it’s interesting that her empathy has its limits.

Ruka won’t take that, so he shuts her down, yelling at her that she could never understand how Natsume feels, having an alice he doesn’t even want.

Mikan apologizes for her comments but wonders what Ruka means by that.

I can't say I'm the world's biggest Natsume apologist because that's Ruka's title.

Mikan seeks connection and wants to understand people. She wanted to understand Ruka, to see his “true self,” and now that she has, she understands him better (and has just learned that he’s fiercely protective of his jerk friend as well). She wanted to understand how Hotaru could leave her like she had, and now that she knows, she has a better grasp at what makes Hotaru tick. She needed reassurance that Narumi was the kind teacher she had assumed at first and after Misaki talked with her, she is certain that she was right from the start.

But any desire to connect with Natsume was squashed when he attacked her and then followed that up with letting the whole class bully her. It’s hard to want to connect with somebody so unpleasant, who has been nothing but mean to you. But Ruka is the first person to insist that there is a hidden depth to Natsume. He is the first person to defend him instead of spreading rumors and calling him dangerous (or being superficially worshipful of him like Mochu or Sumire). This gives Mikan an extra insight to Natsume’s character, but that just serves to make him more confusing. A sweet guy like Ruka thinks he’s great, that there’s something more to him, for one. Additionally, Natsume seems to be going through something, struggling with his alice.

On top of that, she still doesn’t know what her own alice is.

(Parallels from the beginning. Aren’t we blessed?)

Then Natsume shows up, furious and unreasonable (see my Natsume essay for a breakdown of his berserk button). He tells Mikan that she’s lost the game. She’s confused and startled, because this all seems to have come out of nowhere. Then he slams her against a tree, and this is the scariest he’s been all day, and he’s been scary from the start. His eyes are still cold, despite his rage, and Mikan is scared. He won’t listen no matter what even Ruka says. He only escalates when Hotaru tries to distract him with a smoke bomb. He traps her friends in rings of fire and demands that she tell him her alice if she doesn’t want them to die.

What would we call this "uselessness complex"? Imposter syndrome? Inferiority complex? IDK I studied fictional people in college, not psychology.

The rumors she’s heard today all take shape. Avoid black cats. He’s a murderer. It all feels real now. It’s more than just general bad vibes; this guy is really dangerous.

Mikan, helpless, pleads with him to put out the fire. She doesn’t know what her alice is--she probably doesn’t even have one--and even if she’d had one she would’ve used it by now. She feels guilty, because her friends are only in this situation because of her. Not only did she rope them into accompanying her to the Northern Woods, but she’s powerless now, unable to help them, even though they’ve been helping her all day. This is her chance to prove herself. She’s the only one who can save them, but she has no powers, no abilities.

Mikan is useless, unable to do anything meaningful. All she can do is yell at Natsume to cut it out. She pleads with herself, with her own alice, that if she ever had one, now is the time to come out. Natsume is distracted for a moment so Mikan makes her move. She tackles him to the ground, and just as he’s about to retaliate with his alice, something else knocks them both back.

I'll later have a lot of pretty thoughts about how it's always Natsume but not right this second.

A huge wave of an alice, and it wasn’t Natsume’s.

Narumi knocks him out, having arrived on the scene just in time to witness the end of the fight. Yuu and Hotaru are finally free and Mikan embraces them, happy to see them both safe. The test is over, Narumi announces, and Mikan is concerned, because she’s caused all this. She’s sure she’ll be kicked out, until Narumi congratulates her on passing. She has a wonderful alice: the nullification alice.

She can stay at school, with Hotaru. She can be a fully fledged Alice Academy student.

She thinks she’s useless and feels guilty for involving her friends, only to come out and prove that she is capable of something amazing. She was ultimately able to protect herself, and against Natsume’s powerful alice, even if she wasn’t even aware of it. Mikan’s alice suits her very well. Not everyone has an alice they want or like, as we have already seen, but even though Mikan has a complicated relationship with her alice, it complements her kind and sociable personality. She values other people and her alice has the power to protect the people closest to her.

She’s overjoyed, until Hotaru teases her for having an alice as selfish as its owner, something that can only be used on herself. But Narumi assures her that that’s up to her: an alice can be a poison or a medicine, depending on its user.

I remember being shocked and disappointed the first time I watched Gakuen Alice, to find out that her alice was nullification and not something more fun or tangible like water or something (I was a stupid child then). But imagine if I’d gotten what I’d wanted back then, what a boring story that would make! Mikan’s arc is about becoming the person she wants to be, about recognizing her talents and worth, about realizing that she can be of use, can be helpful, that she can save somebody with her alice. A girl like Mikan suits the nullification alice: plain and unimpressive on the outside but with so much potential on the inside.

Mikan’s nullification alice isn’t flashy or immediately impressive like her classmates’. She can’t create or attack with it. All she can do is protect, and because it’s untrained, she has a long way to go to refine it. But her alice isn’t all about protecting herself. Narumi muses that maybe there’s somebody in need of her alice, who could benefit from it, and it’s pretty clear foreshadowing that Natsume is in the same panel when he says this.

SUBTLE NUDGE. (It's always Natsume.)

Mikan’s alice is important, especially in regards to her relationship with Natsume. Her alice stops offensive attacks. He has an alice he doesn’t even want. The potential here is clear from the start. Furthermore, her alice is revealed to the audience through her nullifying his attack. Mikan’s relationship with her alice is narratively intertwined with Natsume and his relationship with his own alice. Her alice is set up to have the potential to help somebody--particularly Natsume--in a huge way, and it will.

But Natsume is the last thing on her mind right now. Mikan can finally stay with Hotaru. She’s a real Alice now.

Conclusion

Mikan has just been through an ordeal, but came out the end of it with an alice of her very own! Just like this arc solidified some of Natsume's most important traits, Mikan's are also cemented (the worst ones, anyway). Yesterday we met a girl crippled by toxic positivity. Now we see she thinks she's useless too. Very fun for her!

Anyway, I do think this is the peak of her hatred for him because he hurt her and all her friends. I get that. But it will only cool from now on. Surprisingly, it only gets better from here.

Tomorrow, we'll watch Mikan adjust to Academy life and her struggle with the rules, as well as with fitting in. I'm not sure what my schedule will look like in the long run, but for now expect me to post on weekdays with weekend breaks, similar to my Natsume essay schedule. I will probably need the breaks lmao.

Thank you for reading, friends! I hope it was enjoyable!

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#gakuen alice #alice academy #ga #sakura mikan #mikan sakura #hyuuga natsume #natsume hyuuga #my meta #ga meta #ga meta: nm #ga meta: manga #ga meta: manga nm #let's talk about natsumikan #let's talk about natsumikan: mikan #ill rec another mikan song: fake happy by paramore (tho thatll be more relevant later)#i also listened to 'ratujemo ti i ja' by sars while editing which is a very. enemies to lovers vibes song #it is in serbian tho lol #im off to do an interview appointment thing now. <3 hope yall enjoyed and stay tuned for tomorrow

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