Gakuen Alice, Vol. 3

Contains Chapters 11 - 16: This is a really fun volume. I'm the beginning of the volume Mikan learns about the upcoming school festival and then her and several of her friends go to Central Town. Then Natsume is sick in the campus hospital when a celebrity alumni visits who turns out to be working with an organization that is against the academy and they kidnap Natsume with Mikan and Sumire as witnesses who follow after them to rescue Natsume leaving Hotaru and Luca to explain things to the teachers.

This volume of Gakuen Alice begins with more explainations on how star rankings works, as poor Mikan finally receives her allowance and goes shopping in Central Town. But being the creative girl she is, she finds away to make the most of this as well as continue to make more friends. Also, with the school Cultural festival coming up, students are busy preparing to show off their alices, well everyone except the Dangerous Ability class.

The second part begins the "Reo Arc", and the story finally begins to shed some light on why Natsume hates the school, hints about what the Dangerous Ability class really is, and why Natsume is called the "Black Cat."

Volume 3 is a must read to get a sense and feel for the series, where before the show more impression left was a cute elementary school story, we now have an idea of the darker side of Gakuen Alice and the forces working against it.

The book itself still has the partial glossy cover with a picture of Hotaru with her tools. However, her inventions have been removed from the background (see original japanese cover for for actual cover image). Paper quality is good, though the ink quality seems to be getting worse as the pages began to quickly fade at various parts of the book.

Price ($9.99 US) is comparable to other shoujo manga at the time of publication. show less