Hoping for a happy ending in Gal Gohan’s tenth and final volume

So this is it; it all comes down to this last volume. After ten books of delightful sexy fun, good-natured love rivalry and some of the most beautiful eyes ever depicted in the manga medium, Gal Gohan is finally coming to a close with its tenth and final installment. At last, we will get an answer to the question that’s been on our lips right from the outset: “will they or won’t they?”

I mean, obviously, clearly, definitely they will, but the question is: how does that happen?

We open immediately with a scene that combines Gal Gohan’s leading lady Miku Okazaki’s love of teasing our hero (and still, at this point, her teacher) Shinji Yabe with a sign that she has grown and matured. As we join the story, Miku is preparing for her culinary school entrance exam in an attempt to realise her ambitions of becoming a chef and/or a home economics teacher.

The script has, it has to be said, wibble-wobbled back and forth a little between these two slightly different potential outcomes over the course of the last couple of volumes of Gal Gohan, though Miku’s earnest desire to grow up as someone worthy of — and appropriate for — Yabe’s love remains a constant.

Part of that whole maturation process involves accepting that, as free as she has been to express herself as a gal up until this point, when she enters the world of adulthood she will not necessarily have that same freedom. And as such, the first chapter of this final Gal Gohan volume sees Yabe helping her dye her blonde hair a more respectable Japanese shade of black, because she supposedly “forgot” to do so.

Of course, Yabe sees right through her deception the moment she reveals that she put a swimsuit on under her school uniform to protect her modesty — but he doesn’t mind. It’s another opportunity for the pair of them to bond, after all — and there might not be many more.

This whole scene is actually something of a callback to a previous conversation between Miku and Yabe, in which she admitted that while she loved being a gal, she would happily change herself for him — up to and including changing her hair colour if he ever indicated that he preferred black hair. While she’s not necessarily doing it for him directly in this scene, one can make the argument that her whole desire to get into the culinary trade almost entirely stems from her desire to get closer to and understand Yabe better — and as such, in some way, the black hair is for Yabe.

At its core, though, it’s one of the more emotional scenes in Gal Gohan. It’s Yabe and Miku’s last official club session together — and as such, after her maintaining a firmly stiff upper lip and admirable degree of decorum when thanking him and saying goodbye, it’s entirely understandable that she explodes in a torrent of thoroughly undignified tears while walking home. Particularly as she’s left him with a letter that finally, once and for all, explains that no, she’s not just teasing, yes she really does love him, and no, she really doesn’t know what the best way to handle these boiling emotions is.

“Being a gal was all I was good at,” she writes, referring back to how she felt like everyone had written her off at the outset of Gal Gohan’s first volume. “No matter what else went wrong, being a gal made it okay. I screwed up that first batch of cookies. I felt so bad for wasting your time. But you ran with the gal thing and didn’t give up on me. I was really happy. Happier than I’d ever felt. I thought, this dude’s the one!

“I never expected anything to come of it,” she continues. “I knew you’d reject the idea. And when Fujiwara-chan graduated, you proved you’d never go for a student. I envy Nagisa-chan. If only I was your age. I wish I was grown-up. Maybe you don’t need to hear any of this. But I can’t just give up. I know better! I do. But I love you.

“I love you, Yabecchi! I want us to be happy together. To stick together, no matter what. I want you to be glad you chose me. Even if I have to keep my hair black! Maybe you think that’s dumb… but it’s how I feel. Once I’ve graduated, will you finally see me as a woman?”

Yabe is struck dumb by Miku’s confession; there’s no trace of her silliness and teasing in there. This is pure honesty; completely earnest feelings, and the maturity to recognise there’s a chance that it will all be for naught. But we know very well by now that Yabe has been harbouring his own feelings for Miku for some time now — even though he knows that to act upon them would be many, many levels of wrong.

And as such, it’s not a surprise to see him, after he gets over the initial shock at her final question, burst out of his classroom to go and find her — only to discover that she’s come running back to wait for his response, too.

The chapter ends in complete silence, with no explicit acknowledgement of what transpires between the pair of them and a simple representation of winter giving way to spring. And it’s very effective.

The next chapter leaps forward six months in time, and business is seemingly booming for Yabe’s cooking club — with some fun parallels to Miku’s first appearance with his new students. But Yabe is still troubled, and Nagisa recognises and understands this; she describes the way he’s been for the last six months as him “looking like she took your soul with her”. Yabe is quick to deny this, but the evidence is fairly compelling.

This, naturally, causes Yabe to reflect on what transpired six months earlier — and we finally get to see what actually happened. It turns out that Yabe stuck to his guns and continually told both himself and Miku that he absolutely, definitely could not date either a student or, as he rather harshly refers to her at one point, a “child”.

The pair are clearly frustrated for similar but contrasting reasons. Miku is upset because she knows Yabe really does feel something for her but refuses to allow himself to, as he puts it, “act like a scumbag and allow my baser urges to drive me into the arms of a student”.

Yabe, meanwhile, is obviously struggling with the depths of his own feelings coupled with his sincere desire to do the right thing, to protect Miku from the harshness of the adult world — and, of course, to not be looked upon as a predator himself.

“Why did I start to chase after her?” he asks himself. “She smiled. But I knew she’d been about to cry. That’s a side of her I could never ignore. That’s all.”

But things gradually change as Yabe gets the opportunity to spend time with Miku, enjoying her first vacation from culinary school and immediately doubling down on the gal thing after having to suppress it for so long.

She and Yabe get the opportunity to visit a farm they had previously been to together as student and teacher and a variety of things happen; when learning how to milk a cow, Miku gets covered in milk in the second exceedingly transparent cumshot allegory of the series, but also she demonstrates how well she knows Yabe when he exhibits discomfort over eating the meat of animals they had just been interacting with.

He’d been trying to hide it — particularly as the farming couple had brought extra meat specifically for him — but Miku understands right away and helps him fake his way through the situation with some well-placed “say ahh” shenanigans.

“She’s helping me,” he realises. “Right, she’s no longer a student in need of my protection.”

Something clearly clicks in Yabe’s head at this point, because after the pair of them depart and Miku suggests another date, he doesn’t immediately deny that what they’ve just done was a date, nor that any potential future meetings are “dates” — and in fact he indicates that he would be very open to spending more time with her, their own commitments permitting.

These sequences are all very satisfying and heartwarming to see — and thus when another narrative thread is revisited, it’s also rather pleasing. Yes, Fujiwara comes back to see Yabe — ostensibly to deliver a lunch that Miku made for him, but clearly she also wanted to see him too. This is why despite complaining to Miku that making her run this errand for her is “cruel and unusual”, she still agrees to do it.

“Her food sure puts a smile on your face,” Fujiwara says as the pair of them settle down to eat together — and Yabe reveals an absurdly lovey-dovey bento from Miku. “Are you sure you’re not a couple?”

“We aren’t, I swear!” Yabe protests immediately. “She’s my student. Off-limits!”

But Fujiwara keeps pressing.

“Former student,” she corrects him. “She’s graduated. No longer a problem.”

“But she’s still a minor,” Yabe retorts.

“Yes,” adds Fujiwara. “But she’s eighteen. Old enough. Japanese laws allow serious relationships with minors, if they’re above the age of consent. Marriage is allowed, and sex, if consensual, violates no laws. In other words, legally speaking, you’re fine. So my point is, there’s no reason you and I couldn’t date, if we were serious about it. Speaking hypothetically.”

Fujiwara knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Whose face just crossed your mind?” she asks after a moment’s silence. Of course it was Miku’s. “The reason I fell for you is because you always saw who I really was,” she continues. “So why don’t you try seeing her as a woman who loves you?”

It’s a fair point, and thus Yabe resolves to try and take things slow. But Miku, of course, is not the sort of person who does anything slowly — let alone begin pursuing a relationship she’s been thinking about for several years by this point.

From this point on, there’s an interesting tonal shift towards Yabe in Gal Gohan. While the word “paedophile” hasn’t been mentioned once up until this point, it comes up several times within the space of a few pages from hereon. Initially it comes up with a colleague cautioning him that his current students would think he’s a “paedo” if they found out about Miku making him lunch, and subsequently, after he asks Nagisa out to ask for romantic advice — an event at which she hopes (in vain) that she might have a last-ditch attempt to confess her feelings to him.

“I’ve started to be conscious of [Miku] as a woman,” he admits to Nagisa who, quickly becoming aware that her chance departed long, long ago, is already drinking heavily. “I’m afraid to admit it.”

“Eeaugh! You frickin’ paedophile!” she cries. “She’s eighteen, you perv. But if you’re both happy, who cares?”

“I probably deserve that,” Yabe admits. “I know this was a weird thing to bring up, but I have to face how I feel. And I was afraid other teachers, like you, would loathe me for it. You’re the teacher I respect the most. Honestly, this whole thing has shaken me. Graduate or not, she’s still my student. I dunno if I should let myself see her this way. I don’t know if doing this makes me a good mentor for her.”

“Then I better take this seriously too,” Nagisa continues, having calmed down from her previous outburst. “I personally wouldn’t date a student. Even once they’ve graduated. I mean, it’s a teacher’s job to protect our students.”

Nagisa’s thoughts reflect feelings that Yabe has already moved on from; he knows that she no longer needs protecting and that she is more than capable of protecting him in return when necessary. We know this by this point, but Nagisa doesn’t. Plus, she’s still harbouring some last-minute hope — seemingly believing for a moment that the fact she’s been in love with Yabe for longer must count for something.

But then something seemingly occurs to her; she knows she’s never going to win this fight, so she has to do what is right without ruining what she still does have with Yabe.

“But you do love her, right?” she asks, without waiting for a response. “Certainly, dating former students carries a ton of problems. That’s not baggage you can easily ignore. But there’s no such thing as a perfect couple. If you’re gonna do this, make sure you both end up happy. Okazaki-san was my student, too, so I won’t stand for anything else.”

“I was scared to lose what we had,” she tells herself. “Okazaki-san and Fujiwara-san were both braver than I was.” But it’s precisely because she now understands completely what Yabe is feeling — even without him saying anything completely conclusive — that she finally feels able to admit her own feelings to him, even though she recognises and admits that it’s far too late for her to give voice to them.

What we have in this final volume of Gal Gohan, then, is something of an explosion of emotion — and not just on the part of our main characters. At this point, all the things that have doubtless been weighing on the reader’s mind for the entire run of Gal Gohan, particularly with regard to the impropriety of the relationship between Miku and Yabe, suddenly come to a head. Not only does Yabe have to come to terms with the choices ahead of him, but the reader does, too.

Having followed Gal Gohan’s romantic comedy up until this point, chances are most readers are very much on board with Yabe and Miku getting together — but the question is, are they willing to wait until it’s considered more societally appropriate, as Yabe seemingly is, or do they feel he should just rush right in, potentially to the scorn and derision of people whose opinion he values?

How exactly does it all end up? Well, I’ve got to leave you with some reason to read this final volume and find out for yourself, no?

Gal Gohan volume 10 is available now in paperback from Amazon. Digital versions and alternative retailers can be found via Seven Seas’ website.

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