Tempting propositions in Gal Gohan’s seventh volume

As we talked about last time around, author and artist Marii Taiyou originally only expected Gal Gohan to run for five volumes of manga, with the story left tantalisingly open-ended and presumably up to the reader’s interpretation from thereon. But the positive reception the series had led her on to finish off the story — and with volume 7, it very much seems like we’re starting to build towards one of several different possible conclusions.

What’s been interesting about Gal Gohan so far is that the eventual outcome doesn’t feel like it’s a clear-cut thing. I mean, one would assume that with Miku Okazaki being the titular “gal” and the main focus on the narrative, she is the one who is going to “win” in the end.

But at the same time, as the series progresses, we start to get more and more indications that at least two other characters might be a better match for our hero Shinji Yabe — and that Yabe, being an inherently good sort of person, might just turn them all down out of a combination of embarrassment and professionalism.

Volume 7 directly follows on from the cliffhanger at the end of the sixth volume, in which a beauty contest is about to be held at the school, and Fujiwara — one of Miku’s two main rivals — decides that she wants in as a means of properly confessing her feelings to Yabe. Or, at the very least, to present him with an opportunity to look upon her as a woman rather than the reliable old school council president — and, more importantly, child — he habitually sees her as.

Given the order that the contestants appear in the contest, though, Fujiwara finds herself following Miku in the “confession” part of the competition. While Miku is, as expected, forthright, direct and completely honest — without any thought as to how people might judge her for speaking her mind — Fujiwara instead takes a different approach, saying simply “please wait until I graduate”. There’s enough ambiguity in that phrase for her to feel like she’s maintaining a degree of propriety, but also a hint of something sizzling beneath the surface, just waiting to be unleashed.

It works; Fujiwara ends up winning the beauty contest after a unanimous vote from the panel of judging teachers — which includes Yabe. He, of course, complements her for her excellent acting — and she, still in floods of tears at this point after what, to her, was essentially laying her soul completely bare in front of a huge audience, claims that she wasn’t acting… before immediately passing the whole thing off as a joke. A certain part of her knows that going too far would simply make things awkward.

Miku doesn’t like to let it show, but she’s a little put out that she didn’t win the contest — though having struck up a solid friendship with Fujiwara by this point, she doesn’t want to take it out on her. Hanging out with Yabe and cooking sweet potatoes over an open fire, she broaches the subject with him, pondering if he “prefers good girls” and wondering if she really “matters”.

“I don’t play favourites,” Yabe explains. “I have to treat all students the same.”

Of course, we know very well that Yabe absolutely does play favourites, otherwise he wouldn’t be having this little rendezvous with Miku at all. After all, although she’s a member of his cooking club at school, on many, many occasions by this point in the series, we’ve seen him going well above and beyond the call of duty for the role of a club advisor from the teaching staff. And this is only emphasised by the fact he made an extra little surprise for Miku for their get-together — and Miku made one for him, too.

“I guess we really are perfect for each other, huh?” she says.

“Maybe,” says Yabe, chuckling — the first time he hasn’t responded to a situation like this with embarrassment, fear or some other means of pushing Miku away. This, of course, leaves Miku momentarily speechless — but it leaves her feeling like she “lost the contest but won the war”.

A subsequent chapter sees a school trip to the beach — including both Miku and her friends Makoto and Hana wearing some racy swimsuits that Taiyou clearly had an absolutely wonderful time designing. This is a particularly interesting chapter, because it’s an example of how circumstances can make an age and power gap more or less obvious and relevant; for much of the time in Gal Gohan, we’ve seen Yabe and Miku operating almost as “equals”, however much Yabe might protest — but in this chapter, we see Yabe very obviously demonstrating a power differential.

After Miku seeks solace from Makoto after failing to tempt Yabe with her G-string bikini bottoms — “a view just for you”, she claims, revealing them to him — the pair are approached by a pair of dodgy-looking men who, in traditional “beach episode” formula, don’t want to take “no” for an answer. But as they grab Makoto’s arm and before they’re able to do anything untoward, Yabe shows up and attempts to scare them off by asking them if they’re “sure they want to be accosting minors” and indicating that he is their teacher, and thus more than happy to take responsibility for them.

This is a rare moment in Gal Gohan where we get the impression there was a genuine sense of peril and threat; up until now, the whole thing has been rather gentle and light-hearted, and this sequence was the first real evidence that the world outside one’s high school life can be a harsh and dangerous place. At the same time, we see a Yabe who is keen to ensure that his charges are able to maintain their innocence — or some semblance of it, at least — for as long as possible. No-one should be forced to grow up too soon by the actions of others.

Of course, Miku then goes and ruins the moment by declaring Yabe her boyfriend — though oddly enough, the prospect of Yabe sleeping with one of his students is the one thing that sends the girls’ would-be assailants running in fear from this supposedly crazy man.

The following chapter of Gal Gohan is a particular delight; still on the school trip, Miku has a bath and does herself up nicely, calling Yabe out in private on the grounds that she has “something important to say”. By this point, we’ve been led to believe that this will be yet another example of her attempting to confess to him — and indeed, it certainly seems that might be what is happening.

Miku actually takes things the furthest she’s ever done in this particular scene, demanding answers of Yabe’s seemingly nonexistent libido and eventually straddling him in an attempt to provoke some sort of… reaction. Yabe’s having none of it, of course — though after he throws her off and threatens to leave, Miku indicates that there was actually something else, something more important that she wanted to say. It is noteworthy, however, that before she reveals this, Yabe has an unfinished thought where he admits to himself that if she were to confess to him again he “can’t”… something. There are a few ways to interpret that inner monologue, but Taiyou perhaps wisely leaves them to the reader’s interpretation.

But Miku’s big thing to say isn’t that she wants to confess again — at least, not right now. Instead, she’s come to a decision, inspired by Yabe: she wants to be a home economics teacher in her own right, largely because of how much joy she’s found in preparing food for others — but having been led to believe that she was something of a failure prior to Yabe entering her life in the first volume of Gal Gohan, she’s understandably hesitant to make such a seemingly concrete decision for her future. Yabe, recognising this, reassures her that it’s a great idea — and that her reasoning is a very sound reason to want to pursue that path.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t laugh at me for that,” she admits. “Thanks for hearing me out. I wanted you to be the first to know! I mean, it’s because of you that I want to do this.”

“Children grow up before you know it,” Yabe muses to himself. “She’s got a bright future ahead of her.”

This actually would have been a great point for this volume of Gal Gohan to finish — but there’s plenty more to come, beginning with a Fujiwara-centric chapter where we see the aftermath of her winning the beauty contest: a seemingly endless line of boys wanting to ask her out. Yabe, seemingly genuinely oblivious to Fujiwara’s feelings — even when she admits she’s turning all the boys down because of “someone else” she loves — finds himself agreeing to play “the classmates game” with Fujiwara, in which the pair address one another as if they are classmates rather than student and teacher.

This is actually pretty in keeping with Fujiwara’s behaviour up until this point. With every moment of seeming intimacy she’s managed to achieve with Yabe, she knows that it’s not “real” and that it’s something which can never be “real” — but still she keeps grasping these brief moments of happiness for herself. We’ve seen already how she is often exhausted at how quickly she has been forced to grow up, and how little time her responsibilities at both home and school leave her to just enjoy her teenage years — and as such, it’s understandable that, now and then, she does what she can to snatch these brief moments in what is, to her, another world.

By this point, Fujiwara appears to have reluctantly accepted her position. While she doesn’t necessarily believe that she’s doomed to lose out to Miku, she does at least know that it’s impossible for anything to truly happen between the pair of them prior to her graduation — and thus she comes to find Yabe’s perpetual obliviousness to be rather endearing and amusing.

Gal Gohan’s seventh volume concludes with two chapters that are highly entertaining for completely different reasons. First, we see Yabe meeting Miku’s parents for the first time, with the real highlight here being how Miku’s father is presented as an incredibly threatening Yakuza-style figure in a completely different art style. Miku’s father is, in fact, a florist who enjoys playing golf, but the palpable sense of doom that surrounds him is spectacular to see — particularly when we see that both Miku and her rather gal-like mother are completely immune to it.

As light-hearted and funny as these scenes are, they’re important, too — they give us an idea of how enthusiastic Miku is about the idea of her and Yabe being together, and that her parents would actually not be averse to the idea under the appropriate circumstances. Miku’s father even goes so far as to address Yabe in a way that is typically seen in traditional Japanese romances when a suitor is seeking the approval of their loved one’s parents prior to asking their hand in marriage — a fact which is not lost on a rather uncomfortable Yabe.

The final scene, meanwhile, unfolds on Christmas Day, which Yabe appears to be celebrating alone at home — until Miku shows up on his doorstep, shivering in the cold and dressed in a sexy Santa outfit. Naturally, he invites her in, and Miku takes another opportunity to be the most sexually provocative she has been up until this point — foot fetishists will particularly enjoy this chapter — though, once again, Yabe proves that he is not easily swayed by the wiles of a sexy young girl. Particularly once she accidentally kicks him in the bollocks.

The volume ends with another cliffhanger — this time with the worsening blizzard outside Yabe’s home forcing Miku to stay the night with him. A dangerous situation, for sure — will our hero be able to prevail over his baser instincts? Only one way to find out, huh?

Gal Gohan vol. 7 is available in paperback on Amazon. Other retailers and digital versions can be found via Seven Seas’ website.

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