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Title: Gals! #10

Author:  Mihona Fujii

Publisher:  CMX

ISBN:  9781401208486

May Contain Spoilers

With graduation fast approaching, Ran just can’t focus on her studies.  How can she with the spring shopping season fast approaching?  Too bad she doesn’t have the money for all the awesome new fashions hitting the streets!  While she and Tatsukichi have a small problem hooking up, she meets his little brother and young cousin roaming the streets of Shibuya.  Giving them a personalized tour, she’s dismayed when a purse snatcher grabs Kyohei’s backpack.  Now he hates Shibuya and wishes he’d never come!  

The final volume of Gals! follows Ran and her friends as they look beyond high school and start preparing for the adulthood.  Well, maybe only Ran’s friends matured enough to actually think beyond strutting through the streets of Shibuya, window shopping for the latest fashions.  Ran takes a little longer to get her priorities straight, and even then, other factors motivate her.  It’s only after she’s chosen by the underclassmen to deliver the graduation speech that she begins to buckle down and start seriously applying herself to her studies.  If she doesn’t pass her exams, she won’t be able to participate in the graduation ceremony, and that’s what has caught her attention.  Her speech is delivered in typical, unconventional Ran fashion, and I’m sure all of her teachers heaved a huge sigh of relief that she wouldn’t be back the following year.

With the rest of her life looming before her, Ran has some other serious decisions to make.  Much to the disappointment of her father, there’s no way in hell she wants to follow in the family footsteps to the local police box.  That doesn’t really leave her many options, as she’s hardly college material, and she has yet to dream up a paying career that allows her to strut her stuff through Shibuya’s trendy streets; or has she?  There’s nothing surprising about her career choice, and it should keep her happily making the rounds in Shibuya.

Gals! occasionally gets a little overwhelming, with both Ran’s frantic behavior and the chaotic illustrations that are crammed into the panels.  Ran, a poster child for ADD, needs to cut back on either the caffeine or the nail polish fumes.  Her behavior teeters between funny and obnoxiously annoying, and this is a series that works best for me in small chunks. 

Grade:  C+

Rated for Teen

Review galley provided by CMX