Reviews

By Kaoru Shintani. Released in Japan as “Christie High Tension” by Media Factory, serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

The Young Miss Holmes series wraps up here with an omnibus of the final three volumes, and also takes a departure from canon, as only the first story, “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”, is a Watson story published by Conan Doyle. That said, some of the titles of the remaining stories here may be familiar with Holmes and Watson, particularly the “Canary Trainer” mentioned in “The Adventure of Black Peter”, and the infamous “Giant Rat of Sumatra”, mentioned in the “Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” story. Shintani makes a decent effort at leaving the Holmes canon, and it allows him to do a bit more with Christie than simple sleuthing, particularly in the finale, which is basically an action movie with very little detecting.

The canonical Holmes story, Solitary Cyclist, does a decent job of having Christie and Sherlock join forces. Violet Smith is an old friend of Grace, Christie’s governess. Christie herself is chomping at the bit to become more independent, while still retaining a childlike air (particularly in the Circus chapters). That said, she’s not only more mature than most girls her age but far more modern, discussing how she has no desire to be a young lady the way the Victorians see them, and is already taking her savings and starting a pension plan to allow her servants to retire happily. It’s a good way to try to drag Holmes into the 21st century a bit, while still maintaining the charm of the original. (That said, I could have done without the appearance of Queen Victoria herself, in the weakest part of the book.)

The book is not faultless, of course. There is less nudity and gore than the first two omnibuses, but there’s still lots of corpses for an All-Ages rating, and Comic Flapper and Shintani still seem to sexualize Christie more than is necessary on a few title pages. The use of ‘moneylenders’ once or twice comes with some Victorian stereotypes, although it’s not really bad unless you’re looking for it. (Indeed, most of the villains here suffer from “I am ugly and therefore a villain” disease, which is quite common in comics and manga alike.) “The Dying Message” and “The Flying Dancer” aren’t too bad, but are weaker than the other stories we see here.

The Canary Trainer story is easily the creepiest of the book, featuring murder, suicide, child slavery, hypnotic suggestion, and child prostitution. It also merges Christie and Holmes the best of the five stories seen here, as they start out pursuing two totally different cases that only turn out to be the same thing right near the end. However, in a shocking display of canon ignorance, Shintani may have drawn Mycroft Holmes as slim. Luckily, there’s an out: everyone who says “that must have been Mycroft” didn’t actually see him. Perhaps it was Sherringford. Let’s go with that.

Things come to a head with the 7th volume/last third of the book, The Giant Rat of Sumatra. This helps to avoid the stereotype of “foreign villains” by sending a troup of good guys from India to help protect Christie from the thuggee bad guys. They are, of course, led by a young woman who is basically the Indian version of Christie, complete with tomboy mannerisms and snarky retainers. She’s good in a fight, however, which is a bonus, as Christie decides to simply go to ground in her mansion and let the villains come to her. Which they do, in one big final conflagration.

The series ends with the return of Christie’s parents, which marks a good stopping point – I’m sure they won’t totally stop her getting into adventures, but no doubt she will have to slow down a little. Shintani is currently writing a sequel, Christie London Massive, featuring a 17-year-old Christie, a whole new cadre of battle maids (led by Nora, no fear, she’s still there), and perhaps a familiar adversary of Sherlock Holmes thrown into the mix. Of course, that’s Japan. Whether it comes out here or not depends on how well the print and E-Book versions do. I had a ball reading them, particularly as a Holmes fan, and definitely recommend picking up the whole series.

Also, there is a dodo. For some reason.

By Kyoko Okazaki. Released in Japan by Shodensha, serialized in the magazine Feel Young. Released in North America by Vertical.

When I first heard about the new title that Vertical had licensed, and its basic premise, I started to formulate in my head an idea of how it would probably go. We already knew it would be about modeling and plastic surgery in some way. It was not a great leap forward to imagine there would be a younger, more successful rival, a controlling mother figure, and the hubristic slide into inevitable tragedy. And technically, that’s all present and correct in this volume. But that doesn’t begin to describe what a stunning ride this is, and how much you get drawn into its characters and storyline.

Liliko is the star here, and she’s far more self-aware than I was really expecting. She starts at the top of the modeling game, but it’s taken a lot of work to get her there. Moreover, a secondary plotline throughout the book discusses the shady characters who did her plastic surgery, and how the law is getting closer and closer to them. Really, while Liliko is flagrantly horrible at many points in this book – she notes at one point that she’s so broken that the only thing that gives her satisfaction is breaking others – she’s no worse than na lot of the top strata in the business she’s engaged in, which uncaringly throws away stars once they lose their looks or get embroiled in scandal.

Actually, the character I was most fascinated with throughout the book was Hada, the young woman who starts as Liliko’s gofer/assistant and ends up falling for her hard, in all the wrong ways. I was initially expecting Hada to end up killing herself – there are a few suicides in this book, and I wondered if one of the corpses I saw would be hers. Then, as things got worse, I realized that it was more likely she’d wind up arrested. Then I wondered if she’d be the chief witness for the prosecution. Then, as things really spiraled, it became clear that there was no separating Hada and her easily led boyfriend from Liliko for any period… not while they’re still completely codependent on each other.

There was one thing I didn’t think worked here, or at least that didn’t resonate with me as much as the rest of the book. Takao Nanbu, Liliko’s boyfriend at the start of the book, likes to speak in a philosophical, slightly smarmy way, and he simply grated on my nerves with all the Tiger Lily stuff and talk about past lives. Certainly he added a different element to the story (and oh do I feel bad for his fiancee getting caught up in Liliko’s psychotic drama), but especially towards the end I felt his monologues were simply overdone.

It’s hard to discuss the main selling point of this manga, as it’s basically an underlying tone. So much happens here that could be termed a car crash, but Okazaki is so compelling a storyteller that you read on anyway, even as modeling turns to adultery, assault and multiple suicides. The title is completely appropriate – and no, despite the song getting a mention right at the end, I don’t think it’s entirely talking about The Beatles. The Helter Skelter is a British amusement park ride (tornado slide for U.S. readers) that is a wild, out of control ride that makes the reader want to go back to the top when they hit the bottom. Likewise Liliko hits rock bottom at the end of this book, but that doesn’t mean that we should count her out, or that this is the end. Her story (and possible new downfall) is only beginning.

By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Sometimes books just read FAST. You pick up the book, start turning the pages, and the next thing you know you’re looking at the preview. That’s definitely the case with this volume of Attack on Titan, which is nonstop action from beginning to end, and its pace is just unrelenting. We see Armin being clever, Reiner being badass, Eren learning that being in a military organization is a hard thing for a hothead to do, and lots of mass destruction and slaughter of the survey team in general. As if the cover didn’t already tip you off.

Armin noted at the end of the last volume that the female Titan who dominates this volume is intelligent, and boy do we see that here. She knows how to protect herself, she’s mercilessly cruel and sadistic (you can see the amusement in her face when a soldier begs her to let him go, and she starts spinning him around till he’s so much meat before doing so), and far, far harder to get rid of than the run of the mill titans we’d seen to date. It takes Armin, Jean and Reiner all of their combined skills just to get away and try to shove the titan in the right direction.

As for Eren, he’s having the same problem that a reader might be having – he spent 5 volumes training and bonding with a group of friends and comrades, only to be torn away from them and forced into a group he barely knows and who doesn’t seem to like him much (excepting the resident mad scientist). Not to mention people still won’t let him go berserk and just start killing Titans, possibly as it’s incredibly stupid. He does begin to get an inkling of what military discipline is like here, as Levi straight up tells him he can do what he wants but reminds him of what they’ve all been fighting for. In the end, despite his rage and tragic past, it’s just not all about Eren.

Speaking of his new squadmates, I appreciated the flashback where we see how well they work together as a unit. Given a series like this, you tend to dismiss anyone who doesn’t have a bio at the front of the book as “cannon fodder”, and the fact that they had pictures but no text didn’t bode well. But the fact is Levi’s squad has survived longer than Eren has outside the walls, and they’ve killed more Titans than he has too. Their well-oiled machine shows Eren that he can turn his rage and anger into something useful to them. And his trust is rewarded in the end, as the female Titan is captured due to the efforts of the entire team.

This was a thrilling volume, and uplifting compared to previous ones. Of course, that means next time it will likely be even more depressing, but hey, you take your victories where you can. When humanity is fighting an unstoppable enemy, you enjoy seeing them fight back. The art needs more improvement still (Dear Isayama: your faces all look alike. Love, Sean), but otherwise it’s another winner.

While I enjoy reading paranormal romances set in high school as much as anyone, I attended high school more years ago than I’m willing to admit. So I’m happy to see a romance title that swaps out a twenty-something office lady for the typical teenage manga protagonist. Kaya is an Executive Secretary who is reassigned to the Managing Director at Tohma Corp. Kaya dresses severely, with her hair pulled back and sports fake glasses in order to combat her naturally youthful appearance. Her new boss Kyohei Tohma is an absolute boor, asking that she be reassigned as soon as he sees her because her appearance offends him. Kyohei spends long hours at the office, but he seems to take frequent breaks during the day as a parade of women keep visiting him at his office only to leave looking disheveled and pale.

Kaya is very dedicated to Tohma Corp. and her job, so she does a bit of sleuthing as she is worried that her new boss is doing drugs. She ends up discovering that he is in fact a vampire. Kyohei decides that Kaya’s discovery is a good thing, because she can be his secretary for real if she knows about his condition. He threatens her mother’s employment with the company to ensure Kaya’s silence and assures her that she won’t become his next victim because he only drinks from the finest of women.

As a heroine, Kaya has a bit of a subversive streak. She decides to subtly test vampire theories through her job duties by giving one of Kyohei’s women a silver cross and trying to see if he has a reflection in a mirror. Kaya figures out that the senior director, Kyohei’s older brother, is aware of Kyohei’s vampirism yet isn’t a vampire himself. Kyohei seems amused by Kaya’s detective attempts, and she resolutely resists his arrogant suggestions for her to improve her appearance. When Kyohei gets weakened and needs blood Kaya decides that her secretarial duties extend to becoming food, announcing that “Even if you’re a spoiled, arrogant philanderer…even if you’re sarcastic…and even if you’re a vampire…I want to protect you!”

Kaya and her boss gradually become a bit closer as he begins to trust her with more details of Tohma’s business dealings. Her protective streak is very strong, resulting in some goofy antics at an office Christmas party. I enjoyed the packaging for this manga, as all the extra purple scroll-work makes Midnight Secretary look appropriately gothic. Ohmi’s art is attractive, with believable shifts in the characters’ appearance and mannerisms when Kaya loses her glasses or when Kyohei is in the grips of vampiric compulsion. We see the couple’s professional facades begin to crack more and more as the volume progresses. I enjoyed this first volume of Midnight Secretary very much, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Review copy provided by the publisher

By Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and GAINAX. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazines Shonen Ace and Young Ace. Released in North America by Viz Media.

This fourth omnibus from Viz will be the last for a while, as Japan hasn’t even announced when the final volume is coming out yet. I assume it will be released simultaneously here and Japan, as Vol. 13 was, and that there will be a gap between that any any 5th omnibus. That said, there’s more than enough here to keep Evangelion fans busy. So much happens in this omnibus that it’s a bit difficult to know where to begin. One thing is for certain, though, and that’s the ongoing massacre of everyone Shinji loves and holds dear is still going to happen. Business as usual, folks.

Kaworu was introduced far earlier in each successive adaptation of Evangelion, probably as fans took him so quickly to their hearts. That doesn’t mean that he gets to be all warm and fuzzy, though he’s trying. I think it’s clear he wants to comfort Shinji and make him feel better, but he has no idea how people deal with grief – or indeed, emotions in general. He tries to make up for that by physical closeness, but Shinji, who’s already somewhat sexually confused due to simply being a teenager, lashes out at him. The manga makes things bigger – both Shinji’s rejection of Kaworu’s advances of friendship (or something more), and of his admitting how close Kaworu really got to him. In the end, Kaworu wanting Shinji to kill him manages to be rather heartwarming and sweet, in an Evangelion way.

And, in the opposite direction from heartwarming and sweet, we have Ritsuko, who has realized all along that Gendo is using her like he uses everyone else, but has been too wrapped up in her desire for him to really try to do anything about it. Gendo throwing her to the wolves of SEELE seems like it was a wake-up call, and she proceeds to give him the biggest ‘fuck you’ that she possibly can, with Misato and Shinji as witnesses. The idea of Rei being a clone is something that we’ve basically accepted, particularly given we see her get killed early on in this volume and then show up with the same body but without the emotional attachment to Shinji she had grown over the series. Despite that, the scene showing all the Rei bodies in the vat, waiting to be the next one, has not lost any of its power. It’s almost a relief that a suicidal and self-loathing Ritsuko destroys them all.

I talked last time about how Asuka gets much less to do in the manga, and that’s still true in this volume – until the end. Sticking her in her Eva may have been a safety precaution, but it was also the best possible thing for her psyche, as she manages to come to terms with what her mother was to her – and then goes to town on SEELE’s invading Evas, in the most glorious battle sequence we have seen to date in the series. Seeing Asuka, who has spent her entire life overcompensating for feeling useless and unwanted, take out these fakes with strength and purity of heart, is a beautiful thing, even if she can’t quite save the entire day. Mostly as it’s questionable as to whether there will be a tomorrow to be saved.

Because the JSSDF is invading NERV, and the orders are to kill everyone – even people who surrender, even people begging for their life. This we see, and it’s absolutely terrifying. It comes to the point where only Shinji in his Eva can save the day, but he is absolutely emotionally dead after everything that has happened to him (and remember, the timeline for the manga seems to be far faster than the anime one). Luckily, he has Misato,who gets her finest hour in the final part of this volume at the same time that Asuka is getting hers. Misato has always sort of straddled that line with Shinji between feelings of a mother, of a sister, and of a woman. It fits well with the rest of the series, where Shinji can’t tell if he loathes or is attracted to Kaworu, Ritsuko’s desire merges with her anger, and Gendo imprints her dead wife onto a clone that is both her and not her at the same time – something that she gets but he may not. All of these things are what makes up humanity – and that’s what Misato has to convince Shinji to save.

Has she done that? Well, you can get Vol. 13 right now and see for yourself, but whether we manage to get an ending that isn’t covered in orange goo is another matter. The manga has ended in Japan, so it’s a matter of Kadokawa scheduling the final volume. either way, it’s been an amazing ride. The manga world of Evangelion is still my favorite.

By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s worth noting, in case people have somehow forgotten it amongst all the gyoza and goofiness, that this series is incredibly terrifying at times. Everyone’s pasts are brutal and horrific, and it’s made almost all of them into morally ambiguous killers. The corpses that litter Dorohedoro are almost uncountable. And one of our good guys has a flashback in this volume showing that he collected these corpses and experimented on them. Meanwhile, Ebisu is learning the hard way that you can’t go home again.

Actually, the Ebisu plotline was probably my favorite part of this volume, if only for the 80 shades of wrong it contained. For one, the entire plotline with her parents is just nightmarish. Their daughter disappears, they are distraught, broken… so they pay a sorcerer to bring her back. And he… is a man with a paint tube mask, something that sounds much funnier than it is given that’s also how he recreates Ebisu. Only it isn’t Ebisu, to the point where her own parents fled their home. And now Ebisu returns to find herself under attack by her own doppelganger. Of all the disturbing art and violence that we get in this volume (yes, even the final scene), Ebisu having her head slashed open is the one that will stick with me. Just… urgh.

Meanwhile, we continue to get flashbacks to the guy that I think is Caiman’s past. His name is Ai, and he’s a sullen teen, all right. He also goes and gets himself killed fairly fast, or so we think. As it turns out, when Shin and Noi dig up the grave, there is a distinct lack of Ai there. It has to be said that Dorohedoro is a very dense manga, and its hints, when they arrive, are not necessarily very revealing. Caiman’s past in particular is difficult as we’re given the fakeout of his being connected to Risu, which turned out to be not quite true (but also yes, it is totally true).

And finally, En wakes up again, and boy is he pissed off. It’s worth noting just how overpowered En is in comparison to everyone else in this manga. He arrives and just completely owns everyone, even Caiman, who is immune to magic… which really doesn’t help when mushrooms are erupting from all of your internal organs. Now En has Nikaido again, and Caiman appears to be dead. He’s appeared to be dead before, but this time he has his own head (maybe) back, and the lizard head is a thing of the past. Maybe.

Leaving aside the batter-fried shrimp sorcerer at the end of the book, this was a fun, if a bit confusing, volume of Dorohedoro. Yes, explanations are thin on the ground, but the story never suffers from the lack of them. I suspect that the story is going to switch back to the cross-eyed gang for a bit given that cliffhanger (and we also get a really sweet/disturbing scene of the cross-eyes reminiscing about their completely insane leader, who I think is also Ai? Caiman? Whatever…). Wherever the story goes, though, I’m right there with it.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Jiro Suzuki. Released in Japan in two and 1/2 separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Turn of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The Turn of the Golden Witch concludes, and takes a turn for the grotesque and humiliating. The cover chosen (at the last minute, if advance solicits are to judge) by Yen for the omnibus features Rosa, the last remaining Ushiromiya sibling, glaring suspiciously at the reader with her Winchester at the ready. Open the cover flap, however, and you’ll get a far more appropriate image: Beatrice leering in triumph at a naked Battler, bound in chains and with his naughty bits covered by golden butterflies. Until the very last minute, what happens here is nothing less than Battler’s complete defeat by the magic of the Witch and the power of fantasy.

The choice of Rosa as the adult viewpoint character, which was uncomfortable enough in the first omnibus, gets even more tortuous here. At least with Natsuhi in Vol. 1 we had someone we could root for and sympathize with, even if her haughty pride was all too visible at times. Rosa may be trying to protect Maria and the children, but it’s not nearly as noble. (Indeed, one has to be suspicious of why she alone survived, given all seven siblings and spouses were seen in the chapel the night before the “Happy Halloween For Maria”.) Her use of the ‘wolves and sheep’ puzzle is more or less an excuse to scapegoat the servants. It’s actually oddly surreal at the very end when she finally starts attacking the fantasy “goat butlers” who arrive to destroy everything in order to save her daughter – the scenes of her and Maria reaffirming their love for each other as everything goes to hell seems even more unrealistic than the flying stakes and light swords bandied about earlier.

As for the ‘meta world’ battler and Beatrice, Battler sometimes seems to gain an advantage – the Red Truth is rolled out in this volume (which Yen, like the Japanese tankobons before it, uses a different font on – colored inks cost money), and he’s very quick to figure out how to make it work for him. But the trouble is that his ‘proof’ is simply denial. There are no witches because I say so. Whereas the answer he’s avoiding is “There are no witches because someone I know and care about is guilty instead.” If you choose to treat Umineko as a mystery and not a fantasy, you have to assume that someone is killing everyone, and try to figure out why they’re doing it. Battler, who won’t even bother to find Who, certainly is nowhere near Why. This is why Beatrice subjects him to the ‘naked furniture footstool’ punishment, and parades him past an array of butlers (and a disgusted Bernkastel). It’s his low ebb.

This brings us to this arc’s Tea Party, which this time involves Rosa waking up and not realizing what’s going on. It has to be said, this is easily the most grotesque scene in the series to date – yes, it’s even worse than the Happy Halloween candy corpses – and reminded me a bit of the horror splatter films of Mario Bava. It’s easy to see why Rosa may say she hates her siblings and her daughter – she was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused as a child, and Maria is quite the handful. But much as she’s an abusive mother, and a spiteful sibling, deep down she really does love her family. This is why Beatrice’s waving their fates in her face is so grotesque – and why Battler is able to find the gumption to stop it. (Though I could do without his asking Maria to say ‘eat me’ to him in 10 years time – why does he always fall back on being a pervert?) Indeed, you’d almost think she did this on purpose just so that they could play another game…

Like Battler, the reader, to a certain extent, is rooting for the fantasy. The scenes with Kanon and Shannon battling the stakes (even if the stakes are, sigh, moe teenage girls) are really cool, and the entire sequence plays out in various ways as dramatic, tragic, and heartwarming. Reaffirming love and choosing to go out with a smile… there are some of our very best story cliches come to life here. That said, if the reader wants to continue to say ‘there is a realistic explanation for what happened’, this arc drops the most obvious way of figuring out what that is: don’t believe everything you see or read. Clearly, if this is realistic, some of what we saw here has to be imaginary. It didn’t really happen. So, what did happen? Did Rosa murder her siblings? I doubt she could kill all six of them without a fight. Perhaps the servants, who are highly suspicious throughout this? Aw, but they’re so nice! I don’t want Shannon or Kumasawa to be a killer!

This feeling of pleasure, intrigue and discomfort is what drives the Umineko series, and it drives Battler (and us) to play another game, so we can get closer to the truth. Even if that truth involves a witch. (Also, I want to read further to find out where the hell the Battler/Beatrice fans all came from… is it all hateship? Certainly Beatrice is at her most loathsome here…) Yen are taking a break until January, but then we’ll have two more omnibuses, and focus on a new family member – get ready to get inside Eva Ushiromiya’s head.

Oh yes, about the hidden tea party: 1) Lambdadelta seems to have the body of little Miyoko Tanashi (aka Miyo Takano) and her personality of Satoko Houjou. What a horrible combination. 2) Bernkastel basically doing Rika’s “mew” line further makes the listener raise an eyebrow at Ryukishi07 when he insists she’s not Rika. Certainly SOMETHING in her is Rika…

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

It has been noted several times that Academy City, where the events of this series take place, is providing young teens with power development so that they can, in essence, become superheroes. They are ranked all the way from Level 0 (Saten falls here, as well as Touma, though he really doesn’t count) up to Level 5. And our heroine, Misaka, is one of seven people in the entire city strong enough to be a Level 5. Of course, we’ve seen a few other Level 5s along the way. Accelerator. Mugino, leader of ITEM. And we just met Misaki and her mind-controlling in the previous volume. And it has to be said: Misaka is easily the most down-to-earth, sensible, and normal of all these overpowered lunatics.

And part of the reason for that is that, unlike most of the folks I mentioned above, Misaka isn’t lonely and doesn’t drive people away. She has a social life. She has her best friends. Yes, OK, Saten teases her, and Kuroko wants to assault her every chance she gets, but they’re still her support system that keeps her going through the tough times. Note how she tried to limit contact to those three during the Sisters Arc, where she was contemplating a) murder, and b) suicide. Unfortunately, Misaki is shaping up to be the next big antagonist, and can manipulate people’s memories. And Misaka finds out what this really means when her friends… no longer remember her.

I give credit to Misaka for taking this in and then quickly dealing with it. She’s in the middle of a crisis, one of her sisters has been kidnapped, and while I’m sure she’d love to argue with Kuroko till she’s blue in the face, there just isn’t time. But her face as she accepts what’s happened is simply depressing. Luckily, Misaki hasn’t had a chance to get to everyone, and Kongou is able to help her and give her a few words of comfort… well, anti-comfort, really. Kongou says she’ll try to get information, but Misaka absolutely shouldn’t trust it, as she may be ‘gotten at’ by the enemy.

Kongou, by the way, has two friends that we met in the previous volume, who are usually referred to as ‘those two guys/girls’ by anime fans. They’re the friends of the person who actually gets the dialogue and situations, there to show that they have their own backup and support system. And Kongou’s friends are sweet, adorable minor characters. They even joke in the first chapter about how they have no idea what it’s like to be really angry. Except… why do those two minor characters have such a large picture on the cover? That’s right, this is foreshadowing. And there are no minor characters in Railgun, there are only a bunch of awesome women who will beat the crap out of you. Watching Wannai and Awatsuki get furious and hand the minor mook (who’s a sexist to boot) his ass is a joyous thing to see.

Things are getting quite complicated as we move further into the school festival. At first we thought Misaki might be behind everything, but now it transpires there are multiple groups of villains (a favorite tactic of the author in the main Index series). Will Misaka be able to rescue her sister, restore her friends’ memories, win the athletic competitions and speak with Touma without n blushing and stuttering? Well, we’re caught up with Japan, so you’ll have to wait till April to find out!

By Quin Rose and Mamenosuke Fujimaru, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan as “Anniversary no Kuni no Alice – Tokeiya” by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

You would think that I would have run out of things to say about these volumes. Sometimes I have, when they’re particularly pointless – see last month’s batch of Bookshelf Briefs for my opinion of the Ace spinoff – but there always seem to be a few nuggets of interest to keep me going. It also helps that this volume focuses on one of my favorite of Alice’s romantic choices, Julius Monrey, the clockmaker. (In case you’re wondering about the ‘Anniversary’ thing in the Japanese title, it’s what they called the updated PS3 version of Alice in the Country of Hearts.)

The basic premise won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s read the previous spinoffs of this endless otome game series. Alice is trying to get away from an oppressive Peter White at Heart Castle, so she asks Julius if she can stay at the clocktower for a while. He agrees, and they gradually begin to open up to each other. As their relationship deepens, however, Alice has to not only deal with her own feelings, and the fact that her beloved is not the type to take the initiative, but also realize that Julius is hated by a large number of folks throughout Wonderland. Can she come to terms with what his job really entails? And what of her ever-present need to return to her sister?

Julius is a rarity in the set of Wonderland males that Alice runs into. He’s passive, introverted, and taciturn. He will happily stay in his tower for weeks, just working on clocks and sleeping when he remembers to. After several stories with Blood, or Ace, or the twins, or Eliot, or Boris, he feels like a breath of fresh air. He also causes Alice to need to be more proactive, rather than simply have the love interest be aggressive consistently until she gives in. There’s lots of adorable scenes here.

Also, he’s a mortician. Who can resurrect the dead. Only not really. Wonderland’s weird world, where everyone has clocks instead of hearts, and people can be ‘resurrected’ but aren’t quite the same people they were before, makes almost everyone uncomfortable, and that gets taken out on Julius. He’s clearly not doing this for fun, but it’s his role, and he regards it as necessary. But in a way, hanging out with him is keeping Alice in a constant shadow of death – something that I imagine makes Peter quite nervous, given what they’re all trying to make Alice not remember.

This one-shot also has an unusual ending in that, when Alice confesses her love, she chooses to remain in Wonderland and stop trying to return to her own world. Which she’s done before, but in this case the vial filled with people’s feelings that she carries around throughout the game is seen in the final shot to be shattered at her feet. It’s a striking image, showing that there’s no going back. I will admit I’m not entirely happy with the basic premise of the series being ‘if she remembers her traumatic past that makes it a bad end’, which seems to romanticize denial more than I’d like. Still, it does make for a good capper on what has been a fairly enjoyable, if slight, story.

There are also two Crimson Empire stories at the end. Luckily, they are shorter in length than they were in the Ace book. I say luckily as they were incredibly boring and tedious. Alas, you’re better off with Alice than Sheila.