Alice in the Country of Hearts, Vol. 1 (Alice in the Country of Hearts, #1-2)

This was a...strange story, which isn't surprising considering that this is a spin on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, strange seems to be the norm when it comes to retelling Lewis Carroll's most famous work. I usually don't mind strange as long as the story is still well written and the characters interesting and I am not sure if that was the case here. I am sort of on the fence with my assessment of this manga. Do I like it, do I not like it? I don't know but I will be picking up the second omnibus to find out.

The story begins with Alice Liddell being awaken from her nap in the garden by a white rabbit carrying a pocket watch and telling her that she should be chasing him right now. Alice, thinking she is dreaming, can't be bothered and tries to go back to sleep but the rabbit won't accept this. He quickly changes into a man with white rabbit ears, picks up Alice and runs away with her down a dark hole. Once their fall ends, the man whose name is Peter White mentions something about a game and force feeds Alice a small vial of medicine and quickly abandons her. Now Alice is lost in Wonderland with nothing but an empty bottle. You think this would be bad enough but it turns out there is a sort of war happening in Wonderland between three territories - a Mafia gang called The Hatters, the Queen of Hearts, and an Amusement Park (o.O).

There were characters that I was familiar with like Peter White, who is very much in love with Alice and is always annoying her with his overtures of romance. Blood who is actually the leader of the Hatters mafia gang and the Queen of Hearts, Vivaldi, who may seem like the most normal of them all but always, refers to herself as “we”. Then there were new characters like Ace, a knight of the Queen of Hearts and Julius a keeper of the Clock Tower, both of them, like almost everyone else in Wonderland or not exactly what they seem and carry big secrets. All of them seem to carry guns or swords and aren't afraid to use them on each other and in some occasions on Alice herself.

In this first omnibus instalment of Alice in the Country of Heats, our main character meets a whole host of trigger-happy characters and slowly learns the ways of the country she has been taken to (or is dreaming of because she thinks she's still dreaming). And it seems the more time she spends with the characters and learning about Wonderland the closer she is to finishing “the game”. The problem is the more Alice learns the more invested she becomes in this strange world and the more the characters seem to become attached to her. Not a good thing when all Alice wants to do is go home.

There's a full review going up on Bureau42 on the 28th, but suffice it to say, this is the most underwhelming manga I've ever read in my life. There is nothing in this book that hooked me into reading the next volume. I didn't laugh at the jokes. I wasn't rooting for any possible romantic pairings. I wasn't concerned for the physical or emotional well being of any of the characters.

This book is just dull. That's all I can say for it.