Alice 19th

OhHaiDer :]


Whoooops. 
I'm a bit late ^ ^;
Better late than never, yeah?
Oh well
Here I present Alice 19th.


Alice 19th


Story & Art: Yuu Watase
Publisher: Viz Media
Rating: Older Teen
Synopsis: (Wikipedia) The story follows Alice Seno, a fifteen-year-old girl forever in the shadow of her older sister Mayura, who achieves in everything she undertakes. At her school Alice becomes known as "Mayura's little sister". Older girls, judging Alice too meek to retaliate, torment her relentlessly.


Art Review: 5/5


I always enjoyed Watase's style. It's cute, feminine, charming and generally matches the general style of stories she produces. Her style is very clean and well executed in all her works.


Story Review: It would be arbitrary and untruthful of me to say that I enjoy all of Watase's work. This manga, contrary to a lot of opinions, is not one of the ones that I enjoyed. There are a number of problems with this manga, the first being just the plot in general. Watase's work generally has a shoujo/action theme that is heavily intertwined with a lot of Chinese culture and legends, but for this manga, Watase has decided to integrate a western theme in it, which is obviously Alice In Wonderland, due to the fact that the heroine's name is Alice and she does in fact meet a white rabbit in the beginning of her adventure. I usually am appreciative in change in manga and an incorporation of western stories into manga are usually refreshing but nearly ripping off Alice In Wonderland is a terrible attempt to bring depth to a story. Another aspect of this manga that I find terribly irritating is just the method of defending oneself employed in this manga. From all that I have read of this manga and all that I care to understand, one strives to be (or already is) a Lotis master who casts spells simply by saying a single word. I've read other fantasy mangas and novels and know how ridiculous those can get but this is pushing it in many ways considering there is no compensation in other aspects of this manga. At least for other mangas it can be ridiculous as you want it to be but the main character is hot, or the story is good or some other, but clearly there is nothing to fall back on for this type of drudgery. What I find the most irritating about this is that in the ending (and I don't CARE if you've read the whole thing or not, it's bloody terrible, so reading this will get you over and done with this series) after all the characters one would develop a kinship with dies, and Alice is pulled into a sort of purgatory state of mind, where the White Rabbit tells her that if she says a certain word, the monster that just killed off all the supporting characters and threatens to destroy the rest of the world will instantly die. So Alice does go back to reality, says this word and lo and behold, the monster loses his shit and dies. Looking at this logically, Alice got a cheat code. Probably one of the worst endings in manga history, and yes I am including all the sappy shoujo mangas who end shittily no matter how you end it. The plot wasn't that great either, the "little sister envies big sister but it actually turns out that big sister was afraid of little sister" bollocks really doesn't cut it anymore when everyone uses that plot device. As you can tell in general I was widely disappointed of this manga, a rarity for reviews as of yet. For once I plead you, don't read this manga, you're going to get a headache if you think about it too much.


5/10, because no matter how dreadful I think this manga is, it's apparently in good quality enough to make it past the bloody editor.