The wonderful world of Pandora Hearts

Hello my good readers,

Over the summer I stumbled upon an anime by the name of Pandora Hearts. I had discovered Pandora Hearts when I noticed a friend reading it, later another fried recommend it to me, saying it was quite good, so I looked it up. I watched the anime at first, a short 25 episodes, later I picked up the manga, which currently has 77 chapters and is ongoing.

We began in the duke house of Vessalius on Oz Vessalius 15 birthday. When we meet him, he is running around the castle with his younger sister Ada and servant Gilbert (lovingly dubbed ‘Gil’), preparing for his coming of age ceremony. All seems to go well until Oz stumbles into a cave that serves as a mysterious grave. Oz sees a pocket watch sitting on a golden cross, it doesn’t seem to be ticking. He reaches for it, and sees the vision of a girl talking to him about something before attempting to kill him. He snaps out of it and shakes it off and goes to get ready for his ceremony.

And what a ceremony it was, I won’t go into too much detail, but let me say, it has quite a twist. In the end, Oz finds himself in a strange world known as the ‘Abyss’, a twisted wonderland dimension were odd creatures called ‘Chains’ live. While there he encounters a chain called ‘B-rabbit’ or Alice, who changes shape between a giant killer bunny and a young girl of around 13. After a brief introduction and the saving of lives, Alice seals a contract with Oz with a kiss, and Oz finds himself in back in his own

It’s Gil, Oz, and Ada!

world, with a twist.

Alice in B-rabbit form

The anime is lovely, I became quickly addicted and watched all the episodes in only a few days, taking breaks to play games and visit family. The plot engrossed me up until the very end, were it sadly threw me to the curb of disappoint meant in Whatnowvill (more on that later.) The characters were well thought out, some being for comical, some for plot, even some for both. Each one had a distinct personality and appearance, allowing for quick recognition and understanding. Each turn adds something new, and with that you slowly began to understand what’s going on. The story flows nicely, allowing character and plot development to take place, but not overwhelming you with too much going on at one point. The only disappointing moment in the anime is it’s obviously rushed ending, which offered little closer and was a total disappoint to the rest of the show, thankfully, the manga doesn’t end that way.

He hiding under your bed and leaving through your cupboards.

After a rather disappointing ending to the beautiful anime, I wondered how closely the series followed its manga, I found it did very well, up until chapter 32. Because Pandora Hearts is a monthly release, unless it’s already done it’s a challenge for anyone to make it an anime. At some point the weekly or so release of anime will catch up with the monthly or so release of manga. This leaves the animator 3 options 1. Put the show on hiatus so more chapters can be released 2. Make filler arcs to allow the manga to catch up (see Bleach for an example) or 3. Have your own writers write up an ending to stop the show. Pandora Hearts choose option 3, which ended terribly, so I recommend that after watching the anime, pick of chapter 32 of Pandora Hearts.

After reading the manga I must say that Pandora Hearts takes a turn for the best.

Alice in girl form, Oz, and ‘Raven’ (as far as you know)

The manga provides information that allows the story to truly blossom to its full potential, taking one of the biggest twists I’ve ever seen. The artwork is lovely, showing off a true style and a full uses of different character types. Just as in the anime, it’s seems that most intense moments have breaks of comedy between them, allowing you to relax and watch characters grow for a bit (or in the case of the wonderful Break, allow comedy with intense moments for double fun!) The action in both the manga and anime is lovely, and there is a lot of action. The creator of Pandora Hearts deserves a standing ovation for creating a story in which characters resemble those of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but provides a whole new plot with new attitudes.

I do hope you all with give it a try,

PandaEatingATaco