Pandora Hearts

Out of all the anime. manga, visual novels I have read or seen, Pandora Hearts is the one that will always be engraved in my heart and the others as well.

Nothing is stereotyped about this series, there is no lovey-dovey romance for otaku basement-dwellers, instead, this manga focuses on something that has been long overlooked: friendship. It doesn't matter how old one is, its gender or anything else, friendship will always be the greatest form of love and I'm glad the authoress managed to convey this message with such a masterpiece.

Story: 10

Don't let the Tumblr shippers/fangirls fool you, there barely is something that can be called "romance" in it.
At first glance it may look like a comedy but it soon becomes the most complex mindrape I have ever read, yes, way ore than NGE and any other work you can consider "mindrape". If you're looking for a variety of unique characters, each with its own backstory, plenty of surprising plot twists, you just found the best manga I can recommend you.

Art: 10
The art is amazing since the very first chapers, and it gets way better later, I don't really have anything else to say about it, except that the art isn't really the strongest point even though it's one of the best drawn manga I have read.

Character: 10

As I said before, Pandora Hearts has plenty of unique characters you might want to relate with, even the "villains" have its own reasons, pasts, and regrets, as well as even mostly secondary characters being very useful to the plot and the main characters. I can't say anything about this because it would be a lot of spoiler, but I can tell you each character isn't ever being overlooked.

Enjoyment: 10

Once you'll reach around chapter 20, you'll enjoy it to the fullest, all your theories about what'll happen in the story will crumble, as there are many unexpected plot twists that will make you enjoy even more the manga, the authoress also loves to play with our feelings, which is another unexpected thing.

Overall: 10
Never I had found a masterpiece as perfect as Pandora Hearts which made me laugh, cry and smile so much, all my attempts were useless, I still struggle to find a manga which could be equal to it without any success.
I am planning to re-read it soon to enjoy it all over again, as it is my #1 favorite manga I have ever read

NOTE: There are no spoilers in this review.

"That place is said to be engulfed in darkness. But even if that were really the case, there must be a light somewhere."

Loneliness is strange thing - there are people who like it, there are people who take it painful, and there are people who pretend that they like loneliness, but in fact it hurts them...
Pandora Hearts is the perfect example of how the loneliness that destroyed the soul of a person can literally grow into a great tragedy. Well, let's not waste the time and I will start:

Story/Narrative:
In fact, the plot of Pandora Hearts is a rather complicated thing to explain without spoilers, since the number of plot twists in this manga is simply unimaginable - however, if we talk about the beginning of the story, namely the events of the first volume, then we can’t touch the major plot twists. The story begins with how we see our main character - Oz Vessalius, his servant - Gilbert and Oz's little sister - Ada Vessalius. Oz is 15 years old and he must go through the ceremony of initiation into the adult world as is customary in their family, but before the ceremony, when Oz decides to play with Gilbert once again, Oz heard some kind of familiar melody and goes to the place where it plays, after that Oz and Gilbert fall into the hole and there they meet something similar to a grave, and it weighs a clock in which the same melody plays. Oz immediately picked up the clock, then opens it and finds himself in a completely different place, in a room with some strange toys that giggle over him, after that - some strange girl comes in who Oz has never seen, and we can't see her face, but all she says to Oz is that she was waiting for him. However, Oz doesn't understand what this strange girl wants from him and says that she doesn't know her, after that the girl tells him in a completely different tone that she will never forgive him for these words...
The floor in this room is crumbling and the girl is falling with Oz and choking him - after that Oz hears Gilbert’s voice and “comes to his senses” in the same place where he took the clock, and understands that the watch is in his hands and that only a few seconds have passed since he was in that strange room, after that Oz tells Gilbert that everything is okay, and they return home to prepare for the ceremony of initiation of Oz into adulthood, but something goes wrong there - that will become the starting point of the whole story, but I will not explain what happens at the ceremony, because I believe that you should see it yourself. I also want to add that in this story there are a lot of references to "Alice in Wonderland" and many other English tales.
If we talk about the quality of the whole plot - then I can only say that the plot will impress you a lot, however I would say that this story is divided into 3 parts:
1. 1-8 Volumes - The purest exposition, familiarity with the characters and their very first development.
2. 9-16 Volumes - Answers to many questions, and a greater focus on the plot itself rather than on getting to know the characters and their development - but again, the characters are also developing here.
3. 17-24 Volumes - The most powerful part of the story. When I finished reading the 17th volume - this story slowly started to catch my heart, and when I was reading the last 3 volumes - I was so overwhelmed with emotions that when I read the last chapter, there was a very rare moment when some black and white pieces of paper caused me to drop couple of tears.

Picture/Art:
To be honest, I didn’t read that much manga in order to compare this characteristic in Pandora Hearts with other manga, so here I will be brief and say that Jun Mochizuki has put her soul into the visual view of this manga, so except “beautiful”, I cannot describe the level of what Jun drew in another way, but I want to note that not everyone will like the art style, since Jun has a very unique art style - she strongly emphasized the beauty of the male characters, and that's the reason why in some places the manga feels more “girly” and many who say that, also saying that for this reason Pandora Hearts would be more suitable for girls... But, as a male who is indifferent to some girly stuff, I can say that this art style didn’t interfered me visually, not only because I even somehow liked it, and also because all of the drawed backgrounds and places compensated absolutely all the flaws. I also want to add that this manga is very easy to read due to the fact that there is a few quantity of text and more pictures unlike to many other manga, and I’ll also say that sometimes Jun uses some "antics" similar to those in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - it happens when the style of drawing changes into a more humorous in order to emphasize the seriousness of the moment, but not everyone likes this feature, but there are people like me who liked it, because it creates a contrast between very serious moments in this story (and there is a lot, trust me) and moments where you can enjoy the humor that can make the story more "vivid".

Characters:
The characters in this story are also some of the strongest aspects. All the characters have very different types of personalities, and I will be honest when I finished reading Pandora Hearts, it was very, very difficult for me to choose my “favorite”. Not only because here all the characters are, as I said before, have very different personalities, but also because I liked almost everyone so much. There were characters who at the beginning of the story sometimes annoyed me, but none of them were left without explaining his motives, a good example of this is Vincent, who often behaved like scum, but in the end - his motives were explained so well...
Another very strong thing that I couldn't ignore was the relationship between Oz and Alice. I think that their connection, which is revealed in the last third of the story as I mentioned earlier (volumes 17-24), was one of the most important reasons why I fell in love with this story, and how not surprising, but Oz and Alice became my favorite characters in this story.
Also, I would like to add that the supporting characters in this story (especially Elliot and Echo) were also really impressive, and many of them will never let you bored, since their influence on the plot can be really big... But I don't want to give examples here, since even the slightest hint that any character will affect the plot in this story will be a spoiler, so I'm not going to touch them. In the end, I would like to mention that character who will never let you get bored - Xerxes Break. I am almost completely sure that absolutely everyone will like him, and maybe he is not my "favorite" character like Oz and Alice, but if I was asked “Who is objectively the best character in Pandora Hearts?”, I would say that it's Break, for sure.

Conclusion + My opinion:
Pandrora Hearts was a manga that I decided to read on the coronavirus quarantine which known for all of us this year, therefore, not that fast, due to a lot of free time, I was able to master all the 24 volumes in less than one month, and I can definitely say that I don't regret it, and one of the proofs of this is the fact that after reading I still want to return to this story again, and perhaps I will do it by watching an anime which I still haven’t watched by the way... However, after listening to the soundtracks from my beloved Yuki Kajiura from the anime adaptation, I can say that listening to them as an addition to the manga is just something amazing, and even despite the very middling animation that I saw in the anime adaptation - I am ready to watch it at least because of Yuki's godlike soundtracks, and even Jun Mochizuki herself said that she loved to listen to the soundtracks made by Yuki Kajiura for the anime adaptation when she was working on Pandora Hearts. So in my conclusion, I really wanted to mention the soundtrack from the anime adaptation, it's godlike...
I also wanted to tell about my first meeting with Pandora Hearts:
I was watching some MMVs on YouTube, and then, in my recommendations I found an MMV that looked really cool, and I wanted to find about this manga from friends, and they all told me that it was absolutely worth reading, and of course, I've read this manga and now I'm writing this review...
At the very end, I would like to tell who will like Pandora Hearts and who will not. If you are a lover of the Victorian era and the setting of old England - then the setting in Pandora Hearts will definitely catch you. I still think that the most important genres of this story are supernatural and fantasy, but many people also refer Pandora Hearts to the genre of “shounen”, but personally I think that if it's a shounen, then it's very different from the others, not only because of the vibe, but also in the main moral of the story, that is to say that like in most classical shounens, like Naruto or One Piece - Pandora Hearts doesn't have so much naivety and "friends is the most important thing". In Pandora Hearts, things are a little different...
I haven't seen similar stories like Pandora Hearts, but many people tell me that it has a lot of similarities with Black Butler, but I haven't watched or read it yet, so I can’t say anything.
And of course, my rate... I don’t really like to say in "numbers language" how much I liked something... But I think that this not perfect but still a masterpiece story absolutely deserves some special praises from me - 10 Bloody Rabbits out of 10.