Manga Review: Pandora Hearts

Title: Pandora Hearts
Author: Mochizuki Jun
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Seinen, Mystery, Supernatural
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: A
Humor: B
Action: A

Impression: This is about Oz Bezarius who is the key to obtaining the Abyss, a mysterious source of monsters called chains, his servant Gilbert and the human-like chain Alice who is searching for the fragments of her lost memories with them. All of them are somehow linked with the mysterious massacre that occurred a century before called the “Tragedy of Sabrie” where hundreds of people disappeared into the Abyss along with a section of their town. Oz is thrown into the Abyss on the charge that his existence is his crime by a mysterious group of chain contractors and forms a contract with Alice there and together they escape back to the real world. There’s a lot of good things about this manga like interesting characters , plot twists and the slowly unraveling mysteries concerning Oz and the Abyss. The character development is a bit of a mixed bag since the author really overdoes it with Oz and Break to the point where it’s dull and annoyingly cheesy. Plot progression is also a bit slow despite it how good the story is proving itself to be. Latest chapters look really promising though since we’re about to bite into the main course of the story.