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My aunt bought me the first vol on Amazon and I have to say I wasnt in the least bit impressed. The art was pretty poor and the story at no point grabbed like Deathnote and Devilman did. It was ok at the best mostly mildly confusing. I was honestly surprised to see it so high on the top manga ranking. Why is it so high?

Or you can, y'know, read the reviews on here. That'd prolly be faster than waiting for people to reply... I'd rather not copy paste mine.

I will say: if you're genuinely curious if you'd like PH, try reading through chapter 22 or chapter 32. Sure the plot gets exponentially better every 10 chapters or so, but 22 and 32 give you a decent idea of the general tone and where it's going.

Hum well lets see, iam mostly a shoujo fan and there´s like 3 or 4 shonen i like only. PH is a shounen and became one of my fav manga EVER.
do not judge it by the first vol. Its an amazing journey filled with twists and unexpected events. Besides the relationships between the characters are AMAZING.
If you dont keep reading than you´re loosing a masterpiece.

I did read them actually but they didnt give me the answers i was looking for. Basically i just wanted to know if their was a significant improvement on plot later on, so maybe ill give it a try but it doesnt seem like something id care for much but then again a review i read felt this way. Hate the art though. Already mistook a boy for a girl.



Ok ill go on but im really more of a seinen guy.

I'm reading it because of the plot, you get so many themes from the Alice in Wonderland and it includes identity. Once you read it, it's hard to figure out who the characters really are. I fell in love with the style of the story and how not everything is what it seems. There's so much mystery involved that once you think you know the answer, it's just so unexpected in the end. And yes, the art does get better later on and it will definitely match the atmosphere. Btw, beware of lots of trolling because there's a lot in the latest chapters.

There are various reasons to love PH, though the main reasons why it gets rated so high is because of the plot and the characters.

PH plot is very confusing, because it is one that won't make complete sense until the very end. Nevertheless, the plot is not arbitrary, nor does it follow the usual Shounen arc formats. There are no arcs that are filler arcs or light arcs or unconnected arcs or arcs that are there solely for character development, they are all intricately connected to each other and character development and plot development occur side by side. The pacing of the plot has been well done (not completely perfect, but very good) and Mochizuki-sensei has had the ending and plot planned out from the beginning (and it shows), she is also one for plot twists, but not ones that are pulled out of thin air, there is *tons* of foreshadowing and re-reads are fantastic, since you notice some new hint that was right there all along.

Reading and being able to see the pieces fall into place is also a very rewarding experience that comes with this series.

Another thing that is very rewarding, is watching how Mochizuki-sensei takes the characters and gives them this image - from the character designs of certain characters we expect certain personality traits...And then she eventually takes those expected character traits and completely flips them on us. Sadly some characters, notably the female characters, have gotten underused and underdeveloped, but that is only going by PH standards of character development, which is very high. Every chapter and every scene is extremely important and gives great insight into the characters that exist in the story. Some of the character development is very in your face, but at other parts (and this is the majority) it is mostly subtle, so you don't really notice the change in the character's personalities until the change has already occurred, or you look back at the earlier parts of the series and really notice the difference.

Of course, such things as character designs and drawing style are extremely subjective, but in a general the artwork improves greatly.

Finally, when it comes to the level of pure entertainment, this series always delivers, with a very few chapters ever resulting in my disappointment. There is usually always something great to theorize and discuss about, and there are tons of themes, motifs, and etc. that can be found within PH, which is why I always recommend it. It is just plain good storytelling.

PH themes and plot is a lot more like seinen than shounen, imo. Russian sites group it as seinen. I group it along with Berserk and Dorohedoro. Maybe not for outward gore, but for thematic depth of plot and characters.

I thought the same thing when I first started reading it. At first I couldn't understand what was happening and it didn't really grab my attention, but once all these twists and plots reveal itself it grabbed my attention and I started to understand it. I'm sure most people who read this probably know that it goes deep into the main plot and the characters as said above me.

The fandom pretty much makes Pandora Hearts.