Pandora Hearts

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“Oz Vessalius. With my chain of condemnation, I hereby pronounce judgement on you. Your sin...is your very existence.”

With its first words, Pandora Hearts makes a promise: to answer this question. What could the sin of a fifteen year old boy possibly be? It draws you in. And it doesn’t let go.

I’ve read Pandora Hearts twice in the span of roughly one month, so I figured it was time I finally write a review.

Pandora Hearts is, objectively speaking, the best piece of fiction I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps not my absolute favorite, but…well, even if it isn’t my first favorite, it’s definitely my second favorite (all my ... homies know my number 1).

It’s one of those manga series that I would recommend to pretty much everyone, even people who have never touched manga before. I don’t believe you can define it by its medium. It’s a story that goes beyond the limits of its demographic, of its genres, and the culture it originates from.

So let me tell you why you should read it.

"A messenger from the Abyss comes to those who've committed deadly sins.”

Pandora Hearts is a very loose retelling of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. It takes place in a fictional Victorian country where an entity known as the Abyss is kept. The government organization Pandora controls the Abyss and keeps monsters that live in it, known as chains, from escaping and wreaking havoc. The protagonist, Oz Vessalius, knows nothing about these affairs. He’s part of the Vessalius family, one of the four aristocratic dukedoms that make up Pandora. Oz is set to have his coming of age ceremony the day the story opens and enter high society, but that's where everything starts to go wrong. Red-robed messengers of the Abyss called Baskervilles enter his ceremony and tell him that his sin is his very being. Once cast into the Abyss, Oz has no choice but to make a contract with Alice, the feared chain known as the B-Rabbit. And once more, he is thrust into the real world and taken into Pandora’s custody. Oz has become an illegal contractor, and slowly the clock on his incuse will tick until it completes its cycle, sending him once again into the Abyss. Oz agrees to help Pandora so he can discover what his original sin is and help Alice retrieve her lost memories.

…What if I told you all of this only happens in the first few chapters?

That fact alone should tell you just how dense this entire series is. I’ve barely introduced the main characters, plot, or world. Yeah, Pandora Hearts is kind of scary in that way. The amount of information thrust at you with every chapter can be kind of terrifying. It’s overwhelming. But it’s so worth it.

In all honesty, I wasn’t very impressed with the series at first. I’d found it through Jun Mochizuki’s other series, The Case Study of Vanitas (VnK), and I think one of the biggest issues people have with her series is that there’s a very sharp learning curve. In both, you’re just bombarded with so much information. Vanitas has more exposition, but it’s also easier to get the hang of things since a lot of it is rooted in real-world factions and countries. Pandora, on the other hand, purposely withholds information from you. And that’s because it’s tricking you. Mochizuki is, essentially, very, very good at tricking people. Her stories are subversions. They tell you one thing, present themselves as one thing, and then, before you know it, the story is turned upside-down. Here's the best analogy I can think of: reading her stories is like being told you're playing chess, only to later be told you were actually playing football on the fucking moon all along.

I found Pandora to be overly confusing at first, with a lot of the plot points feeling pointless, up until around the one third mark. I mean, I enjoyed it, I was just constantly confused. My logic was always, "I think this is good, but I can't even tell what's happening." And yeah, I do think she could have done a better job at making most of the early arcs flow better. Sometimes it just felt like events happened not because that’s the natural progression of things, but because they need to happen for the plot, which isn’t the best feeling in a story. That being said, after the one third mark, my perspective began to finally shift. That was the first plot twist that really made me question what I knew, and made me truly intrigued to keep reading. And as I kept reading, I began to realize that all of these seemingly pointless side quests actually had an enormous meaning in the overarching plot. You see, every single character interaction is intentional. Everything that happens is intentional. Every bit of dialogue, illustration, and plot is completely intentional. Everything connects in an intricate web that paints a picture, and you have to piece it together. Pandora Hearts is complicated and frustrating, but it’s worth it. You have to give it time and patience, but it’s worth it. Because once you do have that final picture, it takes your breath away.

Pandora Hearts is one of the few things I’ve read where the plot twists actually feel significant. The ones in the beginning didn’t necessarily shock me, but they did made me go, “Oh, I’m intrigued.” I wanted to see where they went. And so as the series goes on, you’re lulled into a false sense of security. Because Mochizuki doesn’t just tell you what’s happening—she makes it a fact. She builds up the world so meticulously that you don’t even question anything. So when the major plot twists come so late in the series, it doesn’t just feel like a plot twist—it feels like the entire world has been shattered. Everything you thought you knew wasn’t true. They were all lies. Mochizuki tricked you, and you fell for it. For anyone who has read the series, I think you’ll know the exact one I’m talking about, because I don’t think anyone could have predicted that entire thing. Because, again, it wasn’t just a reveal, it wasn’t just you discovering something new—it was a complete rewrite of what we knew as the truth.

But arguably Mochizuki's strongest ability is character writing. One of the defining features of the series to me is that the lines between good and evil are often blurred. Sure, there are some antagonistic characters introduced, but whether or not their motivations are justified is largely up to you. Most of the ambiguous morality comes in during the Feast Arc, which is also the first arc that is just pure pain given to you in book form.

Oz Vessalius was a pretty average protagonist for most of the series. I found him a bit cliche and kind of boring, especially compared to the protagonists from VnK. He grew on me as the series went on, but there wasn't anything about him that was mind-blowing... Until there was. I can't describe any of this to you since it would spoil most of the series, but Oz has the (second) best character arc in the series. He really encapsulates Mochizuki's ability to turn your thoughts on a character upside-down within such a short span of time. All it took was a few volumes for him to become one of my favorite characters in the series, and probably my second favorite protagonist in general (all my homies know my number 1). Oz is one of the two characters that most of my tears were shed for. I loved his relationship with the other characters and how they all came to accept him. Everyone truly felt like family. Oz, like the series, needs patience, but I promise you that he is phenomenal.

Xerxes Breakis my favorite character and by far has the best character arc. However, I also didn't care very much for him in the beginning. He seemed like a character that was weird simply for the sake of being weird, without a lot more substance. I remember one of my notes for him in the earlier volumes was that he reminded me of Hisoka, which...is absolutely not a good comparison. Ironically, he was also the first character that I truly came to like. The sudden turn in my investment around the one third mark was because of him. Obviously I'm not going to say much, but I will say that Break is my favorite character for a good reason, and he’s easily the most beloved in the fanbase. His arc was perfectly done. He was the other character that I cried over the most. It was all perfect. Seeing his relationships slowly change was the highlight of the series, and every time he appeared in a scene I smiled. I absolutely adore this candy-loving, middle-aged man who can’t enter a room properly.


Gilbert Nightray is universally beloved because there's quite literally nothing to dislike about him. Gil does remain a bit stagnant for a while, and I also didn't care about him as much as some of the other characters for a while, but his arc is also perfectly done. His relationship with Oz and Vincent was sweet and I loved how he grew because of his connections with the two. He's easily one of the best characters because, again, there’s simply nothing to dislike about him.

Alice and Sharon are the last in the main five, and my thoughts on them have an inverse relationship: I think Alice lacks character growth but has a really good place in the plot, while Sharon has good character growth but barely any narrative influence. I was a bit disappointed that nothing more was done with them during the bulk of the story, but I did ultimately like their conclusions (and cried over them, let's be honest). In general, I really like both of their characters and personalities and think they’re great, even if a bit overshadowed.

Now for two of my personal favorites—Vincent Nightray and Jack Vessalius. For Vince, I despised him at first. He was creepy and weird and made me feel ~unsafe~, but his arc was so well-written. I loved his relationship with Gilbert and how morally-gray he was. Vince constantly does the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons. He’s so layered and was so easy for me to empathize with, especially considering his place in the story. He's a bad person, sure, but I still understood his motivations for everything he did. Vince, somehow, became probably my third or fourth favorite character in the series, behind Xerxes and Oz. And Jack—a character that only becomes very important midway through the series, but one of the most important in the series. I won’t say much about him because so much of his identity is linked to the plot, but let me just say, Jack is a completely flawlessly written character. He served his purpose in the plot better than anyone else. He’s tied with Vince as one of my favorites.

There are so many other characters as well—Echo, Reim, Elliot, Leo, Lottie, Oscar, Ada, Barma: all characters that were amazing. Even the side characters are all fleshed-out and feel alive. There is no stone left unturned in this series.

Pandora is often compared to Fullmetal Alchemist, so, if you're an FMA fan, you may be wondering just how similar they are. Mochizuki has mentioned that FMA was her inspiration, and both her and Arakawa read each other series (Arakawa even has a blurb in the Yen Press release of VnK). And yeah, there is clear inspiration in all of Mochizuki's works, but the biggest similarity is the basic concept of Pandora. Both are about teenage boys who've committed some sort of sin or taboo and have to work for/are taken care of by the government. They're on some sort of quest to reverse their sin or discover what it is. The villains are also inhuman and their true intentions are largely a mystery. (Also Ed and Oz both have daddy issues!) One of the main differences in the ~vibes~ is that, in general, Mochizuki's series are only Shounen by pure definition (aka being published in a Shounen magazine) when the art and general feeling seem more Shoujo, or at the very least ungendered, and also the fact that most of her fanbase is women. Pandora is a drama with bits of action in it, not a full battle Shounen in the slightest. But if you like Fullmetal Alchemist, I would highly recommend Pandora Hearts simply for their minor similarities, because I really do think there's a lot in here that you would enjoy. And I also think there are a lot of references to FMA that would be fun to pick up!

I also think the early art style might scare some people away because...yeah, it does look a bit rough at times. However, within a few volumes it improves, and around volume 16 it very abruptly becomes the same style as The Case Study of Vanitas, which is stunning. I always love when art styles change throughout series, because to me it feels like we're witnessing the evolution of a artist’s abilities. I can tell which part of the series a panel is from simply from the art style, and I just think that's such a beautiful representation of Pandora Hearts as a whole. A gorgeous, lush story that changes as the mangaka's own abilities do as well.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Jun Mochizuki is one of the best writers I’ve come across. I think she’s amazing at subverting expectations and writing characters, but I also just like her. I’ve read all of her major series (PH, VnK, and Crimson Shell) and in every one I’ve always felt this sense that she just enjoys what she does. She writes because she wants to. She writes manga because she has a genuine want to tell a beautiful story and share it with the world. She’s not afraid to tell a complicated story either. She doesn't write stories that would appeal to the largest audience, but stories that appeal to her. And because of that, every page feels like it has so much passion put into it, so much love and care.

In the end, all of her stories are tragedies, but they never feel nihilistic. For every character death or complete rewrite of what we knew as the truth, there’s a bit of hope thrown in there. It’s such a bittersweet feeling, her stories. I wrote in my original review for the last volume that I had a lot of conflicting feelings about the ending, but after reading it twice, I don’t think it was that I was conflicted about the way it ended itself. I was just so…sad but happy at the same time. I was so sad about everything that was lost, but I was also so happy because of how much hope it was filled with. For every tragedy, there is something gained. Thinking about the ending still makes me feel physically ill because of all these conflicting emotions. This is the only piece of fiction I can think of that has made me cry at multiple points in a first read. And then, when I read it a month later, I cried at all the same parts.

And thus we reach my conclusion: read Pandora Hearts. Go in completely blind and embrace having no idea what's happening. There's a simple beauty in that. You have to be patient, but it's worth it in the end.

Stumbling upon The Case Study of Vanitas was probably the best mistake of my life, simply because it got me to read this. I think Pandora Hearts is beautiful. It's full of pain and despair and melancholy, but it's also full of hope and joy and love. It's one of those stories where I feel grateful to be alive solely because I was able to read it.

So now I leave it to you. It needs time, but once it starts to click, it'll be a feeling like nothing you've ever experienced.

Happy Unbirthday!

"Welcome home."

I had to drop this at chapter 20. I'm not sure what it is about this manga but everything seems so incredibly....bland? The art, paneling, story beats, characters, etc. There is an underlying mystery but honestly it wasn't strong enough to make me want to stick around at all. This may be better for somebody else but nothing in this story up to chapter 20 really clicked for me. After every page I felt an "eh" come from within like nothing was impressing me despite it being so highly ranked. It is possible that it gets better and I'm missing on the best parts of ... the story. However, if the rest of the story is similar to how the first 20 chapters are, then I'm not interested in continuing.

I do not really have a ton of specifics to say here because I just really could not care about this...there was nothing to hate and nothing to love. The premise was a little interesting, but this manga prefers to bog itself down with poorly written gags, atrocious dialogue, and frivolous declarations of affirmation than actually focus on either action or story.

The basic premise of the story is nice enough - secret mysterious prison like madman world that exists alongside the normal world and represents awful things for pretty much any human being. Okay, nice enough! Except...they never explain pretty much anything about it in ... particular. Even worse, our main hero is straightaway declared to be the key to obtaining that power...and no one really says why. We get some vague exposition along these lines, but never anything interesting or helpful; all the interactions and dialogue are more along dramatic lines.

Similarly, there is an interesting enough idea of needing to get back Alice's memories. Great, so we have an actual mission! Except there is no real rhyme or reason to how she gets them back (she just does), and it never really becomes anywhere near a main focus; again, dramatic character interactions and meetings kind of train wreck all of this.

The characters are all essentially uninteresting - Oz the tragic hero who overcompensates by being excessively friendly and accommodating, Gilbert who exists basically to be his homoerotic friend (they made his character dark for a while, then just totally destroyed that to get him back to being homoerotic), Alice the initially tsundere, then just naive and secretly really nice...(ch. 20 p. 32 - She gets angry easily, and her words are harsh, but...the real Alice is very gentle, and loves to cry, and she is very stupid as well...her appetite is also very huge!) *yawn*. Some of the characters have potential for being interesting, like Break or Vincent, but then never actually get to be interesting. The dialogue, always fractured, and ADD of this work ensure that they cannot have any profound details or interactions. It always comes back to bad gags or bad friendship speeches...

All in all, this is not really a work worth anyone's time. It offers a nice concept and world, but fails to flesh them out, it offers boring characters, boring dialogue, boring character interactions, beyond typical gags, and the banter is always lacking in wit. It throws vague calls to Alice in Wonderland mythos and expects you to think that it makes it instantly awesome (unfortunately...this works on almost everyone...). This is a work that offers frivolities instead of awesomeness.