Kakei no Alice
Alice in Murderland

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Alice in Murderland has all the features that made Kaori Yuki the great artist she is.

I think it is necessary to introduce briefly the mangaka herself. She is one of the "old guard" having started her career back in 1987 before breaking popularity at the beginning of the 90s with the Cain series and later on with the highly acclaimed (and pretty controversial at that time) Angel Sanctuary which took religions and twisted them heavily (you know in a classical Japanese way).

While belonging to the shoujo demographics could be a necessary label I have always found her work pretty tangent and transversal as she definitely ... has her style and the demographics categorization may be pretty limited.

Alice in Murderland is a good entrance to the artist as it is short and has all the peculiarities of Kaori Yuki's style.

The manga was serialized in a defunct magazine which lasted less than a decade and was shut down at the beginning of 2018 leaving Alice in Murderland without a host.

And while "Aria" (that was the name of the magazine) was pretty much shoujo, the following host "Shōnen Magazine Edge" had definitely the grip for a younger male audience who probably wasn't interested in a gothic battle between beautiful ladies and boys.

I have the feeling that this was one of the reasons why the last chapters felt so rushed. I guess the magazine pushed her to close it quickly.

But is it good?

I am biased as she is one of my favourite authors, but trying to be objective I would say for a beginner reader that: "It is good but the journey is better than the destination".

Surely our lady Kaori Yuki has always a way to create plot twists every couple of pages and this is her advantage, but what I felt in this particular entry is that she wanted to put so many things on the table - and believe me it is full of topics and plots all over - without really giving that feel of empathy towards one or the others.

The plot is pretty straightforward, nothing new under the sun.

The Kuonji family is a powerhouse worldwide, even stronger than heads of government. This juggernaut of a family is ruled by Olga who needs to decide the new head of the family and opens a battle royal among all 8 siblings (almost no one blood-related).

From here on we follow Stella through the rankings but despite the battle royal premises many plot lines open and we have a huge number of events condensed in 11 volumes.

Due to the fast pace, we never get attached to the characters. Typical of these battles manga (and one of the reasons why I tend to avoid them) is the continuous elevation of every character to a dramatic river of tears - where the "bad" does not really exist and each one has a dramatic trauma that made them "bad".

Here more or less is the same. We follow everyone involved with background stories that are already outdated and over-abused, additionally, due to the above-mentioned high rhythm we really do not get engaged in them.

This is to say that despite the "classical" features they are still memorable characters because the author is a veteran and knows how to treat even tropes in a way that is fascinating.

Olga herself is worth the price, she has been a great villain (sadly in the end Kaori Yuki tried to humanize her too much).

What keeps the manga going is definitely the insane mystery and twists crafted well with an open ending that I personally liked, ending in a climax and leaving there mysterious.

So, I give this a 60 out of 100 but consider that as a fan I am pretty critical too of her, and you need to give this a chance because it is still an above-average product and even in her minor works Kaori Yuki remains an incredible artist.

Alice in Murderland, I don't know what opinion I would like to leave on it.
The initial idea is good, which is to kill all the members of his family to be the successor, thus turning into a survival game.
The beginning of the story is really good but as it goes on, I find that everything gets messy and that the author has trouble organizing her ideas.

I found it hard to understand the relationships between the different characters and the plot, which is getting worse and worse. All this to tell you that you should not trust the cover which at first glance is beautiful (yes ... I admit it), the story is botched and I find it a pity.
There was so much potential to make a well written story with a good coherent and not rushed end.

First of all, I absolutely love the friggin cover man like it's super colourful and badass. I think it's one of the most beautiful manga covers I've ever encountered. However secondly, the story was all over the shop like it made my head spin to truly understand what was going on. As someone said on Goodreads, the Stella character only becomes a brilliant character when she becomes her ego "Bloody Alice". The scenes when there's action going on were out of this world. As I said though, the plot was muddy for me unfortunately..

It's pretty disappointing for me to think this could have potential but ... unfortunately, it just didn't work out for me :/

Alice In Murderland is a manga by Kaori Yuki and its based on Alice In Wonderland but, with a play or die type twist to it.

It focuses on Stella Kuonji one of 9 adopted siblings who is placed in a death game to survive and last one survives gets the family fortune straightforward enough concept. Also the guests they invite are used as collateral to get them to take part in the challenge. Bloody Alice, is Stella’s blood thirsty counterpart that only appears when fighting other challengers.

Players can also, aside from wealth and power can have their own lovers of their choice should ... they win.

The other kids as well also have their own double sided personalities as well too that can be just as vicious as Stella’s own as a result of the mind altering tea they were given by the parents.

The parents in the manga are pretty horrifying and it does a good job showing scary they can be.

The story is a mix of fairy tale elements as well as Japanese mythos as well too. Also since it’s a death game styled story the pacing is going to be pretty hectic and also, the action as well was pretty frentic as well too.

Kuonji you can say is almost like the white rabbit in the original Alice books since they help guide the respective characters in the weird scenario that they are in.

Characters aren’t going to be easy to like either since lot of them can be downright vicious.

Early on the story it doesn’t show much but as time goes by things will start to pick up the pace and you’ll find out more on whats going on. Character development especially early on is pretty lacking in that department.

The art is pretty solid as always from Kaori Yuki.

The atmosphere is pretty tense and dark as well too. Like in Die and Angel Sanctuary, there’s also elements of incest in it as well too so keep this in mind before you do consider reading. Zemo and Alice even though they are adopted yeah the incest thing still is there and it ain’t meant for everyone.

It’s a fairly long read as well too.

Overall it was a pretty decent dark fantasy manga.

This was a struggle to read from the beginning. The writing, the characters, the story, and everything were just horrible. I was thrown off immediately by the little story of trying to make incest seem cute. Then it later just randomly throws out that they are adopted, trying to make this sound all okay even though they literally grew up in the same orphanage, have the same birthmark on their arms and look almost exactly like siblings. Even if this was taken out of the story or ignored, each chapter and every scene was a pain to read. It was worse than reading a teenagers ... unedited fanfiction.