I love all the characters here. Really, I've never loved so many characters so much before. They all have very colorful personalities, representing most of the standard animanga archetypes but elaborating on each in unique ways. I connect with all of them very strongly. There's lots of great chemistry between the characters, ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to depressingly-dark. I love the full spectrum of emotion here. But characters alone do not a good series make.
The plot is incredible. It is complex, but not to the point of confusion. The whole thing so far is about unraveling what happened during a tragedy 100 years ago in order to prevent it from happening again. As such, most of the plot takes place in the past, and is revealed through pieces of characters' memories. Herein lies my favorite philosophical obsession with this series. I love how PH addresses the fact that partial memory is a very dangerous thing. The characters get their memories back gradually, and in very fragmented form. They don't know the whole story, and their assumptions about what happened and about who they are given the limited information they have affects self-image, personality, and actions, even if the assumption they made isn't true.
How do people deal with the idea that there's more to them than the life they know, or that they're essentially more than one person? What if everybody around them expects them to be somebody else? How does this shape their perception of identity? What if you don't remember enough? What if you forgot that you wanted to forget? And what do you do when you remember too much? Or what if the past that made you who you are completely changed? These are the kinds of questions addressed in Pandora Hearts.
There is much re-read value in this series. Many things happen before they are explained, or before a character remembers its significance, so you pick up on a lot of things you missed on your 2nd (or 3rd or 10th) read through.
