Pandora Hearts

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I’m going to convince you to read Pandora Hearts.

The power to change the past– If you had the chance, would you take it?

Pandora Hearts tackles ideas of loss, trauma, the importance of our pasts, as well much more. It’s tackled so respectfully and thoughtfully that it allowed me to reflect on my own past. I’m sure we all have something we wish we could change. A person we wished we never met, a person who we wish we got to talk to once more, and Pandora Hearts allows people to reflect on that.

But wait, who cares about all that philosophy stuff?
Is it fun to ... read? Where’s all the joy, where’s the funny?

Well, fear not.
Pandora Hearts also cured my depression ⭐~

I absolutely adore all the characters, and everything they feel and experience throughout the story is just so relatable. I love them so much that when this particular scene happened, this manga broke me out of my depressive lethargy by allowing me to feel an anger so strong that I was left no other choice but to quite literally scream aloud in agony. Yeah, that’s right, depression, “I reject you”, BITCH! Also, yes, that is a reference.

I ended up falling in love with the characters so much that this stupid idiot manga caused me to make my first ever MMV, an entire minute and 44 seconds dedicated to one effeminate man with blonde hair and scissors– It now sits alone on my desktop for no one but me to see.
But falling away from my point I am not, as I made this MMV because it helped me process my complex feelings of love and hate that I felt for this character.
Grief is a complex emotion, and it can take many forms, one which happens to include making an incomprehensible music video featuring over 80 screenshots of the manga that I cropped, a plethora of sparkle text, stars, and bouncing hearts gifs that I found on google.com, and enough layers of irony that wedding cakes can’t help but shutter in jealousy.

Pandora Hearts themes on grief mean a lot to me. Jun Mochizuki uses her manga to tell a beautiful story that allows her readers to explore their complex and intense feelings on difficult topics. I know, because I experienced that introspection when and after reading Pandora Hearts. What else can you ask for in a story?

In this review, my tonal whiplash is an intentional choice done to demonstrate how Pandora Hearts itself also handles its tone– It shifts from more serious to light tone, but the topic and subjects in question are usually all still serious. Just because I shared my experience of making a music video in a funny way, it doesn’t undermine my overall point of the various ways that grief manifests itself.
Read Pandora Hearts.
You want to understand my reference, don’t you?
Read Pandora Hearts.
Don’t you want to know which character the “effeminate man with blonde hair and scissors” is?
Read Pandora Hearts.
You want an emotionally gratifying and fun experience that keeps you on edge, right?
Read Pandora Hearts.
If nothing else, the care I put into this review is an indicator of something, isn’t it?
Read Pandora Hearts.

Might be an epic series seeing how high up is ranked out here on MAL, but one thing I also learned from the MAL rankings is that, not ALL top/highly ranked series will grasp my interest.

Main reason why I dropped this is the character design as well as the silly and gag relief moments the author randomly throws at you. I does not suits my taste and I find it very annoying. Which is a bit funny, cause in fact this was my main issue with the anime adaptation of Vanitas, but now that I started reading it, it somehow became more bearable.

Has a sightly ... intriguing mystery surrounding the plot, but nothing too heart racing nor thrilling enough to make me stay and ignore the annoying "comic relief" and bland art.

The art department is very lacking, like a whole lot. Not enough backgrounds and the art style along with the overall character design is just not for me.

I did not enjoy a single thing about it. As I mentioned before, the story might pick up further ahead but too bad I won't be there to witness it.
The 5 chapters of Vanitas I have read so far, have been far more entertaining than the 10 chapters of Pandora. Even though I've finished the 1st cour and have an idea of what lies ahead, I am still very thrilled by every single page I go through.

I have noticed minor similarities in both works so I might get back to this in a distance future for a speed reading just to compare both series, n see how much the author grew.

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.