Reviews

Alice decides to stay at the Hatter mansion, even going so far as to get a job there. She slowly becomes closer to Elliot, until the day she witnesses him doing his job (killing people for Blood). That awakens doubts in her, which deepen when

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Elliot tells her he'll kill her sister for hurting her and making her unhappy. Alice leaves and ends up traveling with Ace to Heart Castle. He gets lost, so she joins up with Peter when he shows up, but Peter ends up locking her up to keep her from leaving. The volume ends with Elliot heading to the castle, and Vivaldi about to order Alice beheaded.

I'm really not a fan of the Alice and Elliot pairing. It's either too goofy and focused on Alice's love of Elliot's ears (it often feels like she enjoys tugging Elliot's ears more than she likes him as a person) or too focused in Elliot's violent nature. In this case it's more of the latter. Elliot announcing that he'd

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kill Alice's sister for making her unhappy

was horrifying, and a good reminder that the people in Wonderland have a very different and far more violent way of approaching the world than Alice is used to (that said, there are non-killers in Wonderland - it's one of the reasons why I like the Julius and Alice pairing so much).

This volume also had a bit of the ear-tugging stuff that I hate. Alice tugged Elliot's ears until it hurt him, and readers were supposed to think this was cute. I do not. He makes it pretty clear that he doesn't like it, and yet she doesn't stop. Volumes that pair off Elliot and Alice really do tend to highlight the worst in both of the characters.

There's a bit in this volume where Nightmare tells Alice "Anyone who meets you will take an interest in you and eventually fall in love with you." I think this is probably supposed to be good and comforting - Alice has gone from a place where the people she loves keep inadvertently hurting her to one where they are guaranteed to love her - but instead it strikes me as being both horrifying and depressing. It probably doesn't help that I played Doki Doki Literature Club! not long before reading this. It

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really highlights just how awful the "someone is guaranteed to love you" aspect of romance visual novels would be if the characters were actually aware of what was going on.

The artwork was at least relatively nice, although the use of screentone was a bit odd.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)