Many thanks to Yen Press for providing me with a review copy.

About the Mangaka

Until I picked up this series I’d never heard of Ihara Shiro, and sadly, other than his (or her) name, I can’t find anything else out. Neither ANN nor Wikipedia have anything beyond the name. So, no info this time around, if anyone has any please do email it to me so I can update the info.

About the Manga

alice_4

First a correction, in my last review I said Alice on Deadlines was six volumes long, it’s not, it’s four volumes and with this one is now complete.

I have to admit I enjoyed this volume, once you accept the series as being nothing but an ecchi fest you can begin to enjoy it for what it is, brainless fun. It doesn’t take anything seriously, including itself.

Once I got over judging the series, and just decided to try and enjoy it, I did :D

Initially I wasn’t overly fond on of the art, but truth be told I think it’s perfect. Reading this volume I was able to appreciate the subtle changes Ihara introduces into his characters. These aren’t, as I believed at first, inconsistencies.

The only thing I really find frustrating is the cross-dressing aspects. Male shinigami deciding to use a female body just doesn’t make much sense IMO. You can get away with some of them, as story hooks, but mostly it just doesn’t make sense (but then the entire story makes no sense, so it’s all good haha).

There’s a lot more story revealed in this volume, which does make up for the brainless aspects of the previous volumes. In fact we treated to huge amounts of back story which is great.

While the ending was nothing special, in that it was pretty much a given how it was going to end, I did enjoy it. While there was nothing original, it was done in a good way, making it interesting to read. Usually series that end this quick have a stale and uninteresting ending.

As I’ve come to expect Yen Press did an excellent job on this volume. The cover design is awesome, and the colour panel is even better. It does suffer from minor guttering at times, but these aren’t all that major. I did like the use of fonts in this series, they were easy to read and follow.

Christine Schilling returns as the translator, and as usual she does a superb job in translating the series to english, while keeping the original meaning and feelings intact. She’s the ultimate in translators IMO.

So, do I recommend it? Sure, but only if you like ecchi stuff that’s almost hentai. As such it doesn’t go on my Essential Read List as I can see a lot of people not liking it. I do think if the ecchi had been tuned down a bit, and more story allowed to come out, it would have been a better series.

If you like ecchi stuff, want something funny to read, and are open minded about cross-dressing and gender bending, then this is a great series to read.

Where to Buy

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