Alice in the Country of Hearts – My Fanatic Rabbit 2
May 16, 2015
QuinRose / Psyche Delico – Yen Press – 2013 – 2 volumes
My impression pretty much stayed the same through volume 2. Cute love story, but I wish they hadn’t condensed the story from the main series into two volumes to tell alongside it. I know it’s a weird, alien story if you don’t have the details (and still is, even if you do), but it’s also not meant to be told in two volumes.
In this volume, Alice is still trying to reconcile herself to the fact life means nothing to the Heart-landers, she learns the deal with the clocks, etc. Elliot tries to check himself, although loses control once again when she sees Alice walking with Julius. We continue on to a conclusion from there.
Again, if you’re familiar with the series, you know where these books are going. There’s not a lot of surprises. This one’s okay, but I’ve liked a couple of the other spinoffs better.
I was excited to read this one, because I liked Psyche Delico’s art in the BL books I’ve read by her. The character designs are a little weird (maybe not quite suited to this series), but I still like her a lot. She uses a lot of beautiful pattern and detail that make certain scenes quite lovely.
SLIGHT SPOILER: There’s a scene at the end where Alice is trying to decide whether or not to leave, and Nightmare shows her an illusion of Elliot killing herself when he realizes she’s gone. This strikes me as horrifyingly manipulative, although not necessarily out-of-character. There’s a few intense scenes with Elliot in this volume, actually, which surprised me. Slightly more intense and violent than your usual shoujo manga, and I tend to like books that shake things up like that. But the suicide was a little too much for me.
