QuinRose

In the Country of Hearts, Alice thought of Dee and Dum as rambunctious little brothers. In the Country of Clover, however, they spend most of their time in their adult forms, and Alice is confused and embarrassed by her budding feelings for them. She's also worried that, at some point, they'll want her to choose between them. She likes them both equally and doesn't know how she could possibly do that.

The twins are fairly low on my list of favorite lover interests for Alice, for a lot of show more reasons. One, I'm not a fan of relationships involving a main character and twins – it comes too close to twincest, which I also dislike. Two, the twins are gleefully violent. Yes, a lot of the Wonderland guys are violent, but they don't all revel in that violence quite as much as the twins. And three, the twins are usually very child-like, even in their adult forms. I'd argue that it's actually a little worse in their adult forms, because the disconnect between their appearance and their behavior is so jarring.

As in The March Hare's Revolution, Alice once again finds herself saddled with love interests who say threatening things that are supposed to be romantic. At one point, one of the twins says “If you leave us, big sis, we might do something bad.” Of course, they're likely to do “something bad” whether she leaves them or not, because killing random people who try to enter the Hatter Mansion is their job.

Alice's internal conflicts about being attracted to the twins apparently weren't enough, so the story included Dee and Dum competing for Alice's love. It was a little odd, since, despite Alice's worries about having to choose between them, the twins themselves had previously seemed perfectly fine with sharing Alice. Their effort to get the best gift for Alice was still amusing, however, and worked out pretty much the way I expected.

This would probably have worked better for me if it had been more about friendship/family-building than romance, since that would have significantly reduced the squick factor. Parts of the story were actually pretty sweet. The artwork was also good, although I noticed that Shichiri's interpretation of Vivaldi was a little different.

Rating Note:

Why did The March Hare's Revolution only get 2 stars while this got 3? No idea. I just like the twins more than Elliot, I guess. They can be a fun pair sometimes, whereas with Elliot it's just him and his carrots and his extreme loyalty to Blood.

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

Alice is accosted by a Faceless guy who is taken away and tortured by Blood's men (specifically, Pierce) to see if he's part of a rival family. Peter begins a deadly battle with Boris. Nightmare prevents Alice from interrupting, but she finally manages to break free and intervene. Alice and Borishave sex, further ensnaring Alice in Wonderland, but she still can't bring herself to move in with him. Blood refuses to let her pay to stay at his mansion, and she doesn't want to be Nightmare or show more Vivaldi's guest. The volume ends with a short featuring Boris fetching food for Alice after this volume's sex scene.

So many of the volumes in this series have kissing-only romance that it hadn't even occurred to me that some of them might have sex, so the on-page (tastefully done, but multi-page) sex scene caught me by surprise. It's vague enough that I suppose it could be really intense cuddling... Okay, so it was definitely sex. I had to laugh at one part of the volume, which turned a grape tomato being speared by a fork into sexual imagery.

Anyway, the relationship between Boris and Alice still has problematic elements, what with it being focused primarily on Boris's jealousy and characters' attempts to keep Alice bound to Wonderland. Even Nightmare referred to Boris as their “best ball-and-chain.”

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

A delightful twist on the original 'Alice in the Country of Hearts' series. Instead of Blood Dupre being the main love interest, Elliot March is the beau Alice has fallen for. Elliot is adorable and sweet but also vicious and deadly. Falling for a double sided man is at best confusing, at worst, painful.

Volume one ends on a cliffhanger with Alice in danger, leaving the reader wanting the next volume.

Note: The Alice in the Country of Hearts series is based on an Otome dating game. The show more resulting manga (by the same title) has spawned many different spinoffs. This is one of those stories.

This spinoff has 2 volumes. show less

Peter saves Alice from being beheaded by Vivaldi, and Elliot takes Alice back to the mansion. Alice and Elliot are suddenly a lovey dovey couple, but things take a turn for the worse when Alice spends time with Ace and Julius. She learns about the clocks, and that Elliot was once in prison for irreparably breaking his friend's clock. Elliot gets mad at Alice for being chummy with Julius, the man he hates, so Alice decides that she should drink the vial and go back to her world and her show more sister. However, Nightmare intervenes with a vision of Elliot killing himself after Alice leaves, so she decides to stay.

This started off as a mediocre series, featuring one of my least favorite Alice in the Country of pairings, and then took a turn for the much worse. First we have attempted rape on Elliot's part - he begins to force himself on Alice in anger after she spends time with Julius, his enemy. Then we have Nightmare's emotional manipulation of her. Alice was going to leave Wonderland for good, and for a very good reason (a borderline abusive boyfriend). In order to stop her, Nightmare produced a vision of Elliot killing himself out of thin air. It reminded me of the horrible boyfriend a family member of mine used to have, who'd try to get her to stay with him by telling her he'd kill himself if she left.

Not only that, the way the story was told was choppy and just plain bad - it went from Elliot taking Alice back to the mansion to them being a couple in the space of a page or so. I also felt that the artwork took a bit of a nosedive, becoming scratchier and less appealing.

If this were a horror series, it'd be one thing, but these stories are supposed to be romances, albeit occasionally kind of dark ones. This was garbage.

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