I never thought mixing Alice in Wonderland with demons, time travel and mystery would ever be something that intrigued me as much as it did but Pandora Hearts, an anime from 2009 animated by studio Xebec and adapted from the same titled manga by Jun Mochizuki comes in.
Synopsis
Pandora Hearts gripped me early on with its immensely packed story and symbolism. It’s a coming of age story in every sense of the phrase as our main character Oz finds himself thrown through time fairly early into the story and although ten years have gone by, he is still the same child he was on the night he traveled through time. In this world, Oz holds a secret power that a society named Baskerville is out to capture, their intentions however seem unknown at first. Demons called Chains create contracts with humans and come from a world called Abyss, in which the Will of Abyss controls them whether they have contracted with humans or not. That’s a lot to take in and there are more phrases like the Four Great Dukes, Sablier, Trumps, and more that you need to know to make sense of the story, but the good news is it doesn’t all get thrown on you as babble talk and actually makes sense.
The Positive
Let’s start with what I believe Pandora Hearts’ biggest strengths: its characters and how the story develops them. This is Oz’s story, but it’s just as much everyone else’s, his servant Gilbert and master Alice creates a decently rounded cast. Pandora Organization members Xerxes Break and Sharon Rainsworth fill out our main cast of characters. Each episode early on focuses on Oz trying to find Alice’s memories from Chains they encounter, over the course of those somewhat episodic bits, new one time characters pop up but contribute to Oz’s personal development over time, similar to how Inuyasha and Kagome search out the Shikon jewels but done much quicker and feeling way less stretched out, probably because Pandora Hearts is only twenty-five episodes. There would be too much to spoil to describe how these characters developed, but it’s safe to say that first impressions aren’t everything with any of them, the story will have you guessing at its mysteries as it progresses and adds new characters, though some answers may seem obvious (and one of them really is) not all of them are.
Yuki Kaijura, more well known for her work on Sword Art Online and Madoka Magica composed the soundtrack to this show. Though I’m more a fan of her soundtrack to the Bandai Namco RPG series Xenosaga. When watching the series, it kind of feels like you’re stuck in the middle of a classic Final Fantasy game, despite Nobuo Uematsu not being there. It’s probably because of that love for Xenosaga that I feel that, though. The opening “Parallel Hearts” by FictionJunction is also a super catchy tune, that I’m really glad lasted the entire run of the series…which is to say it’s not long enough.
The Negative
You won’t feel a sense of completion when you finish this show, of over one hundred chapters that exist in the source manga the anime series would have to rush everything to cover the entire story and do a little of time travel too as the anime ended before the manga. Maybe there were plans for a season two, as some plot points get teased and go absolutely nowhere, specifically with a character introduced later into the show, Elliot Nightray. It’s a shame because the series really did deserve to be complete. Due to this there might be times it feels like the series wastes some valuable time, especially with an episode focused on the cast infiltrating Oz’s sister’s school as a means to introduce her, Elliot, Leo and some Baskerville characters. There’s also the fact that finding the manga is also super hard unless you’re willing to sail the high seas, due to it being fairly unavailable across many markets, you’d best be searching across used markets or for digital versions.
Then there is the fact that there is a lack of an English dub, not quite a negative, but this may be a turn off for some people. If you’re totally against subtitles and that’s a dealbreaker, well at least you know that now.
Final Verdict
Some reviewers will say that the ending means everything, but with this one it’s more about the journey. Yes, to get the complete story you are going to need to read the manga, but it’s still worth a watch anyway. Besides, unless you want to wait for items to come back into availability or pay exorbitant prices to fill out your collection.
Pandora Hearts is available on Crunchyroll and Funimation.