Manga-ka: Shiro Ihara
Publisher: Yen Press
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Released: July 2008

Synopsis: “Poor Alice’s trouble seems to know no bounds when she has to deal with a shinigami worse than Lapan… (Is that even possible??) And she has a run-in with the king of the shinigami. Some days it doesn’t pay to be a girl trapped in the body of a skeleton…”

Take a perverted guy and turn him into a girl. Then turn some of his friends/comrades into girls as well and let them loose on the world. While they proceed to do inappropriate things to each other, blow stuff up, cry, whine and act completely obnoxious, they also try to tell a complicated story of deceit and betrayal. The dark and ominous company of Shinigami threatens to make this story interesting, but there’s little to no reason to fear that could ever actually happen.

I’d tell you more about what’s going on, but quite frankly, I haven’t the slightest clue. Alice appears to be a skeleton (I think) and Lapan is the man turned into a woman that may or may not be in love with her. It’s hard to tell if Lapan is really in love with anything when he/she is sticking his/her face into someone’s crotch every other page. I’m fairly sure all the main characters are Shinigami (of some sort) and from this I can only assume they are meant to collect souls.

This series somehow manages to even fail aesthetically on many levels. The scenes don’t match up, the art quality comes and goes and the paneling rarely makes sense. The story is so diluted with sexy posing and inappropriate groping (circumstantially, as well as being pornographic in nature), that you’ll only find it understandable if you can stomach reading it more than once. Getting over the fact that the imagery is disturbingly perverted, there is no transition between the past and present or change of location. Seldom do you even have any idea who is talking.

All three reviewers of Kuriousity tried to read this book, and I was the only one to make it more than halfway. I’m going to consider it a personal victory that I could subject myself to something like this and make it through without wanting to burn out my own eyes. So with my eyes still intact, I’m off to read the next one and pray that it improves in even the smallest of ways. Receiving the next Alice on Deadlines may be my punishment for not writing this review fast enough.

Review written April 14, 2009 by Marsha Reid
Book provided by Yen Press for review purposes

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About the Author: Marsha Reid

Marsha Reid is a self-proclaimed manhwa nut – "It’s my not so guilty pleasure and my one true love." She has a group called Anime@ Large, which has become much like a full time job to go along with her full time job at a local theater. Marsha likes fluffy animals (even though she's allergic), manga/manhwa, anime, and make Lolita costumes in her spare time.