My Pandora Hearts propaganda

if it hasn't been made glaringly obvious, this is my favorite manga ever, so i HAVE to write something.

the best part of this are the character/intrapersonal relations, which are all well written + interesting as fuck and has SUPER great art (esp later on in the story) to go with it. even though it starts somewhat overwhelming and confusing, I think the whole story overall is genuinely done really well and HAS been sticking with me for a long time now.. if you've read The Case Study of Vanitas, I would even say that this is a must-read for you even!!!! it's definitely a window to what author Jun Mochizuki was capable of even for her first manga series and will be for Vanitas as well.

a vague synopsis.. Pandora Hearts is themed after Alice In Wonderland, and multiple other fairytales. the major thing in the manga is the "Abyss," a terrifying realm that's unknown to our protagonist, Oz Vessalius, until he's banished there for "the sin of his own existence" on his coming-of-age ceremony. There, he finds that he  as he knows himself may not be the whole truth, and the story hinges on him discovering the puzzle of his past self, alongside other characters. Such as a fellow amnesiac, and a girl he meets in that abyss.

i omitted a few details there, so you can go and read itself if its in your interests. It is infinitely worth it to check out if you're interested and i HAVE so much to say on this manga. it is my life and heart and soul and passion and basically a part of me at this point i will never shut up about it.

a lot of the plot is focused on the characters, and their relationships with each other. it really shines through in this aspect, i think. some of them are familial, platonic, wholesome, or messed up but theyre also all very complex. many characters are also interlinked/paralleled despite never meeting, and i just have A LOT of thoughts on this. if Found Family is your thing, Pandora Hearts will supply you with more than you can expect, genuinely. every character is developed very well, with special shoutouts to [im not tellinggg youuu.] 

You can probably watch the (rather.. alright-ish..) anime to get a taste of what its like, but it ends on an original ending that only really scratches the surface of the work. the manga also has a lot of pieces and bits of the real truth sprinkled all over as foreshadowing, even some seemingly obscure things. i know because ive reread this five billion fucking times

my own story for how I discovered this, I was looking through voice actor Kosuke Toriumi, just for the fun of it and saw an interesting character from PH there. I then put Pandora Hearts on my to-read list and then finally finished it in the beginning of 2025... even though I started from all the way back in 2023. For some reason I kept procrastinating it and I honestly regret a bit that I did.

the story is a bit incomprehensible at first, I think as is with most mysteries, but as I read through it it starts to pieces together in your brain. In one of the chapters I had a moment where I was like. "Oh my god. So that's how it is." and kept reading for as much as I could. Bit of a spoiler but It was Not How It Is. Around March I was laying on my bed freaking out reading it 'til 4 AM, then woke up at 11 and continued to read until it was finished. It was truly. Truly. TRULY. One of my best decisions yet.

Thank you for reading and indulging in a neurodivergent teen's pipedream of I Hope My Favorite Manga Gets Popular Enough For A New Adaptation. 

As a note since I've mentioned art a lot - For some I think the artstyle early on will seem a bit dated, but the improvement definitely becomes immeasurably obvious later on. Here's one illustration for you. I think it takes a bit to load in.