At the time of writing this, I’m… Overwhelmed. I’m confused. I’m pretty emotional. My feelings are complicated, but I'm convinced that what I've read is a stone-cold classic.

No manga encapsulates the idea of “It gets better later” than Pandora Hearts. At least, for me. You see, nearly all of the manga I like are generally good or at least hold my interest from the outset, and on the first read. Not the case with Pandora Hearts; It took me several attempts to get into it. The reason that this attempt worked was because I loved The Case Study of Vanitas, so I wanted to give Pandora Hearts a real fair shake.

Pandora Hearts can be confusing to the point of frustration; The amount of confusion caused by the series during the first few chapters was what caused me to drop it during the first few attempts. But I ended up starting over, and persevering, realizing that I was gonna need the occasional wiki summary of the chapter that I had just read, and that I was occasionally gonna have to go back, and re-read the last few pages if I realized I was getting lost. Once I did this, the story was a lot more manageable. So, I guess that’s my advice for reading Pandora Hearts; You’re gonna have to constantly refresh your memory, and give your full attention to it.

So, onto the actual story; There’s no way I can effectively summarize it. It’s way too complex for me to do so. But I will say this: Stick with it. It’s confusing, non-linear, and convoluted, but I promise that your patience will be rewarded. When it happens will vary somewhat; Some say that it’s great from the beginning, some say around volume 7, some say around volume 11, but for me, it was pretty damn late. Around volume 16. But once Pandora Hearts hooks you, you’re in for a wild ride that can only be described as a complete mindfuck. And when certain events happen, hopefully, you remembered certain plot points from earlier; Because if you do, you’ll be able to predict what happens a page in advance, and when you’re right, you’ll be shocked at how much of a mad lad Mochizuki was to set this shit up, and you’ll be satisfied at yourself for calling it. And from then on, I was hit with some of the most emotional beats that I had ever experienced when reading a manga, all while still being slightly confused as to what was happening. This might take a re-read for me to understand more. I give this aspect of Pandora Hearts a 10/10.

The art’s real good. Everyone’s a fucking supermodel here, and have the most over-the-top fashion sense that you can imagine. And it works super well here. The art’s solid from the outset, but gets better, and better over time until it eventually turns into the wonderfully polished artwork that’s also showcased in Vanitas from the very start. This aspect is definitely a 10/10.

The weakest point of the manga is the characters; While the cast is all well-developed, likeable, and have motivations that make enough sense in the context of the story, I can’t really say that there’s a single character in the cast that became an all-time favourite of mine, compared to characters like Guts, Koro-sensei, Kaiji, Luffy, or… Well, Vanitas. As I said, none of these characters are bad, there just really wasn’t a super huge standout for me. But YMMV on that front, because I know that people have gotten super attached to these characters. The characters get an 8.5/10 from me.

Enjoyment’s an odd one. At the start, I was only a step above tolerating it. Next, I thought it was fairly interesting. Then, I was completely shocked to my core, and finally, I was confidently thinking to myself: “Yep, glad I gave this another chance!” It was very much something that I consistently enjoyed more as I went along. But I think because of how a lot of the later beats ended up re-contextualizing earlier scenes, I ended up retroactively enjoying those scenes more. In that regard, I’m willing to score this as a 9/10.

Pandora Hearts is something, to say the least. As stated earlier, it started off slow, but then improved as time went on, and then it became one of the hardest-hitting manga I had read in quite a long time. It’s absolutely worth your time, and admittedly, some patience. You’ll think “Nothing could possibly be worth this wait” at the start, and once you really get to the meat of things, you think “This actually was worth the wait!”. Because that’s exactly how I felt. I’m feeling a 9.5/10 on this one. So, what are you waiting for? Give this a read.

(On a side note, while I said that I probably need to re-read it to fully understand, knowing myself… I’m probably never gonna get around to doing so.)