Merry Month of Shojo: ALICE 19TH

It seems like the further I look into Yuu Watase's career, the more likely I am to like their work.  I hated Fushigi Yugi, I was iffy on Ceres, but I legitimately loved this one.

ALICE 19TH (Arisu Naintinsu), by Yuu Watase.  First published in 2001, and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

Alice Seno is a quiet, pleasant girl, the sort of person who wants to please others at the expense of her own happiness.  She's nothing like her older sister Mayura, who is beautiful, lively, and the darling of both her parents and classmates.  Alice has a crush on one of her sister's classmates, Kyo Wakamiya, and is crushed when her sister starts dating him.

At the same time, Alice encounters a strange bunny, who turns into an equally strange little girl who tells her she is a Lotis Master.  Alice doesn't quite understand what this means until some hasty, heated words from her cause her older sister to disappear and the boundaries between this world and another begin to break down.

STORY:

I've seen a lot of different takes on the magical girl concept over the years, but Alice 19th presents me with a brand new one: magical girl powers as a metaphor for emotional health and communication.  The story is clearly meant to focus on Alice's growth as a person and by and large it's quite effective.

I was surprised how much I liked Alice considering how passive she is for much of this volume.  Maybe it's because her passiveness feels very real, as does the quiet anguish and conflict she feels about it.  I wouldn't be shocked if Watase drew from real life from it, if not personal experience.  Alice and her sister don't interact too much in this first volume, but what we do see demonstrates that there is genuine affection between them, which lends a real emotional punch to the guilt Alice feels later.  

I also like how they handle Kyo.  A lot of Watase's male leads tend to be smartasses or sickeningly perfect, so it was kind of refreshing to see that Kyo is himself kind of reserved and awkward.  The love triangle between him and the sisters is handled in a far less melodramatic manner than I'm used to from Watase.  The only concession to their usual brand of drama is a late-stage rando who tries to force himself on Alice just so Kyo can save her.  Otherwise it was actually kind of compelling, a stark change from the usual annoyance I feel with love triangle plots.

The only downside to this is that the magical girl elements feel a little underbaked.  The whole Lotis Master concept is still pretty vague.  It's all about the power of words and how one's emotions color them, but the powers that come with it don't start to come into focus until the monsters start coming out and Mayuri disappears.  Honestly, it reminded me a little of Labyrinth.  I wouldn't have been surprised if Alice had simply wished her sister away to the goblins.  I'm not too worried, though.  At least some of this vagueness seems to be purposeful and I'm sure it'll get fleshed out with time.

ART:

This series really highlights the delicacy of Watase's artwork.  It's most obvious with the character designs, where their fine linework lends them all a degree of beauty.  They get to really show it off in the well-timed dramatic close-ups.  It also stands in contrast to the backgrounds, which are all fairly mundane and clearly rotoscoped.  Probably my favorite bit of artwork here is the cover.  Watase's color artwork has always been charming, but the way that the ribbons on Alice's magical girl costume blend into the background to form an Art Nouveau-style frame is nothing sort of lovely.

RATING:

Alice 19th works for me in a way that a lot of Watase's work doesn't because it eschews a lot of the usual melodrama of their work, allowing for a greater focus on the emotion underneath it all.  Combine that with their pretty art and you get a magical girl manga that I can heartily recommend.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 7 volumes available.  All 7 have been released; the physical volumes are out of print, but the series is available digitally.