ありす19th

ALICE 19TH

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
7
RELEASE
March 5, 2003
CHAPTERS
40

DESCRIPTION

Alice Seno is a seemingly shy and meek girl who always seems to be outshined by her older sister Mayura. One day, Alice has an encounter with a mysterious and magical rabbit girl, and her life is turned upside down. Alice discovers that certain words have power, and that she has the potential to be master of a set of sublimely powerful words called the Lotis Words. But power always comes with a price, and the price may turn out to be Alice's sister Mayura...

(Source: Viz Media)

CAST

Alice Seno
Kyo Wakamiya
Frey Weilhausen
Nyozeka
Mayura Seno
Oshii
Kazuki
Billy MacDowell
Tatsuya Matsujo
Pai Mei-Lin
Kayna
Yuki Rengedou
Samuel
Maki Rengedou
Eric
Christopher Roland XIII

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

PushPin
45/100
19 problems but world-building is definitely one of them
I was wondering how to write this review so here are basically 19 reasons why I dislike Alice 19th. Spoilers ahead.

1) It actually starts decent enough
Alice 19th doesn't start out bad. We are introduced to our main protagonist, Alice Seno, a 15-year-old high school student who always feels like she's in the shadow of her older sister, Mayura. This causes Alice a lot of grief, especially since she can't even have a pet, something she always wanted, because of her sister's allergy to animals. One day she saves a bunny (with the help of her crush, Kyo) from being run over. It eventually runs away from her but leaves behind a bracelet she decided to keep. Later on, that bunny returns to her, transforming into a small anthropomorphic girl, Nyozeka, and says Alice is a Lotis master.
I would say the first 5 chapters are decent in starting this story. Kyo accepts Mayura's confession, Alice vanishes her sister, and she even does a good job at solving her first "Inner Heart" mission. It's after this point more and more things start to bother me.

2) No direct antagonist is introduced.
When Nyozeka is first introduced, she says Alice is a Lotis Master and that's fucking it for like 2 chapters. She doesn't explain what Lotis is, I still don't even know what it is, and why Alice needs to learn it. So there's no importance put on it and the story carries on to focus on other drama. We don't find out that words have power till chapter 4 and we only see our villain until chapter 5. Considering Alice was told to be a Lotis Master in chapter 2, this was information I expected to already have by then, which sort of leads to my next points

3 & 4)The lack of Urgency and Alice
Despite there being multiple pressing matters Alice faces, I felt there was no real rush from her to actually improve her power. In fact, she doesn't even start properly training her Lotis until chapter 25, and by then we're already halfway through the manga and the villain has influence over everyone in the city. The antagonist can turn a room of people against her in an instance and yet our protagonist isn't strong enough to go through an Inner Heart mission by herself. Kyo and Frey do most of the fighting pretty much until chapter 30 and all she does is talk a little and get in danger.
One of the most laughable moments is when she first transforms into her Lotis Master gear, tries to fly and reach her sister, and is then immediately shot down by lightning, it's so pathetic. And mind you it's probably been weeks, maybe even a couple of months, between that point and the beginning of the story.

5) What Isekai?
I found this Manga under the Isekai tag and I wanna know who did that. There are barely any elements to mark this with an Isekai tag, even as a minor element. The only "Isekai"-ing that goes on is when they go inside someone's "inner heart" and it's like a mini-world where they're are trapped in their problems. But that's not Isekai, that just magic. Calling this an Isekai would be like calling Lolirock or Yugiyo an Isekai because they often fight in damage containing spaces. Speaking of magic...

6 & 7) Magic and the world-building
One of Alice 19th's main problems is its world-building. Remember how I said we don't find out that "words have power" until chapter 4? Well, the words have power thing is a little arbitrary. While Lotis has a set 24 words they use mainly for fighting, regular talking as long as it holds an emotional weight/message seems to work too. After chapter 6 we don't ever see these 24 words used to directly take away the darkness. We are never even told all of the 24 words they're supposed to master.
And, as I said before, I don't know what Lotis is. We are never told how it works or why it was created. We aren't told it's connection to Maram, and why Maram is even here in the first place. The lack of world-building makes it hard to understand what our characters are going through and therefore, and harder to get into the story.

8) No training montages :(
With this lack of world-building, we get stronger characters without knowing how they got stronger. Any progression and training of their powers happen off-page. Without seeing what our characters do to get stronger it's hard to accept them as stronger characters. We don't connect with these characters by seeing them grow with their powers and it takes away from the story. Sure there is a clear emotional growth, but when their magical growth is just as important, just hearing them say "I'm gonna do my best!!" isn't gonna cut it. I need to see that shit too. I'm supposed to believe that in a span of like, 5 chapters our main characters are strong enough to take down the big bad? Yeah, no.

9) Frey Weilhausen
Let me back up a bit. With stories like this, they're always a love interest that has prior knowledge of the newly discovered power that appears. When Kyo, her crush, accepts her sister's confession, I had already written him off of potential endgame and just unrequited love. I expected our second love interest to actually be an interesting character, probably a tsundere to contrast with Kyo, just at least marginally likeable, that would be a suitable love interest for Alice.
Frey is fucking trash.
He's the stereotypical romantically/sexually aggressive love interest that comes in immediately "in love" with the protag. He gets way too close for comfort and kisses without consent. He flirts with every girl in his vicinity and often does actions that require him to be tied up. He's not charming or likeable, personally. The only reason he's even here is that Lotis masters can only marry Lotis masters, which they don't explain either, and he set his sights on Alice. So with this, I got another sad relavation.

10) Kyo Wakamiya is endgame
Don't get me wrong, Kyo is a good guy. He's nice, good senpai points has his own interesting backstory. I just didn't see him as a legitimate love interest. He would have preferred him being someone Alice struggled to get over while getting to know a love interest that actually connected with her. But by chapter 25 it's pretty much set in stone these 2 are gonna get married so, I digress.

11 & 12) Minor Antagonists and lack of intimidation
In minor antagonist fashion, they get in the way of our heroes' fight with the big bad. But honestly, these antagonists don't add anything to the story. Especially Eric, who literally kills himself so that Frey can feel despair (???? Monakuma is that you?), but is only mourned for like 2 pages before they just move on like what? And I could get into the last one's emotional gimmick but Its a little sensitive. But the fact that they literally had another man's head appear on their chest to talk all sad and shit really made me question if I'm supposed to take this seriously.

13) Nyozeka
As the mascot/animal friend/mentor that Nyozeka represents, she completely fails in every aspect. The relationship-building between her and Alice is so minuscule I was really surprised how her death affected Alice so much. Nyozeka stays completely useless from beginning to end. As the very reason, Alice becomes a Lotis master in the first place, Nyozeka does shit all in actually teaching her. She literally just exists and its annoying.

14) Alice is sad.tm
Like I said, Nyozeka's death having such an impact on Alice made no sense to me. For one, as I said, relationship building was minimal. She's so unimportant that I don't even register her when she appears on the page. But Nyozeka's death literally paralyzes her to her knees. And she just sits there. And don't look at me like "oh her friend died, be nice." She is the only one out the main 3 that does this!! Kyo''s friend that dies right in front of him? Passes out due to pain but the next time we see him he's ready to fight. Kyo's dad he thought he killed and had to see die again? A little sad but we good. Eric's friend that betrays him and literally dies in front of him? Mans just wipes some tears and we proceed like nothing happen. A rabbit's that's presence is less important than a thumbtack? DEVASTATION. Sorry if I expected some consistency, I just didn't get it.
And because she shuts down, she's not even the one who saves her sister!! Fucking Kyo does it and basically gets sucked in like sis come on.

15) The Ending
The ending is a cop-out really. Remember when I said this lacks world building and we barely understand Lotis? yeah supposedly there is this lost word that Kyo and Alice were supposed to find to use and defeat the big bad, but they never do. We never seen an attempt or given any information that would help them find these words. So in the end, after Alice snaps out she hears Nyozeka's voice (even though she's dead) and leads Alice into her inner heart (even though she's dead?) and she finds Frey's teacher??? Which in itself doesn't make sense since this guy is supposed to be dead too. It doesn't really follow any of this world's rules but then again, we don't know this world's rules. So he tells her the words, she leaves and saves Kyo, they defeat the bad guy, and we all live happily ever after

So that's not actually 19 (I was close) but this review is already so long I'll be surprised if anyone finishes it.
Alice 19 really had potential. I liked the sister becoming a main antagonist element. I was curious about how the whole Lotis power worked. I really wanted to see her become a whole badass in Lotis with how powerful they were making her out to be. But no dice. Everything is kind of forgettable and I've had to frequently go back to the manga to write this review.
This manga could really benefit from just being longer and building a solid world. Working out the character relationships and giving us more content so we can actually care about these guys. It's not a horrible story, but I wished it was better.
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