Black Rose Alice: Volume 6 manga review

Manga
Black Rose Alice: Volume 6 manga review
By Leroy Douresseaux
October 30, 2015 - 20:05

Viz Media
Writer(s): Setona Mizushiro, John Werry
Penciller(s): Setona Mizushiro
Letterer(s): Evan Waldinger
ISBN: 978-1-4215-7165-2
$9.99 U.S., $12.99 CAN, £6.99 UK, 200pp, B&W, paperback
Rating: T+ (Teen Plus)

Black Rose Alice Volume 6 cover image

Rated “T+” for “Older Teen”

A celebrated tenor in early 1900s Vienna, Dimitri Lewandowski was accidentally killed at the age of 26. His corpse was colonized by the seeds of a vampire. At first, Dimitri denied what he had become, until he realized that he was killing all his friends. A century later, Dimitri was living in Japan, where he made a deal with a dying young woman, Azusa Kikukawa. She became Alice, destined to become the new breeding ground for a group of vampires.

As Black Rose Alice, Vol. 6 (Chapters 23 to 27) opens, Dimitri remains in a kind of semi-exile from his home. In the meantime, twins, Kai and Reiji, vie for Alice's attention, but that only serves to recall troubled memories of their lives just before they became vampires. Also, the household gets a visit from Akari Nakanishi, a young woman who has a past with Dimitri.

THE LOWDOWN: There are no punches pulled in the Black Rose Alice manga. I have previously described it as a dark-hearted shojo vampire romance, and though it remains dark, the narrative is ultimately a love story, regardless of the bizarre rags in which it is sometimes dressed.

Black Rose Alice Volume 6, in one way, is a rumination on the different ways in which men and women view love and romance. Creator Setona Mizushiro does not, in a broad or general manner, focus on the ways in which women approach romance, nor does she do that for men. She simply depicts how two individuals navigate their way to the same goal... or what seems like the same goal. Each is in love with the other, but each expresses that differently, which leads to some fussin' and fightin.' This is how Black Rose Alice reveals another layer, so that this vampire romance is not like any other vampire romance.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE: Fans of vampire manga will want to try the Shojo Beat title, Black Rose Alice.

Rating: A/10