Mangaka: Tetsuya Imai
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Release Date: July 4th, 2017
So, there’s an anime about this manga on Crunchyroll and both fellow TDM reviewer Bijouxdemon and myself were highly excited to watch it weekly when it came out last season, but for various reasons, we didn’t get to watch it. My want to see it had died down as new anime came out and grabbed my attention. However, I was super excited when I learned that the manga was being translated into English by Seven Seas Entertainment. After all, as a person who loves playing Visual Novels often, I can be quite the voracious reader. I can say that this volume did not disappoint my appetite.
Alice and Zoroku follows ‘Sana’, a young female being known as an “Alice’s Dreamer”, and an old man named Zoroku. Volume 1 shows how they meet and begin bonding. By that, I mean Zoroku lays the smackdown on her verbally with words of such intense wisdom that it’s almost comical for him to be in the series. Sana has been trapped in some laboratory for as long as she can remember and she escapes. During her escape, she meets Zoroku in a market [with the cutest cashier ever (next to Cassi), I might add] and immediately reads his mind, states that he should make a contract with her without saying to make a contract, and then vanishes into thin air. She reappears a little later, doing the same vanishing trick (but in reverse!), and gets Zoroku involved in a car chase scene that I hope was animated well by J.C. Staff in the anime.
I won’t go further to spoil anything, but the story is a captivating read. The characters are drawn well. The backgrounds are beautiful and the English reads very naturally. Zoroku as a character is likable, albeit very stern. Sana is totes adorbs in all she does with her misunderstandings of the world and how things work outside of the lab she escaped. (Not to mention that I think if she and Goku got into an eating contest, she might give Goku a run for his money.) There’s mystery, action, slice of life, and more all packed into one tiny package and I absolutely loved it.
Personally, I can’t wait for Volume 2 of Alice and Zoroku to come out and I hope the same for you. For the price of $12.99 USD at a retailer of your choice, I can’t help but implore you to read this manga. It’s got battles. It’s story-driven. It’s got ‘magic’. It’s got a lot of stuff in it to whet your appetite. I wholly recommend reading it.
Lolinia gives Alice and Zoroku Volume 1 a Drastik Moé Measure of 8.5 out of 10.0 (85).
