After yesterday’s amazing interview this will immediately pale into the obscurity it deserves, but it has to be done. ^_^

We have, through much hardship and effort, made our way through to the final, climactic volume of Alice on Deadlines and still, the title remains the best part of the story.

The final showdown is less of a showdown than a melee and characters are being stabbed through the gut left and right (with scythes. Seriously? Who uses a scythe to *stab*?!? I mean, yes – you can do it, but what a miserable misuse of a lovely weapon. My long-handled, edged-weapons-loving self protests.)

But in no way is this really anything to do with the story. The story, such as it is, is really about Alice and Lapan, each stuck in a body that is not theirs and only one of them happy about it.

So the final showdown with Regina comes and, instead of it being Lapan vs Regina, it’s everyone vs everyone, with really hard to follow art, but we’re able to parse a few key concepts. The big takeaway – personal loyalty trumps silly plot complication.

As we always suspected – everyone in the Tsurukame family, the heads of the company for which Lapan works, is a cross-dresser. Unlike the sex-obsessed male members of the family, the President and eldest sister seems to actually have business in mind. The severely competent, cross-dressing female business leader stereotype strikes again. Thankfully, she puts an end to the nonsense of destroying lots of lives just to let Lapan and Regina destroy each other.

Somuria remains completely Yuri for Alice, even after she regains her body…in fact, I’m never really sure Somuria realized that it was Lapan in there for most of the series. Because she was competent and hunky, I will also insist that President Tsurukame is gay. ;-) That’s about it for Yuri.

Way, way, waaaaaayyyyy down in what teeny, weeny little soul this manga had, it was a love story. And although we have been told many times that Shinigami and humans cannot be together, Lapan somehow manages to live happily ever after with Alice. No explanations will be given, so just move along, thank you, nothing to see here.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 3
Characters – 4
Yuri – 3
Service – 7

Overall – 4

Many, many sincere thanks to today’s Sponsor, Okazu Hero Ed S! All this needed was popcorn and it would have made a perfect rainy Sunday afternoon snark-a-thon. ^_^