Heart No Kuni No Alice

Unlike the original Alice in Wonderland, Alice Liddell did not go to Heartland willingly. She was kidnapped by a man with bunny ears after she fell asleep in her lawn. After introducing himself as Peter White, this mysterious man disappeared, leaving Alice to wander off by herself. From then on, Alice Liddell meets all kinds of different characters and made new friends. Among them are Ace, a dashing knight from the Castle of Hearts and Blood Dupre, a handsome mafia boss who looks like Alice's ex-boyfriend. (You can already foresee the chances of romance in this story.)

Alice also gets to know more about Heartland, such as the power struggle between the three main territories: The Hatter Mansion, the Castle of Hearts and the Amusement Park. She stays in the Clock Tower Square, the only neutral territory, together with Julius Monrey, the Master of the Clock Tower.

As she is stuck in this game, she cannot leave easily, as the rule is that 'you cannot leave alone'. Alice could only get to go back home if she can meet and interact with enough people to fill up a potion bottle. Otherwise, she has to continue staying in this never ending dream and game. What would Alice do in this out-of-the-ordinary world?

Alice is a strong willed girl who is unlike the usual meek and mild damsel in distress. Stuck in this dream/game, Alice refuses to give up no matter what. She is also well liked by many of the characters, and almost all of the good looking guy characters have already confessed their love for her. Yes, the sound that you are hearing now are fangirls' hearts shattering into a million pieces.

Nightmare, who is an incubus that she meets in her dream in this dream, told her that she was the one who had the desire to go to Heartland, and that was why she was there now. No, she did not create Heartland; it just happened to be a place that 'reflects her inner feelings' (quoted from Alice). The people living in Heartland also takes a liking to her very quickly, in fact, too quickly. Everyone she met a few times claims that they love her already. This just made Alice wonder whether she was really so depressed and want everyone to love her, and whether that was why she was in Heartland now.

Alice sometimes shows self-doubt and inferiority, especially when she was close to her perfect sister. This was mostly because her ex-boyfriend fell in love with Alice's sister and left her. Hence, meeting Blood Dupre for the first time was a shock to her as he look alot like her ex-lover.
As for Peter White, it could be said that meeting him was the bane of her life. Kidnapping her, forcing a kiss on her and leaving her alone in the foreign kingdom where she was almost shot dead, Peter did not make a good first impression at all. Appearing in front of her numerous times and trying to hug her (out of sheer joy) did not help either.
Alice had bumped into the lost Ace when she was on her way to the Castle of Hearts to find Peter (to punch him for dumping her in Heartland and that kiss) After that, she knew never to trust Ace when it comes to directions. Ace is a mystery to Alice, as he could be happy-go-lucky at one moment and seemingly troubled at another. But something was clear; he was hiding something from her. He was also the one who had told Alice that her heartbeat was special and let her hear his own heartbeat, leading her to realise what is Julius Monrey's occupation.

Although she is alone in this foreign land, Alice blends in well and is on good terms with everyone. Even Julius, who is cold and unfriendly, is kind to her. She has also made good friends with Elliot March (the March hare character), Boris (the Cheshire Cat character) and the Bloody Twins. One unique trait about Alice is that she could recognize the soldiers in the Castle of Hearts. That is uncommon as the soldiers have no faces. Yet, Alice was the only one who can do so. (Or care to do so) Only Alice would jump in front of a soldier and prevent Peter from shooting him dead. She would even risk her life to protect someone she don't even know.

Being in Heartland was also a culture shock to her. In Heartland, people whip out guns from thin air faster than you can say the word. Not only that, they do not treasure their own and other's lives, and roleholders would simply shoot others dead whenever they want. This is mostly because the people have a chance to be reborn once Julius heals and repairs the clock (heart) in their body.
The weather also changes randomly, but it does not affect the people who lived there. Tea parties at midnight were not unusual either.
However, she is already as Nightmare said, getting used to their lifestyle and starting to be one of them already.

Read the manga to read about Alice's adventure in Heartland.

In the original Alice in Wonderland story, Alice Liddell was the one who had spotted a white rabbit that was wearing clothes trying to rush somewhere and started to chase the bunny. However, in this story, Peter White the said rabbit did not get any response from the trying-to-sleep-and-ignoring-the-rabbit Alice, and had no other choice but to kidnap her. Jumping into the large hole he saw in her lawn, the two arrived in Heartland whereby he had forced her to drink a strange potion. When she refused to consume it, he drank the potion and kissed her so that it would be forced down her throat. After introducing himself, he disappeared into the kingdom, leaving her alone.

Alice learn later that he was the Prime Minister of the Castle of Hearts and the Queen's adviser. However, Peter often do not listen to the Queen's orders. He also seems dangerous as Peter has no qualms whipping out a gun and shooting a soldier dead in front of Alice.
Peter gets jealous easily and dislikes it whenever Alice is close to someone male. However, one can tell that he truly loves Alice and would do anything she tells him to do. He told Nightmare, the incubus, that Alice ought to love him back as he was the one who had brought her to this world.

Peter could also transform into a small white bunny (picture below). He had only done it twice so far, one at the very beginning and another in Chapter 12 of the manga series. Yup, kawaii-ne!

At first, all Peter wanted was Alice to stay in Heartland, but now due to some appearance of love rivals, he becomes more anxious and hasty in wanting Alice to love him. He knows that his persistence annoys Alice but he cannot help it, as seeing her makes him feel very happy.

Will his wish come true one day? (:

Peter White in his rabbit form (:

As what the picture says, Ace is a knight at the Castle of Hearts. (It is almost funny how a large castle could only have a Queen, Prime Minister, one knight and some servants.)

This charming knight has a habit of getting lost everytime he goes out. However, he once said to Elliot March that he likes being lost, as he would be able to meet nice people like Eliot who would guide him in the right direction later. (Elliot can't stand him)
Ace is one of the story's most cheerful character. He is often seen smiling no matter what the situation is and is happy-go-lucky. However, this seems almost like a facade that he puts up in front of people, since he could be moody and troubled at times, as though something is weighing him down. Alice was the one who spotted the other side of him that occurs sometimes.

Although he is a knight from the Castle of Hearts, Ace does some work for Julius Monrey too. His work was to help Julius gather some clocks, and most of the time Ace returned with bloodied clothes; blood that wasn't his. He once told Alice that he did not like his life. Furthermore, he was the one who revealed to Alice that people living in Heartland has a different heartbeat from hers; theirs was a clock ticking inside their body.

And yes, Ace has told Alice that he loves her and even told Peter that he was interested in Alice.
Will Alice find out Ace's secret? Or accept his love?

Blood Dupre is the 'Mad Hatter' in the original Alice in Wonderland, as you can see from his unique hat in his profile picture. According to Alice, this mafia boss looks strikingly like her ex-lover. Blood had also saved her the first time he met, by ordering Elliot (his subordinate) not to shoot her. However, due to the shock by the familiar face, Alice had fled the scene immediately after that. Blood seems to be very interested in Alice. However, he once told Elliot that he would like to keep this foreigner close to him, and when he gets bored with her, he will kill Alice.

Despite being a mafia boss, Blood is a gentleman and has good manners and etiquette. You could say that he is a lady's man too. Blood is someone who can say romantic lines without being overly corny. He had once provoked the owner of the amusement park until the latter opened fire, and escaped with Alice, telling her that he did that just so that he could have a fun escape with Alice. He would rather be in a troublesome situation than a boring one.

Blood is the eternal enemy of Mary Gowland, the owner of the amusement park. Unlike what the name suggest, Mary is a man. Yes a dude. Unfortunately for the latter, Blood has told the whole of Heartland about his deepest secret, which was his name. (You can practically imagine the poor Mary's embarrassment and suffering after that.)

He was otherwise on pretty good terms with Alice until a midnight tea party which he held for her. Probably due to Alice paying alot of attention to Elliot, Blood got moody and became cold towards her. At her next visit to his mansion to borrow some books, Alice unwittingly saw him and the Queen of Hearts, Vivaldi, together and being very close to each other. This was strange as there was a power struggle between the three territories and Blood and Vivaldi should be on bad terms with one another. That scene of Blood and Vivaldi together then reminded Alice of her ex-lover with her sister.

What exactly is Blood's relationship with Vivaldi? Read the manga to find out later. (:

Another roleholder, Julius Monrey is the Master of the Clock Tower who repairs clocks. At the first sight, he is cold and unfriendly towards people, but his kindness towards Alice could be seen throughout the series many times. Julius was also the one who had taught Alice about Heartland and provided her with lodging at the Clock Tower.

Mary Gowland claims that Julius is his best friend and admires him, as Julius is the only one in Heartland who never made fun of his name before. Ace is also one of the few who is close to Julius as Ace helps him to do some jobs by collecting clocks. However, neither of them had told Alice what Julius's job is, as Julius would not want Alice to know.

Only after listening to Ace's heartbeat, which was a clock ticking, Alice finally realises what Julius's job was and why he hid it from her. After learning that she knew, Julius then told her about his hated job as a mortician, and said that he knew that she would be afraid of him if she learnt about it. However, much to his surprise, Alice was not afraid of him and even told him that he was much like a God in helping people to be reborn in Heartland. She would rather watch him repair clocks than see the other people in Heartland draw out their weapons to hurt others.

Between Julius and Alice, Alice often brews coffee for him and he would give her a grade as if it was a test, and each time Alice would do her best to improve. Although he is not really a sociable person to begin with, Julius likes Alice as much as the others do. It could be seen one time when Julius told Peter that he would tell Alice the way back to her home, but in the end he did not do so, as Peter asked him whether did he have the courage to let Alice go back.

Elliot is a hare who refuses to have anyone call him a rabbit. (Seriously, what's the difference?) His argument is that he likes to eat carrot flavoured food, but he detests the vegetable itself, hence, he is not a rabbit.
Once during the midnight tea party with Blood and Elliot, Alice could not withstand it anymore and had to grab his cute bunny ears to feel the furry texture. That, of course, was a painful experience for Elliot, but after the incident he claims that he loves Alice.

However, he was not very friendly towards Alice in the beginning. When Alice first stepped into Heartland, she was clueless about where to go and found herself at the Hatter mansion. At the gate outside the mansion, she met the Bloody Twins who nearly want to slice her to death with their swords, and was also nearly shot dead by Elliot. As the guards of the mansion, Elliot and the Bloody Twins did what their job entailed. Fortunately for Alice, Blood Dupre appeared in time to save her.

Elliot is the subordinate of Blood, and is close to him. This was because Blood had saved Elliot before. Julius Monrey had once arrested Elliot and detained him at the Clock Tower, as Elliot's friend had died and Elliot destroyed the clock so that his friend could not be reborn. This was because of his friend's wish never to be reborn in Heartland again, and Elliot had to fulfill this wish. However, doing this was a crime and Julius detained him. Hence, Elliot detests and despises Julius. Blood somehow decided to save Elliot and let him work at his mansion. Blood also promised Elliot that he would destroy Elliot's clock when he dies in the future, so he would not be reborn either. Thus, Elliot is very in debt and grateful to Blood. Elliot is the one who would take care of most of the mansion's business.

Elliot is also not on good terms with Ace, as the latter often irritates him by getting lost and appearing before him many times. Elliot has no idea that a skilled masked man he once fought against was actually Ace. However, besides a few people, Elliot is actually a cute person to be with, and he gets along well with Alice.

Not much is spoken about Vivaldi in the manga. So far, all we know about her is that she is the Queen of Hearts, and is secretly close to Blood Dupre, someone from another territory whom she should not be friendly with. Ace said before that although Peter White is the Prime Minister and Vivaldi's adviser, he hardly ever listens to her instruction and likes to contradict her. For example, he may be late at her meeting at 3pm, but will insist that he is on time by saying he had reached before 3am. However, when he does obey her words occasionally, he will carry out her orders reluctantly.

Most of Vivaldi's orders have got to be with beheading and killing people. This was shown in Chapter 8 of the manga whereby Ace said to Peter: "How rare. The Queen made an order that didn't involve beheading". In that chapter alone, she was not very happy with Alice being close with Blood Dupre, and told Peter to prevent those two from being too close. Later, in Chapter 11, Alice unwittingly saw Vivaldi and Blood were together behaving like lovers when she was trying to find Blood in his mansion. This shows that Vivaldi and Blood has a questionable relationship, seeing that they should be more like enemies instead. (Vivaldi is probably being hated by all of Blood Dupre's fangirls now)

Vivaldi once told Alice at the latter's first tea party there that as a roleholder, Vivaldi is able to change the weather anytime she wants, but the rule of this game was that every action must have a motive/purpose behind it, so the roleholders cannot do something recklessly. This was when Alice asked whether the weather could just change so randomly. Vivaldi's favourite time of the day is the sunset.

Read the manga to find out more about this mysterious lady and what exactly is her relationship with Blood Dupre?

Mary Gowland will probably hold a grudge against Blood Dupre forever for exposing his secret. Indeed, having a name "Mary" when you are a man is terribly embarrassing. (His mother probably lost a bet or something by naming him that) To add on to his humiliation, even a foreigner like Alice knows of his name, no thanks to Boris. He had kept this secret his whole life before Blood spread it across the country, making him the mockery of the town. It is unknown of how Blood came to knew of this secret though.

Gowland happens to be the owner of the other territory in the country besides the Castle of Hearts and the Hatter mansion, which is the amusement park. Upon his first meeting with Alice at the fairground, Gowland decides to play the violin and sing for her. This should be a good thing, except that Gowland can't sing nor play the violin to save his life. Unable to bear the screeching sound, Alice had no choice and asked him to stop and unwittingly blurted out his name "Mary". This only helped to increase Gowland's hatred for Blood that even an outsider had learnt of his secret.

Just like Peter, Gowland is able to make a gun appear out of nowhere. He changed his violin into a rifle when Blood was at the amusement park for business. Just when he finally calmed down a bit, Blood provoked him and made Gowland even madder, provoking him into a shooting frenzy. (Gowland had held back before as Alice was there)

Gowland once claimed that Juiius is the person he liked most in the country, as Julius is the only person who does not care to make fun of Gowland's first name.

Boris is always dressed in punk fashion, and just like Peter and Elliot, he has animal's ears and a tail, specifically a cat. After all, the character Boris is supposed to be inspired after the Cheshire Cat in the original Alice in Wonderland. In this story, however, Boris is someone who has little regard for his life. He often sneaks into the Castle of Hearts and gets caught by the guards sometimes. Boris is touched that Alice is worried about him and his wounds, and is interested in what her world is like.

Boris lives with Mary Gowland at the amusement park. Despite being from another territory, he gets along very well with the Bloody Twins, Dee and Dum from the Hatter Mansion. The three of them had brought Alice to the amusement park to play before.

As there is a limitless supply of clocks around, Boris is reckless as he knows there will be a substitute for him if he dies anyway. However, after listening to Alice's words, he decides to heed her advice and treat his own life preciously. It is also evident that Boris likes Alice. He told Alice that she was the only one who had ever showed concern and worried about him. If it was Gowland whom he was living together with at the fairground, Gowland would have scolded him for spilling his blood on the floor instead of treating and disinfecting his wounds like what Alice did for him.

The Bloody Twins are so named as they are the guards of the Hatter Mansion and carries their dangerous looking weapons around. Their actual names are Dee and Dum respectively (I can't tell the two apart anyway) and they are identical twin brothers who look barely ten years old. However, although their job is to guard the mansion, they often go slacking together, most likely hanging around with their friend Boris at the amusement park.

The twins nearly attacked Alice when she was wandering in Heartland for the first time and chanced upon the mansion. They were stopped by Elliot March who also nearly attacked Alice again but was stopped by Blood Dupre. After Blood Dupre instructed them to be nice to Alice, all three were friendlier to Alice.

Dee and Dum treats Alice like their good friend the next time they met each other and called her "onee-san!" which means "sister" in Japanese. However, the two of them do not really like Elliot as he bosses them around and scolds them for slacking off their job. They gave him a nickname, "newbie-hare" which implies that Elliot has started working at the Hatter Mansion since not long ago.

Nightmare is the incubus who, well, creates nightmares (duh!) in Heartland. When he had first met Alice in her dream, she recognized his voice from before when she was still in her world. He then told Alice that he was the one who had showed Peter the way to get her to Heartland. Nightmare also explained to Alice that this is the world whereby everyone living in Heartland loves her, and even he himself loves her too. When Alice commented that he was like a devil, Nightmare claims that he is worse than a devil, stating that the devil can send people to hell, but he, Nightmare, can drop people into dreams. According to what he said, dreams are scary because once you wake up from it, there's only reality. Nightmare also told her a little about the afterimages that she saw one day.

There are many moments when Nightmare could be really comical. For instance, he is a sickly incubus who refuses to go to the hospital even though Alice told him to go, because he hates having shots/injections. Once, when Alice pulled on him to demand an explanation about the afterimages, he coughed up blood. However, his appearance in the manga is quite seldom and lasts for a short while only. I guess the main reason is because Nightmare can only appear when Alice is sleeping and having a dream or when he is speaking to the other characters, thus, Nightmare's appearance could be really limited.

Peter was seen in Chapter 12 of the manga asking him for some advice and whether is Alice already adapting to this unusual world. Nightmare also advised him not to be too persistent and pushy whenever he meets Alice so that the latter would not hate Peter so much.

Thus, Nightmare is basically quite a mysterious character who does not reveal alot about himself besides the stuff stated above. However, I can tell that there is still alot of potential from him for us to expect many more interesting moments in the manga soon. (=

As the manga is only up to Chapter 12 since 7th December 2009, I presumed that there are many other characters who have not been introduced into the storyline yet. Hence, if there are other new characters appearing, I will updated this lens ASAP about the new character(s). Thank you all for your patience! (=

If you like bishies a.k.a beautiful men, you will be most delighted at this new game. Another of the main draw is the cast chosen for the voice actors for this. You can even expect one of Japan's most prolific seiyuu Takehito Koyasu and even Kenyuu Horiuchi, who had famously been chosen as Brad Pitt's dub voice, as well as many other voice actors from popular series like Naruto, Bleach and Gundam Wing. You can check out the voice actor(s) in action here: http://quinrose.com/game/alice_h/flash/kyara2_flash01.html

This game is available in PC, PSP and PS2 formats. (=