By Quin Rose and Mamenosuke Fujimaru, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan as “Anniversary no Kuni no Alice – Tokeiya” by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

You would think that I would have run out of things to say about these volumes. Sometimes I have, when they’re particularly pointless – see last month’s batch of Bookshelf Briefs for my opinion of the Ace spinoff – but there always seem to be a few nuggets of interest to keep me going. It also helps that this volume focuses on one of my favorite of Alice’s romantic choices, Julius Monrey, the clockmaker. (In case you’re wondering about the ‘Anniversary’ thing in the Japanese title, it’s what they called the updated PS3 version of Alice in the Country of Hearts.)

The basic premise won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s read the previous spinoffs of this endless otome game series. Alice is trying to get away from an oppressive Peter White at Heart Castle, so she asks Julius if she can stay at the clocktower for a while. He agrees, and they gradually begin to open up to each other. As their relationship deepens, however, Alice has to not only deal with her own feelings, and the fact that her beloved is not the type to take the initiative, but also realize that Julius is hated by a large number of folks throughout Wonderland. Can she come to terms with what his job really entails? And what of her ever-present need to return to her sister?

Julius is a rarity in the set of Wonderland males that Alice runs into. He’s passive, introverted, and taciturn. He will happily stay in his tower for weeks, just working on clocks and sleeping when he remembers to. After several stories with Blood, or Ace, or the twins, or Eliot, or Boris, he feels like a breath of fresh air. He also causes Alice to need to be more proactive, rather than simply have the love interest be aggressive consistently until she gives in. There’s lots of adorable scenes here.

Also, he’s a mortician. Who can resurrect the dead. Only not really. Wonderland’s weird world, where everyone has clocks instead of hearts, and people can be ‘resurrected’ but aren’t quite the same people they were before, makes almost everyone uncomfortable, and that gets taken out on Julius. He’s clearly not doing this for fun, but it’s his role, and he regards it as necessary. But in a way, hanging out with him is keeping Alice in a constant shadow of death – something that I imagine makes Peter quite nervous, given what they’re all trying to make Alice not remember.

This one-shot also has an unusual ending in that, when Alice confesses her love, she chooses to remain in Wonderland and stop trying to return to her own world. Which she’s done before, but in this case the vial filled with people’s feelings that she carries around throughout the game is seen in the final shot to be shattered at her feet. It’s a striking image, showing that there’s no going back. I will admit I’m not entirely happy with the basic premise of the series being ‘if she remembers her traumatic past that makes it a bad end’, which seems to romanticize denial more than I’d like. Still, it does make for a good capper on what has been a fairly enjoyable, if slight, story.

There are also two Crimson Empire stories at the end. Luckily, they are shorter in length than they were in the Ace book. I say luckily as they were incredibly boring and tedious. Alas, you’re better off with Alice than Sheila.