Manga Review: Pandora Hearts Vol.3

                                                  Pandora Hearts Vol.3 Review

In this volume Oz meets a young boy named Phillip who has lost his mother and has a close bond with his father. There's quite a bit of reflecting about Oz's relationship with his father, Oz's father thinks of him as a vile creature for some reason and while this clearly upsets Oz to hear such a thing when he was a lot younger Oz seems to cope with this feelings by hiding and covering them up with a smile. Soon after Oz has bonded with Philip a girl named Echo who works for the house of Nightray comes for Philip do to the escape of an illegal chain called Grimm, Oz tries to stop Echo from hurting Philip only to discover that Echo is actually after the boy's father and was only using Philip as bait to catch the chain.

By this time Alice and Gil had already arrived in the same area and Alice ends up using her powers to attack the chain which means that Philip's father is also being harmed which upsets Oz greatly. Oz then was actually to stop Alice from being able to access her powers and asked in a very emotional and uncharacteristic way why Philip's father would put himself at risk like this when he has Philip to look after his response is because he wishes to change his past. In the end Oz is unable to save Philip's father who was shot by Vincent Nightray, Oz feels very guilty about not being able to keep is promise to Philip which was that his father would return and a lot of it also had to do with Oz not wanting Philip to feel alone like he had in the past although that last part isn't something that he admits out loud.

The next part of the story of this volume is of how and Gil joined the house of Nightray. Gil joined the house of Nightray because Break told him that if he joined the house of Nightray he'd be able to use the Raven chain in order to rescue Oz from the abyss but Break also tells Gil that he'll be his spy on the inside of the Nightray family and that their relationship is essentially one of using each other to get what they want. It's also stated that Gil and Vincent are actually brothers who have both been taken in by the house of Nightray and it's implied that Vincent is mentally unstable in a dangerous way with how when he was young he was cutting up stuffed animals and Gil saw a memory flash of a bloody knife.

I overall loved this volume I thought it did I really good job of filling in character backgrounds and showing more aspects of certain characters. I also still find the artwork to be well done. Please tell me your thoughts on this volume.