Bibliomania is a horror manga by Obaru (story) and Macchiro (art) that is about a girl waking up in a strange manor and proceeding to try and find her way out of the manor by trapaising through the 431 rooms to make it room 000 which is where the entrance lies.

I wasn't sure really what to expect from this manga. Despite the strange beginning of the manga prior to Alice waking up in the manor, it didn't seem a terribly unique premise for a manga.

I've always had a negative gut reaction to anything that looks to get by on weirdness alone. A character waking up in a literal white void and then being accosted by this wacky looking serpent when they tried to leave... I just had a bad feeling it was going to be one of those. Something that's weird just to be weird.

But I was off the mark. Though don't get me wrong, Bibliomania's very weird.

But there is a story here. ~~One that I don't necessarily want to spoil. At least, not outside of a spoiler tag anyways.~~ What really sells it though is definitely the art. I mean what got me to read the series in the first place was that cover image of Alice's face rotting.

As the serpent explained, if an occupant of their room leaves it, their body will start to rot. The more rooms Alice makes it through, the worse her rotting gets. And later on, she's rotted so badly that she barely even resembles a human and it is just wonderful.

I'm a huge fan of body horror and all those pages of monster Alice were just absolutely great. The rooms themselves and stories of the occupants are pretty good too, but the main thing I like about this manga is definitely Alice and the Serpent.

The Serpent especially grew on me. As it acts as a Virgil to Alice's Dante as she proceeds throughout the rooms and provides commentary on the various occupants she encounters. It was no twist that the Serpent was hiding something big from Alice. After all, who would ever trust a talking Serpent in a suit? Especially after mentioning that the amount of guests he needs to have to start the “party” just happens to be 666.

But that's not to say there isn't anything unsettling about Alice as well. There's just something off about her and the way she acts. That's without even mentioning that we also keep cutting to before when Alice entered the book and it's her wandering the world which seems to be already completely destroyed.

WARNING: MASSIVE SERIES RUINING SPOILERS AHEAD. DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE MANGA.

Spoiler, click to view

I think it's pretty obvious pretty even early on that there was going to be a twist. Nevertheless, I really didn't predict that Alice was going to turn out to be the serpent that destroyed the entire world at the very start of the manga. And that THE Serpent was simply a knock-off product developed and based off of Alice's Book of Truth.

But then I reread the whole thing from start to finish and in one sitting and realized it's not even an outrageous twist that came out of nowhere. Explains why there's something unsettling about Alice even before she seems completely impervious to the desire poison of the Serpent's book, explains why she's wandering the ruined world alone, and of course, it gives a hell of a lot more weight to that moment of her finding that doll.

~~I fucking absolutely love details like that.~~

And then when Alice and the Serpent both make it out of the book and you have that whole excellent chunk of Serpent realizing that oh shit, I'm not the true monster here. I absolutely fucking love the concept of a monster being confronted with a greater monster, and good god they nailed it with this manga. Because it's not just that Alice has beaten the Serpent to destroying the world in sating her ravenous Bibliomania, but we get a clear comparison of their size and the Serpent is just so much smaller than Alice.

I said it earlier in the review, and I'll say it again, I love Monster Alice so much.

#Conclusion#

What a nice surprise this manga ended up being. Really was just in it for the art. My primary recommendation with this manga is if you do read it, maybe read it a second time. I wasn't able to read it in one sitting the first time through, but even then there were a whole bunch of more details I just completely overlooked because I was just gawking at the art in general.

It just barely misses the level of being a new favorite for me. Bibliomania's a 9 out of 10.