Alice in Murderland Review: Nine Adopted Siblings, One Tea Party, and an Order to Kill Each Other

Kaori Yuki built her reputation on gothic excess — angels, demons, family curses, beautiful people doing terrible things in ornate rooms. Alice in Murderland is her at her most concentrated: a death game between siblings, staged like a tea party, drawn like a fashion plate, escalating like a fever dream. It is melodramatic and overstuffed and I had a great time with it.

If you want restraint, look elsewhere. Yuki has never been interested in restraint.

Quick Take

• Gothic death-game horror from Kaori Yuki, the artist behind Angel Sanctuary
• The nine adopted Kuonji siblings are ordered to kill each other in a deadly inheritance game until one survivor claims everything
• Rated M (Mature); 11 volumes complete, published in English by Yen Press

Who Is This Manga For?

• Fans of Kaori Yuki's lavish gothic horror
• Readers who enjoy death games with constant betrayals and shifting alliances
• Anyone who loves ornate, baroque art paired with brutal violence
• Readers who want melodrama embraced rather than apologized for

Content Warnings & Age Rating

Age Rating: M (Mature) Content Warnings: Graphic violence and gore; sibling-versus-sibling killing; incest themes (common to Yuki's work); psychological horror tied to Stella's split personality

The M rating is accurate. The violence is frequent and the family dynamics are deliberately transgressive.

Story Overview

Stella Kuonji is the meek, unremarkable adopted daughter of the immensely wealthy Kuonji family — the least notable of nine adopted children. At a grand party hosted by the family matriarch, the horror is revealed: the nine siblings are commanded to participate in a death game in which they must kill one another until a single survivor remains. The last one standing inherits the entire Kuonji fortune and legacy.

Stella's apparent helplessness conceals a secret. Under threat, a second personality emerges — "Bloody Alice," a ruthless, capable killer utterly unlike the timid girl she usually is. This dual nature makes Stella both prey and predator, and the central tension of the series is whether she controls Alice or Alice controls her.

As the siblings turn on each other, the series becomes a churn of shifting alliances, hidden agendas, buried family secrets, and escalating reveals about the Kuonji family's true history and the real rules of the game. Yuki layers gothic family melodrama — secret parentage, forbidden attachments, ancestral curses — over the death-game skeleton, and the body count climbs toward a finale that ties the bloodletting back to the family's origins.

Characters

Stella Kuonji / Bloody Alice — The meek adopted daughter whose survival depends on the murderous alter ego she can't fully control. The psychological horror of the series lives in the gap between the two: Stella wants to protect people; Alice wants to kill them. Watching her negotiate with her own other self is the book's strongest thread.

The Kuonji siblings — Eight other adopted children, each with a distinct gothic archetype, secret, and stake in the game. Yuki gives them flamboyant designs and competing agendas so that every alliance feels provisional and every death lands with a reveal.

The matriarch — The architect of the death game, whose reasons for staging it are bound up in the Kuonji family's hidden history. Her motives unspool across the series.

What I Love About It

The art does the heavy lifting, and it is glorious. Yuki draws the Crimson 13 like a couture nightmare — elaborate costumes, baroque interiors, flowers and blood arranged with the same care. The contrast between the elegance of the staging and the brutality of the killing is the entire aesthetic argument of the series, and Yuki commits to it completely. A tea party where the porcelain is perfect and the guests are being ordered to murder each other is a very Kaori Yuki image, and she sells it.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The party itself — the inciting scene where the matriarch calmly reveals the rules of the death game to the assembled siblings, and the polite gathering curdles into the realization that everyone present is now expected to kill everyone else. Yuki stages it for maximum gothic irony: the civility of the setting against the savagery of the announcement. The first emergence of Bloody Alice shortly after — Stella's transformation from victim to killer when cornered — is the moment the series shows its hand about what kind of protagonist it actually has.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Gorgeous, ornate gothic art — among Yuki's most lavish
• The Stella/Bloody Alice split adds real psychological unpredictability
• Constant betrayals and reveals keep the death game propulsive
• Complete in 11 volumes with a finale that ties back to the premise

Cons

• Deeply melodramatic — the plot twists pile up faster than they land
• The large sibling cast means some die before they're fully developed
• The transgressive family themes (incest, etc.) won't work for everyone — this is Yuki being Yuki, and that's either the appeal or the exit

Is Alice in Murderland Worth Reading?

Yes — if you want gothic death-game horror with spectacular art and zero interest in subtlety. Fans of Kaori Yuki will adore it; newcomers should know they're signing up for full-throttle melodrama.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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