Welcome Back, Alice Volume 7 Review

We’ve been on quite the journey following Shuzo Oshimi’s Welcome Back, Alice since it made its English debut back in 2022. Now, with the seventh volume, the series reaches its conclusion. But is it the finale we’ve been hoping for? Let’s find out.

In Volume 6 of the series we watched Yohei begin to crumble as he desperately sought a way to escape from the relationship he’d gotten into with Yui. Ultimately, Yohei wanted to ‘become pure’ and felt the only way to do that was to attempt, quite literally, to cut off the root of his sexual desires. This is where the previous book ended, with Yohei having ended up in the hospital.

This brings us to the start of Volume 7, where Kei and Yui have rushed to Yohei’s side after hearing about the incident. Finally reunited with Kei after avoiding him due to dating Yui, Yohei urges his friend to leave everything behind and chase after the dream of ‘the new body’ Yohei envisions Kei suiting. Most of all, Yohei believes that if they chase after their ideals together they’ll both come out the other side okay.

Yui is understandably upset by this notion as she understands Yohei doesn’t want to be with her anymore, nor can she force him to be the way she has up until now. Kei invites her to leave behind the idea of being a woman and set herself free, just like he stepped down from being a man, but unlike him and Yohei this isn’t something Yui believes she can do. Instead, she bids them a tearful goodbye, followed quickly by Ren the Art Club student who had become close to Kei.

Now this is where Welcome Back, Alice descends into being quite abstract again in terms of the art and story, much like we saw in Volume 6. Now out of the hospital, Yohei cuts Kei’s hair and the two spend the day together reminiscing about the past and looking toward the future together while mixing their bodies together (I’m not sure if this is in a metaphorical sense, physically or both). I was worried about how this book would go after #6 and in many ways I fear it got away from Oshimi.

In the afterword for this volume, Oshimi talks about his original intentions for Welcome Back, Alice stating that “I planned for the story to follow the form of a romantic comedy while eating its way out from the inside, but it turned out that following the form of romantic comedy was so suffocating to me that I couldn’t keep it up.” This explains a lot of the twists and turns involving Yui and why the stopping point we’ve reached feels so different to what I expected originally, even having watched as the story slowly shifted away from its origins. I’ve talked before about how this work is very much an outlet for Oshimi’s own feelings on sex and gender, which is fine but I feel they have overwhelmed this series here at the end.

While Kei and Yohei’s stories have concluded, it feels like Yui and to an extent Ren were shortchanged. There’s no resolution for either of them, but this is particularly noticeable for Yui who was struggling so much with not wanting to be left behind by Yohei and Kei. The final chapter implies that the four are still in touch with one another, which in many ways doesn’t make sense for how things were left at the hospital.

I think that’s what bothers me the most. I’ve enjoyed reading Welcome Back, Alice over these seven instalments. It has varied in quality over time, but it always felt like Oshimi knew where to end it and how the character arcs would develop. So to reach the end and find that wasn’t true for two of the four (even considering Ren was introduced much later) just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s unsatisfying and I think that’s going to put a lot of other readers off as well.

Of course, if you are a longtime fan of the mangaka, this is still quite interesting simply from the perspective of his afterwords and how the story reflects his feelings. That, in some ways, has proven more investable than Yohei and Kei’s stories. It will certainly be interesting to see what he creates next, especially having finished Blood on the Tracks last year as well.

Welcome Back, Alice Volume 7 comes to the West thanks to Kodansha under their Vertical imprint and has been translated by Daniel Koman. No translation notes or colour pages here, so nothing to speak of in terms of extras. Next up for Kodansha is Shuzo Oshimi’s Chii-chan, a single-volume story that they’ve loosely scheduled for Spring 2025 at the time of writing.

Overall, this certainly wasn’t the conclusion I was hoping for but Oshimi has at least wrapped up Kei and Yohei’s story. This series got increasingly messy toward the end and that has undermined the message it wanted to send, but it’s clear the mangaka has had a lot to work through and that is deeply reflected here – for better and worse.

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).