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REVIEW: I Am Alice: Body Swap in Wonderland GN 1




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The Mad Manga Massacre



Joined: 15 Jul 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:36 pm Reply with quote
Is the number of modern Alice in Wonderland adaptations this big in other mediums? Because Viz recently re-released CLAMP's Alice in Wonderland and Yen Press has an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland from Kaori Yuki being released sometime in the future as well and there just seems to be no end to Seven Seas' Alice in Wonderland adaptations (most of which stem from the same games but still)
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:27 am Reply with quote
There have been a lot of Alice adaptations and illustrations since Carroll published the book - everyone from Carroll himself to Salvador Dali has illustrated it, there are American and Spanish comic versions, multiple video games (American McGee's Alice is probably the best known, but there are others, including the bizarre Zombie Panic in Wonderland), and multiple middle grade and YA novels reworking the books similarly to the way manga does. Recently a literary fiction adult novel about Alice Liddell herself came out (I Was Alice) and there lots of film and TV versions, right down to the episode of the Muppet Show that Brooke Shields hosted.

So short answer: yes. Yes, the number is huge no matter where you look. Not bad for a story a guy made up to entertain three kids on a boat trip.
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EricJ2



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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:18 am Reply with quote
The Japanese have a fascination with Alice in Wonderland but don't quite understand it:
It has tea parties and girls in ploofy Victorian dresses, so it has that elegant European appeal...
But apart from that, they're not quite sure whether SHE'S the one doing all the magical things that are happening herself, all they know (like the current Disney abomination) is that it has kings and queens in it, and the easy metaphor of a mysterious rabbit.

(Carroll's humor was Victorian proto-Python, so you'd be hard pressed to find most Westerners who still get all the jokes the way they're meant to be got, but with the Japanese, a lot more gets lost in the translation.)
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 12:24 pm Reply with quote
I was told recently that it's required reading in many Japanese schools, which would also help to explain why it's so prevalent.


EricJ2 wrote:
all they know (like the current Disney abomination) is that it has kings and queens in it, and the easy metaphor of a mysterious rabbit.


Ugh, that...that thing of which you speak was one of the worst adaptations I've seen. You know it's bad when the SyFy Alice film is better. (I actually really liked that one...) Plus they committed the unpardonable error of confusing the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. As far as I'm concerned, that's a major sin many Alice-inspired stories commit.

Quote:
(Carroll's humor was Victorian proto-Python, so you'd be hard pressed to find most Westerners who still get all the jokes the way they're meant to be got


It isn't perfect, but for those wanting a better understanding of what Carroll was going for, I'd suggest finding a copy of The Annotated Alice.
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EricJ2



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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:33 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
EricJ2 wrote:
all they know (like the current Disney abomination) is that it has kings and queens in it, and the easy metaphor of a mysterious rabbit.


Ugh, that...that thing of which you speak was one of the worst adaptations I've seen. You know it's bad when the SyFy Alice film is better. (I actually really liked that one...) Plus they committed the unpardonable error of confusing the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. As far as I'm concerned, that's a major sin many Alice-inspired stories commit.


That's actually (like big toothy CGI critter) inherited DNA traces from the movie originally beginning as Wes Craven's movie of the American McGee Alice, before Dimension Pictures went under and Disney softened it to sell their cartoon identification.
The videogame originally made the same Red/Hearts goofup, but what's worse is you can now hear Disney's own historians hypnotized into making the same mistake when talking about the Q of H. That does it, this movie's goin' down. Mad

(Oh, and then since Tim Burton made everyone else's mistake of confusing Alice with Dorothy, he turned the White Queen into Glinda, and put in a Wicked-style "sister rivalry" plot.
Never mind that the White Queen in "Through the Looking Glass" is rather dim and grandmotherly, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Betty White in the Golden Girls...)

Quote:
Quote:
(Carroll's humor was Victorian proto-Python, so you'd be hard pressed to find most Westerners who still get all the jokes the way they're meant to be got


It isn't perfect, but for those wanting a better understanding of what Carroll was going for, I'd suggest finding a copy of The Annotated Alice.


It's worth it for looking up the original, un-parodied Victorian "You Are Old, Father William" poem, and when you read what Carroll did to it in the Caterpillar scene...now you're gettin' it. Smile

(Granted, when Python first came out, nobody got the Dead Parrot or Silly Walks sketches either, until someone pointed out, "Ohh, it's like car repair and government bureaucracy!")
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