Manga
It is undeniable that Alice is popular in Japan. No country seems to love the story more since not only does Japan have the most translated editions, but the culture has embraced the story like very few have done. Disneyland Tokyo has devoted an entire area to Alice as guests can now walk through Wonderland; people love to cosplay as Alice and was featured on stage at Japan Expo, an event that celebrates Japan’s culture; there has been countless anime and manga adaptations of Alice with the isekai genre, where a protagonist is transported to a parallel or fantasy world, seemingly coming from Alice.
Manga as a medium is similar to Carroll’s original books as they both are text and visuals presented on the page. However, their visual language is quite different: the books are sequential letters that form words with illustrations designated to their own pages while manga is the “sequential drawing ordered by a rule system—a grammar—” (Cohn 2) where the text is embedded into each drawing. In addition to having to read manga from right-to-left, Japan’s visual language includes graphic emblems, or visual morphemes, unique to Japan that showcase a character’s emotion.
These emblems are ubiquitous: every creator will use them or a variation of them because their reader knows exactly what they represent. The creator does not have to do any work explaining what they mean. They usually appear for a single panel and are gone by the next. Another aspect unique to Japan is the different iterations of Alice that appear in manga adaptations: “Meiji Alice, a noir [gothic] Alice, a male Alice, a pure kawaii [cute] Alice, a Disney Alice” (Johnson, 5). The Alice that appears will entirely depend on the story being told: if the creator wants to tell a historical piece, then the Meiji Alice will appear as she based on the Meiji era of Japan; if they want to tell a story that appeals to young children, kawaii Alice is the choice as she lacks some of the complexities the others have, making it easier for children to understand her; if they want to adapt the story through the lens of the Gothic Lolita culture, which is very big in Japan, then noir Alice is perfect. Alice is much less defined in Japan and “functions as a fluid concept that can take on many forms, and can even be male,” (Johnson, 35).
Are You Alice? is a manga written by Ikumi Katagiri and drawn by Ai Ninomiya that features the male Alice. The blond hair and blue-and-white color scheme very much fits with the image of Alice, especially if one were to use Disney Alice as a basis. It tells the story of an amnesic young man who falls into Wonderland and is given the title of Alice by the Cheshire Cat. All the familiar characters show up—the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit—but they all feel and look different. For example, the Mad Hatter as seen in the background of volume’s one cover is tall, slender, and mysterious due to his outfit, completely different to how comical he comes across in Carroll’s books. As an additional note, similar to how Carroll plays with language, the team uses the Mad Hatter to do some playing of their own. In Japanese, the term for hitman is “koroshiya” while the term for hatter is “boushiya.” The similarity works since the Mad Hatter serves as a sort of hitman for the queen.
Page 31 of chapter three is a great example of how visual language is used in manga. As usual, the panels must be read from right-to-left. Also, the next two panels feature examples of visual morphemes that focus on a character’s eyes. A creator uses the change in eyes “to convey some sort of additional meaning beyond the range afforded by various types of iconic ‘eye schemas’ that might include wide eyes, narrow eyes,” (Cohn, 22). In panel two, Alice loses the detail he had in his eyes as they have been reduced to darkened ovals with a single tear. Aside from being comedic, the change in expressions shows his surprise when the Mad Hatter hits him along with the pain it causes. As stated before, these expressions shift quickly as the emotions change. In the third panel, the reader can not only no longer see Alice’s eyes because the entire upper half is no longer visible. Now, he has three marks on his head that signal anger and irritation. The darkness that covers his eyes help sell the anger as it adds to the effect. He is too angry to show his face.