Fushigi no Kuni no Alice

I could've had done this review a long time ago, but couldn't find the time to do it. but now that i'm back to review some anime shows for a bit, i'll start with the one that i finished back in june. This one being Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Nippon Animation.

Now you already know that there's Walt Disney's adaption of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland back in 1951, but have you ever heard of Nippon Animation's own adaption of this said fairy tale? This show was released in 1983 with little success as it was overshadowed by the said Disney film and only 26 episodes ... were released in Japan and dubbed in english for the american broadcast. However, it did find some decent popularity in european countries, latin countries and arabic countries like saudi arabia for example. The show is an japanese-german collaboration between Nippon Animation (Which you already know who they are just by reading my reviews on some of their animes by now) and the german studio Apollo Films. Which both animated and dubbed this anime while it was running on television

Which lead us to this question: Is this anime as good as many people make it out to be back in the 80s and 90s? I guess we'll just have to find out:

First off, the story. Considering that this is an anime adaptation of the fairy tale, you'd wonder if this follows the story from the books, right? Well, more or less. You see, the story does follow a bit from two books in each half and in episodic format. The first half being Alice in Wonderland, while the other follows the Alice Through the Looking Glass. The only difference, however, is that while the movie tells Alice exploring through the entirety of Wonderland, in this show, the show follows a bit closer to the novels and also takes place in Alice's homeland, England. Where it can be seen her parents and her sister, Celia. Also, the anime shows that Alice can go to Wonderland when she either goes to the cave that the White Rabbit went or while she ends up falling asleep and ends up dreaming, which leads her to go to Wonderland. Not sure if that was the case since i can't tell if she was dreaming or just suddendly entered Wonderland. And also, by the end of the episode, she comes back to real world, which has her telling her parents what she saw, which the parents and her sister get confused. Call it an transition if you will.

So what do i think about the story? Well, it's decent to a certain degree. While there were some episodes that i did find them boring at times, there were a few that i did liked mostly because of how silly the stories are. One that is about trying to leave the forest with no name, where the people end up switching personalities and start acting like crazy, one that is about the white rabbit getting fired because of his incompetence and getting replaced by the black rabbit (Don't ask questions), one that is about the citizens of Wonderland competing in a race where nobody loses and the one that has a fight between the lion and the unicorn. My personal favorite episode so far is about the queen getting fed up with idiots to the point that she decided to put everyone to go to school to start studying and learning. Again, not all the episodes are great, but it does have a good amount of episodes worth watching.

Of course we have the characters of the show. Of course we still get to see more of these characters from the novels. You have Alice, who is the main character of the show, you have the white rabbit, you have the Tweedle brothers, you have Humpty Dumpty, you have the Mad Hatter and March Hare, you have Cheshire Cat, you have the Queen of Hearts, you have Jabberwocky, etc. Although some of them differs their personalities, like for example, Cheshire Cat now became a more bumbler guy, rather than being a smart aleck. There's one character that appears exclusively for this anime. And that character is Benny Bunny, who is the white rabbit's nephew. He usually comes off as Alice's companion through out her adventures in Wonderland and usually gets along with her, although they did bickered at times. Not much of an interesting character, but i find him cute enough. So yeah, aside from Benny and a few different personalities for some of the Wonderlanders, the characters are pretty much the same as the novels. So no need to go deep on them.

The animation is alright, even for 1983. While the characters don't look THAT great, atleast Nippon gets the job done with the character designs decently well. I personally liked Alice's design a bit more. She looks much more cuter in her red clothing and nice color to differentiate from the novels and the movies like the Disney version. Same with the background animations. Looks nice to look at especially for some of the unique ones. Like the mushrooms and the castle.

Now for the audio. But before i delve into it, i'd like to adress that i watched the european portuguese dub of the german dub of this anime. The reasons for this is that:

1) Those two dubs actually has 52 episodes in total instead of just 24. The reason why this anime's MAL page is still set to 24 episodes only is because the japanese dub only lasted for 24 episodes and those said 24 only got dubbed in japanese.

And 2) I can't seem to find the japanese dub anywhere on the internet aside from just one video on Youtube where they said their goodbyes. So i have to go for the portuguese dub since it's the one that is almost entirely available on Youtube.

Anyway, now back to the review. As far as the audio goes, it's alright. I personally find the eletronic music being a bit out of place for this whimsical anime. Sure it's nice to listen to and the german opening theme song "Alice Im Wunderland" is a nice song to listen to, but again, i find it out of place for a anime that adapts a very crazy and whimsical fairy tale from the 19th century.

And finally, the voice acting. Mostly in portuguese though, because i never got a chance to experience the japanese dub aside from, again, that video where they said their goodbyes.

Anyway, the portuguese dub was made and aired on RTP1 in 1987 by the portuguese dubbing studio named "Videoplano". They are the same studio that dubbed other anime shows like The Adventures of Nils Holgersson and Ozamu Tezuka's Aoi Blink.

Just like Dogtatian and the Three Muskehound's 1983 portuguese dub, this one also survived, as well, thanks to the releases of all the episodes on home video by Planeta Diagostini. And it's the one that i saw thanks to Youtube. So i'm glad that i got to watch the dub of this anime with barely any issues.

Anyway, as far as the portuguese dub goes, it's pretty good. Many voice actors did a good job at voicing their characters with their own unique voices lent to the characters. I especially loved Carmen Santos voicing the Queen of Hearts, António Feio voicing the white rabbit, the late Argentina Rocha as the voice of Benny Bunny, Luis Mascarenhas as the voice of Humpy Dumpty (Which is the only well known Disney voice actor to ever voice a anime character) and João Lourenço as the voice of Jabberwocky. But again, just like Dogtanian's portuguese voice in Wanwan Sanjuushi, i also find Alice's portuguese voice actress, Isabel Ribas, to be unfitting for the character. Again, don't get me wrong, i like her voice well enough, but the issue i have with her being the voice of Alice is the same issue i had with João Lourenço as the voice of Dogtanian. She sounds way too adult to voice a child character. Especially considering that Isabel was 29 years old at the time. But yeah, that's the only nitpick i have with the portuguese dub. But anyway, it's a pretty good dub for all things considered.

So in conclusion, i think this anime did aged decently well enough to make me continue watching until the end of the show. While there has been a few issues here and there, i had a good time watching this anime despite it's age. It definitely is nice to see Nippon Animation decided to have it's take on Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. While it's not as good as Walt Disney's 1951 adaption, it definitely is million times better than that shitty Disney live-action remakes from the 2010s decade.

The only issue now is that it's hard to find a japanese dub of all the episodes available to watch and the english dub only managed to dub 24 episodes. So the only way for you to experience the same way as i did is if you learn other languages that's not english or japanese and watch the entire show with an different language. Whether in portuguese, german, french, arabian, spanish or whatever language you learned.

But anyway, if i have to give it a rating, i'd say i'd give it an 7 out of 10. Not exactly Nippon's best work, but it's a very nice show to watch if i have to be generous.

Anyway, i hope you enjoyed my review after a long hiatus. My name is José Diogo and i'll come back with some more reviews next time.