Forgotten Anime #54: “Alice” (1991)

Alice, directed by Yūzō Aoki. 45 minutes. December 13, 1991.

Or No Sekai Alice, or Monkey Punch no Sekai Alice. Since “no” in Japanese is just “of”, a loose translation is Monkey Punch’s World: Alice.

Monkey Punch is the better-known pen name of Kazuhiko Katō, best-known as the creator of Lupin III. Lupin III may be better-known through the TV animation by Tokyo Movie Shinsha/TMS Entertainment Ltd. The Lupin III TV animation is polished and toned down for the family audience. Alice is more accurate to Monkey Punch’s art style and raunchiness – which makes this probably the most R-rated column I’ve ever posted. It’s on YouTube, Anime News Network, and the others, so I assume that it isn’t X-rated. Go ahead and watch it.

A sports car with Alice and her lover roars away from the Mad Scientist’s clifftop lair. They discuss that they’re committing suicide as the only way to escape him. Too late! He machine-guns the car off the cliff road to kill the man before the suicide can take effect. As for Alice – he has a much more lingering fate planned for her.

Title & credits. I like the music by Hiroki Sakaguchi.

The Mad Scientist spends sixty years under the credits working on Alice in his laboratory. The OAV starts again after the credits with an explosion that destroys the clifftop lab, just as Don Jirochō, the M.S.’s adopted son, drives up. He cries out for who is responsible for this? The M.S. arises from his grave and tells him to shut up, because he’s dying and wants to give his last instructions to Don Jirochō first. The M.S. says that he hates Alice and, since he’s dying, he orders D.J. to carry out his revenge against her.

(Note that the Mad Scientist never says that Alice has killed him. That’s Don Jirochō’s assumption.)

D.J. grumbles that his revenge would be easier if his Dad’s extensive file on Alice had included a picture of her. The file is written in the M.S.’s secret code. The Professor is trying to decipher it; in the meantime, D.J. has Omasa, his gunman, bring him women named Alice. He gets more than he expects. Alice from Japan. A transvestite Alice. Alice from the North Pole. Alice from Mars. Alice from Lilliput. Alice from Brobdingnag. Many etcs.; 333 in all. The Professor narrows it down to #180, but when D.J. tries to shoot her, the real Alice appears and catches the bullets. The M.S. has built Alice into an invulnerable super-cyborg.

D.J. drives to the fortress where his private army is based. He meets Jean, a red-headed new security guard, and his young son Daigoro. The Chief of the fortress has captured Alice. He can also read the Alice File. The M.S. spent sixty years making Alice into the peak of femininity whom all men lust for. She will be all men’s sex slave, horny all the time. What really happened is that the M.S.’s final perfection of Alice destroyed his lab, and his sex with Alice killed him. Nevertheless, his orders to D.J. are to take his revenge on Alice, so D.J. throws a grenade at her. She saves D,J,’s life from the explosion and escapes.

D.J. assumes that Jean and Daigoro are spies from a rival crime organization and orders Omasa to have them killed. Omasa pursues them in helicopter gunships to draw Alice out, which works. She saves them and has sex with Jean.

D.J. has figured out that Alice telepathically knows when a man is in trouble and rescues him. Putting himself under a dominatrix doesn’t work. Making himself lustful for Alice draws her out, but Omasa’s shooting at her just puts D.J. into the hospital. Since cyborgs are mostly metal, D.J. tells Omasa to immobilize her with rust formula. That just makes Alice and Omasa stuck together. D.J. says that means he’ll have to kill them both, but Alice escapes after Omasa’s penis is cut off. D.J. offers Omasa a new one. Omasa goes after a horse’s.

D.J. offers to pay a Shaman to kill Alice. The Shaman realizes that D.J. and Alice really love each other. D.J. says that even if this is so, his loyalty to his father outweighs his love for Alice. The Shaman’s attempts to kill Alice don’t work.

The Professor (Daijyo; Great old man) says that D.J.’s industries are second to only Siegel laboratories’. D.J. tries to buy Siegel out. Siegel won’t sell, and he has Alice on his side when she isn’t rescuing men. D.J. and Siegel challenge each other to a battle of cyborgs. D.J.’s cyborgs all fall apart.

D.J. challenges the Professor to make a perfect cyborg. “To make an extraordinary cyborg, we need to operate on an extraordinary human being.” In other words, turn D.J. himself into a cyborg.

It looks like D.J. has agreed to this, in a convoluted plot to use the apparent execution of Domon, an innocent man, to lure Alice to rescue him where the super-cyborg made from D.J. himself will fight her. Alice cannot fight a cyborg made from D.J. since she loves him. But the cyborg is only made from a clone of D.J., and the resonances between Alice and the D.J.-clone cyborg turn the cyborg against D.J. Alice rescues him.

Alice ends, or doesn’t end, with the promise that D.J.’s love-hate relationship with Alice will go on forever. If you want to see what the authentic Monkey Punch looks like, uncensored for the public, here it is. The OAV, made by the Takahashi Studio for Toho in Japan, was never licensed in the U.S.

Next week: Forgotten OAVs #55.