Alice the Wild: Special Double Review

As I write this review, this is the question on my mind: Which version is truer to Monkey Punch's original story? I have never read the manga, so I don't know the true answer. Part of me wants to say the Mankatsu version, because the whole show's shtick is to adapt stories that haven't been done before, so why adapt something that's been done correctly?
But I'm not 100% sure about that answer. When this comparison and review comes to an end, you can make up your own mind.

The opening sequence for both versions is very similar, but right from the beginning there are subtle differences. What both versions agree on is that there is a man and a woman driving very fast in a car, and are trying to escape a Mad Scientist together.

In the OVA, the man and the woman are heading towards a cliff, and have taken poison to kill themselves, so they will be free from the Scientist forever.

In Mankatsu, they may or may not be trying to kill themselves. We just know they are driving away fast.

In both versions, the Scientist knows they are trying to escape, and blows up their car with a bomb/bazooka before they can get too far from his lab. He is upset because the woman (Alice) trampled on his love for her. We don't know if she just rejected being hit on by the ugliest old man in existence, or if she used him in some way before leaving him. In either case, he's mad enough that he wants her dead.

In Mankatsu, he blows up the car but is upset that he had to kill Alice. From the wreckage, Alice's Suicide Note is thrown into his vicinity, where she writes that she is thankful for the kindness that the Scientist showed her, and that she'll always be grateful towards him. Full of regret, he rushes to her dead body and vows that he will make her live again.

In the OVA, after he has blown up the car, he comes over to Alice's body and tells her gleefully that his revenge is not yet complete, and that she can't escape him even in death. He's going to bring her back to life as a sexdroid, who will always be horny and be programmed to do whatever a man tells her to do, even if the orders would make her hurt herself.

She kind of ends up as a sexdroid in Mankatsu, too, but it's not the Scientist's stated purpose.

Anyway, the scientist then spends THE NEXT 60 YEARS bringing her back to life. When he's done, since she's a sex-slave android, he orders her to sleep with him. In both versions, due to various circumstances, this causes his death: In Mankatsu, an errant lightning strike hits the laboratory while they are sleeping together, causing it to explode. In the OVA, he dies because sleeping together was too much for his body.

As he is dying, he is found by his son (adopted, in the OVA), Jirochou. He tells Jirochou that he is dying because of a woman named Alice, and that Jirochou must take revenge upon her for him. Then, he dies for keeps.

Jirochou becomes Don Jirochou, because he is the head of his father's organization (Scientist dad had some sort of criminal organization going on, which is how he had the resources to devote to reviving Alice. Jirochou drives a nice car and has that eye patch goin' on, though, so I'm pretty sure he was in shady business himself before this).

This brings us to the actual plot: Jirochou's revenge against Alice.

 

The beginning of his search for Alice is pretty much the same in both versions: Enlisting the help of Omasa, one of the top men in his dad's organization, they begin to look into the “Alice File”. It's there they find out all about how Alice has been turned into the world's most beautiful woman, and having sex with her would be more pleasurable than having it with anyone else. Jirochou has Omasa search for a woman named “Alice” so that he can kill her, but Omasa finds 333 women named Alice (this number is oddly specific and the same in both versions).

The Alice File doesn't contain a picture of Alice, so Don Jirochou does the only thing he can do: he has sex with every single Alice, to see which one gives the most pleasure. Which ever one does, that's the one to kill. Both versions have the same silly montage of all the Alices he has to sleep with, along with repeating jokes like an Eskimo Alice being cold to the touch, and an Alice being fat and nearly crushing him.

At the end of the 333 women (which he seemed to do all in one day, for some reason, and they all agreed to sleep with him, for that matter...), Omasa crunches the numbers and woman #180 is the one that gave the most pleasure. Jirochou has her summoned back into his bedroom, so he cam kill her. Omasa forces her into the room, and locks the door behind her. Jirochou asks Alice #180 if she killed his dad. She says no, but he doesn't believe her. Realizes she can't escape, she slumps to the floor in defeat. Jirochou takes aim and shoots at her. But the bullet misses its mark. The Real Alice has caught the bullet between her fingers. Don Jirochou shoots the rest of his ammunition, but Alice catches them all. Jirochou realizes that this is no ordinary woman, and asks her what her name is. She tells him that her name is Alice. Since she wasn't in the previous group of Alices, Jirochou orders her to sleep with him, to see if she's better than #180.

In the OVA version, they sleep together and she's so good in bed, Jirochou ends up in a euphoric state and is so zonked out he is unable to kill her or stop her from leaving.

In Mankatsu, he ends up the same way, but before she escapes he asks her why she killed his father, and she tells him it an accident with the lightning.

The OVA has several plans Don Jirochou uses to try to capture and kill Alice, but they fail. All the plans have a very Monkey Punch feel to them, but most of them are cut from the Mankatsu version. They don't really affect the plot, however, so I'm not going to go into detail.

The next plot point both stories agree on is: They discover that Alice has a sensor in her brain that detects danger, and she is programmed to help those in danger.

In the OVA, Jirochou remarks that being programmed to save those in danger and also to obey any orders given to her, Alice was made for eternal enslavement.

The next point both versions have is Alice captured by an army (an army he sponsors in the OVA, an army from Not America in Mankatsu). The army contacts Don Jirochou that they have Alice, and he comes to finally kill her. Through various circumstances, at the army base Jirochou's life ends up in danger, and Alice saves him. Afterwards, Alice flees.

One more plot point before we get into the final act: Jirochou and Alice's feelings for each other.
The OVA has had a few more scenes of Alice saving people in Jirochou's sight, a second time saving his life, and a few more sex scenes with him (all were different plans to kill her). This is as close to a relationship in Monkey Punch-land as we're ever going to get.

The OVA has a character flat out ask Jirochou if he loves Alice. Jirochou asks how can he love her, since he's trying to get revenge on her? He's told that he can love her and hate her at the same time. Don Jirochou denies that he has any feelings of love for her. The same character, during the second time Alice was saving Jirochou's life, observes Alice crying for Jirochou, and tells Jirochou that Alice loves him. That's the set up for the OVA's final act.

Mankatsu is not as direct. Instead they only have the one encounter before she saves his life, and then we observe a more quiet and introspective Jirochou in a few scenes. Since there's less wacky sex hijinks, we as an audience can reflect with Jirochou on how it would feel to be saved by the woman you have been trying to to kill (who was, y'know, turned into a sexdroid against her will by your crazy father). We can see that Omasa wonders about Jirochou's feelings, but he doesn't say anything directly. While it hints at the same question of does he love her or not, there's a more pronounced feeling of ambiguity.

We now have reached the final act of Alice the Wild, which is where the biggest differences come into play. Instead of going scene by scene as I have been doing, I'm going to compare each whole act against each other. The differences between the endings is what really makes me wonder which is the True Monkey Punch one.

OVA:

Don Jirochou comes up with one final plan to defeat Alice: they clone him and make a cyborg out of the clone. The Scientist who makes the cyborg says that this cyborg won't fail, because he looks exactly like Jirochou, and they've analyzed Alice's brainwaves so they KNOW that Alice is in love with Jirochou. Jirochou is pleased that Alice won't be able to fight back against the cyborg.

To lure Alice into their trap, Don Jirochou sets up an innocent man to hang. When he is at his most desperate, Alice shows up to save him. But the innocent man out to be Cyborg Jirochou in disguise. Cyborg Jirouchou pretends to be the real Jirochou, and tells Alice that he became a cyborg just to fight her. Alice says nothing, but tears run down her face in sorrow.

Unable to fight back against Cyborg Jirochou, Alice is beaten up. Real Jirochou watches on a screen inside the jail (where the execution was taking place). But suddenly the cyborg stops. Something went wrong in the programming. He stops beating up Alice, and starts sleeping with her instead (why you gave a cyborg a libido in the first place is anyone's guess...). The real Don Jirochou is upset at this development, and runs outside. He kicks the cyborg away from Alice. Alice realizes that the other Jirochou is a cyborg clone. Cyborg Jirochou is mad at Don Jirochou, and corners him on a cliff, ready to kill him. Don Jirochou calls out for Alice to save him, which she does—but not before he slips and falls off the cliff anyway.

He falls into a passing car, which belongs to the scientist who made Cyborg Jirochou. The scientist was on his way to tell Jirochou that there was a flaw in the programming of Cyborg Jirochou: he and Alice use the same micro compuer wavelength, so there was a high chance that Cyborg Jirochou would switch over to Alice's side.

The scientist asks why Jirochou didn't attack Alice when the cyborg was having sex with her and instead saved her, implying there must be an attraction between them. Jirochou thinks back to being told that Alice loves him, and that he loves Alice. Jirochou again denies that he has any feelings for Alice. The scientist says it's none of his business, and doesn't press the point. They continue to drive down the road, into the sunset. Alice watches them, murmuring Jirochou's name softly to herself. Jirochou swears to spend the rest of his life tracking down Alice for his father's revenge. Cue end credits and a horrible ending song.

Mankatsu ending:

The very same “hang an innocent man who turns out to be a cyborg” trap is sprung on Alice. Except the cyborgs this time are regular cyborgs, not Don Jirochou clones. Alice handily defeats the both of them. Alice asks Jirochou to stop. Alice is tired of all the killing. Jirochou tells her that it's fate, and shoots her. She of course catches the bullet with no problems, but that's what Jirochou was counting on. It's a corrosive bullet, and it will spread across her entire body. For good measure, he shoots her twice more. She doesn't block or dodge either shot. Alice runs away. Jirochou follows after her, managing to shoot her once more.

Jirochou follows her up to the roof, following a trail of blood (or maybe it's oil?). He finds her behind a water tower, huddled in a ball. He aims his gun at her head, and she turns his face towards him. He sees the corrosion eating away at her face, and hesitates. She turns away, saying she doesn't want him to see her like this. Jirochou takes a few more seconds, and then makes a decision. He puts his gun away and picks her up bridal-style. He tells her that the scientists that work for his father can fix her. As he walks back to get her off the roof he steps in a puddle of oil/blood. The corrosive material in bullet has mixed with it, and the jail roof gives underway beneath the both of them. They fall through several floors of concrete, before finally ending up in a furnace (I think), which then explodes.

We cut to Jirochou in a full body cast. Omasa confers with the doctor, and then approaches Jirochou to ask how he's feeling. Jirochou looks out the window into the sky, merely telling Omasa that the sky is beautiful, and his mind is clear.

We then see Jirchou pull up in front of what looks like a run-down bordello. There are many bored prostitutes waiting the the lobby. When Jirochou comes in, they all clamor for him to choose them. He ignores them and instead walks toward the stairs. The owner of the bordello stops Jirochou, telling him that he has to choose a woman first before he can have a room. Jirochou reaches into a bag he has brought with him and pulls out a shotgun, telling the owner that he has an itchy trigger finger. The owner lets him pass—for about three seconds. As soon as he's a few steps up, the owner tries to hit Jirochou on the head with a large mallet. Jirochou turns around and shoots him. The women scream as the owner falls down dead. Jirochou continues up the stairs.

He systematically kicks in the door of each room. In the last room, he finally finds Alice. She is sitting on the bed, curled into a ball. We can see her corrosion is worse. She says, “I see you survived”. He smiles, and replies, “Just my mind”. He takes off his coat to reveal that he, too, is now a cyborg. “I'm the same as you, Alice.”
Alice says, “You didn't forget me.”

Jirochou pulls out his shotgun and points it at Alice's face. Alice is shocked, but then her face softens. Jirochou's expression also changes from one of determination to a softer, more unreadable one.

Alice tells him, “I'm happy”.

We cut to an outside shot of the bordello. We hear one gunshot, followed by a second. Then, silence.

The end

So, there you have it. Two very different versions of the same story. The first one ends in some kind of never-ending love/hate relationship, and the second one is some kind of depressing murder/suicide.

Which one is closer to Monkey Punch's vision? I want to say that a never-ending love/hate sex comedy sounds like the most Monkey Punch ending I can think of, but, (on the other hand) the Mankatsu ending makes so much more sense thematically.

To me, Alice is one of the darkest stories he's done. As wacky and crazy as the OVA is, it's still about a woman who was revived from the dead as a being without a will of her own. All she can do is answer any danger signal, and then obey any order she is given. There are tons of women that Monkey Punch characters end up sleeping with, but there's generally an underlying truth that they have actual agency and they are sleeping together of their own free will. Alice has no agency, literally. She can't have it. She's an eternal victim, and it's depressing.

Don Jirochou knows she's really nothing more than a doll in both versions, yet still feels honor-bound to fulfill his father's wish. The whole things feels like it's set up to be a tragedy from the beginning, but Monkey Punch writing a tragedy is like the sun coming up in the west (in my mind, anyway). That's why I have a hard time figuring out which one could be closer to the manga.

I enjoy both versions for different reasons, and comparing them helped me appreciate both of them more.

I hope this review has been informative and enjoyable. If I ever find the manga version, then I'll update this review.