NOTE: The last of this year's reviews! Thanks to all who voted and read these!
"The dazzling world of adulthood awaits!"
Otome, a naive student with a boundless enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, finds herself in one surreal situation after another when she stumbles into a magic realist version of Kyoto. On her trail is fellow student Senpai, who is head over heels in love with Otome and has chosen this of all nights to confess this. What follows is a curious phantasmagoria of people and places.
Curiouser and curiouser indeed! Let's get this out of the way before we go on. If you were wondering what Alice for an adult audience would be like, the nearest thing is probably this work.
When I was talking with my former editor, I had the idea of “Alice in Wonderland” however in Kiyamichi, Kyoto
Author of the original novel, Tomihiko Morimi. (quote via press kit)Admittedly conceived by the novel's original author as Carroll for adults, the film version compresses Tomihiko Morimi's novel which was set throughout an entire year, into a single, insane night. If anything, the novel's bizarreness is enhanced in choosing to adapt it in this way. There is no pause for breath anymore. The film hurtles from adventure to adventure with little regards to logic.
As our protagonist and yes, Alice, Otome possesses a sense of fearlessness, intelligence, elegance, and naivety which makes her a direct parallel with Carroll's curious child. Simply put, Otome is Alice aged 20.
Down the rabbit hole... or through the looking glass...
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do.
Otome starts off her whirlwind night bored at a mutual friend's wedding. Similarly Senpai wishes the after party would start so he can finally talk with Otome. Seeing all those around her, Otome wishes she was able to drink like her slightly older, more adult peers can.
Instead of going to the after party, Otome heads down a small road alone, overjoyed at freedom and aware she is entering the "dazzling" world of adulthood at last. Senpai chases after her, unaware that things are about to get very odd.
Much of what follows is a bizarre conveyor belt of weird encounter after weird encounter. Just like Carroll's Alice, Otome possesses a level headed attitude which means she can handle anything thrown at her. Her foil, Senpai, possesses none of this and as a result has misadventures instead.
For the purposes of this review, we'll be focusing on Otome's storyline.
Early adventures: Alcohol, Cheshire cat types, and time
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,’ so Alice ventured to taste it.
Alice's drinking of magic potions allows her to access different parts of Wonderland, whereas in Night is Short... Otome finds this function via alcohol. Although in this place alcohol has no effects on Otome, it allows her to magically go from one encounter to the next. It also tells the audience that we are not in a realistic version of Kyoto as Otome never develops alcohol poisoning and is barely tipsy!
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good- natured, she thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
Intelligent party girl Hanuki and perpetual student Higuchi function as more dubious Cheshire Cats to Otome's Alice. Like the Cheshire cat Hanuki and Higuchi are always looking to cause mischief as well as direct the protagonist through a world of wonders. They introduce Otome to late night Kyoto and Hanuki leads the three to crash parties such as the debating club's and Sophists's. This is where Otome has her early adventures.
`Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter.
The debating club stuffed with old men and women worrying about aging is evocative of the White Rabbit and the Hatter's preoccupation with time. Both sets of characters even have watches they constantly check!
The debating club have the opposite problem to Carroll's Hatter, instead of their clocks being too slow, they are too fast.
Otome's awareness
"How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another!"
This overly long night proceeds with little regards to logic. Spring turns to summer to winter and the night is still not over. Despite this Otome is never exasperated or irritated by this,
and never thinks about how she will get home. Instead she decides to embrace the random encounters she finds. This is comparable to Carroll's Alice in both Wonderland and in Looking Glass World, as Alice in both books quickly forgets about getting home and immerses herself in strange events.
Advice from Rihaku
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence.
One of Otome's adventures sees her drinking a famed fake non-alcoholic drink against bitter supernatural old man Rihaku. Rihaku's condition here is like Carroll's caterpillar, constantly searching for meaning. But his existence is an unhappy one. Otome wins a drinking contest against him due to her ability to see the world as a wonder, not as a burden.
Later these roles are reversed as Otome goes to Rihaku looking for advice regarding Senpai, and Rihaku finally gives her useful information.
A brief "mad" party
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep
The travelling Kotatsu table with seemingly endless amounts of food available and its participants (Hanuki and Higuchi again, this time with Don Underwear, a man with a strange love story to tell) could make a vague comparison with Wonderland's mad tea party: except here the party is shut down before it ever begins. The school festival officer declares that anything not authorised at the school fair is shut. Good thing the Kotatsu can be set up and dismantled at any time!
A helping hand
It certainly was a very large Gnat: `about the size of a chicken,' Alice thought. Still, she couldn't feel nervous with it, after they had been talking together so long.
Otome's brief talk with the god of used book stalls recalls the exchange between the Gnat and Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Both god of used book stalls and Gnat have a function to explain certain surreal things to the protagonist, which the protagonist later seeks out.
The Gnat's function is to tell Alice about the wood where things have no names so she'll know what to expect when she goes in, the god of used book stalls tells Otome about the significance of freeing books to a larger market as they are being hoarded.
This later helps Otome identify that the book from her childhood that she has been looking for, Ratatam, is not at the market.
A night of unreality
Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.
Because of the evocation of boredom by both protagonists at the beginning and the surrealistic events that follow, it would not be unreasonable to expect both Otome and Senpai's adventures to be dreams.
This is hinted at by the unreality of the events and neither protagonist understanding what happened to them on the next day. However the film neither confirms or denies this (the fact that its tied to another book and TV series suggests not!) and in a way it doesn't matter. Otome and Senpai still find each other and end the night with a firmer sense of self.
NOTES:
- There is a lovely blink and you'll miss it shot which lists all the books Otome treasured as a child: look closely and you'll see a familiar sight!
- As of today, the original Tomihiko Morimi novel is available in English (it's already in several Asian languages). I didn't plan this review to come out today! Coincidence!
- As mentioned, both book and film are related to another Tomihiko Morimi novel, The Tatami Galaxy, which also features characters Hanuki and Higuchi and the Kyoto setting. The anime TV series can be found relatively easily, and a unofficial English translation of the novel is circling round online.
- diagram from the film's distributor of how each character connects to another.
