English Dub Review: Alice & Zoroku “Where the Cheshire Cat Smiles”

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

Spoilers Below

Sana wakes up, starving and tired. In her spent state, she calls out for Zoroku. She panics, remembering that the old man had been frozen in place by Hitori’s powers. Thankfully, he’s alright, and so are the Hanagiri twins. In fact, while Zoroku is off making up for lost time at the flower shop, he has authorized Sana’s first sleepover… Chaperoned by Sanae, of course. The night kicks off with a bath, all three girls together. For those of you who aren’t long time anime otaku, there’s a significant difference in the cultural norms of bathing. It’s a family thing for the Japanese. So this instance of the twin taking a bath with Sana speaks more to them being like sisters from their time at the facility than anything weird. What’s more incredible to the twins is that Sana actually takes baths now, instead of using her powers to clean herself. They share a meal (a large meal, if you can see how many pizzas they packed away), and head to bed. Once there, Sana begins talking to the twins about her feelings about the incident. Hitori makes her feel frazzled, and that frazzling seems to be the source of some very dark emotions. The next day, after they leave, Zoroku has to also leave, working on his day off. The damage done during the missing day wilted many of the arrangements. Sana’s anger towards Hitori deepens, and Zoroku returns from work to find her drawing little drawings. What he doesn’t know is that these are plots and plans for vengeance.

Hitori returns to her parent’s house, and her mother greets her. The problem is, she isn’t sure if this is the mother as she truly is, or a mother wiped of will. One thing that is certain, whenever her powers wear off, her parents return to fighting with each other. She devotes herself to using her mind control to keep them in love with each other, even if this happiness is a big lie. Her friend Ayumu comes to check on her, after being absent from class for a while. Hitori can’t leave and tells Ayumu to never return. She can’t guarantee that she won’t accidentally use her powers on her friend, slowly stripping her of her will. The only solution is that the two girls remain forever separated. Ayumu makes it her mission to find Sana, the only one to counter Hitori’s powers and ask her for help. But as she gets close, Sana snaps a trap around her, dragging her into Wonderland to begin the Red Queen’s Revenge!

Today’s episode had a dark beginning and continues with the theme of dark feelings throughout. Not only in the form of Sana’s desire to pay the brainwasher back but Hitori’s own feelings about herself are nasty as well. The hook at the beginning suggests that Hitori is destined to be punished with death for her terrible use of her powers. When we see her talking to Ayumu, she seems like she’d be okay with that. Her powers have pushed her down a slippery slope of self-hatred. At the same time, Sana is actually going forward with a plan to use her powers to take her revenge. As we’ve seen, the Dreams of Alice express themselves through their powers. Using them in this way could have nasty repercussions on her later, possibly driving her down the path… TO THE DARK SIDE. I doubt it, though. This isn’t that kind of anime. What we do see here is the not-so-magical side of having powers. Up until now, they’ve been treated as little else than the mutants of X-Men. But powers like these are not as cut and dry. There is an ethics to their use, and once those ethics start to interact with a person’s ego, things are going to go all kinds of crazy. I like seeing this side of this show, where it gets very philosophical. How about you? Do you think there is an ethical way to use mind control powers? Comment below, and tell me what you think.

The art and animation here are good, especially for a talky episode. The use of color balance in different areas is rather interesting and brings out the feeling of each place a bit better. At Zoroku’s, there is a softer, pinkish balance, making it feel brighter and happier. At Hitori’s however, the colors tended more towards blues and purples, making things more subdued and depressed. This also makes the high saturation, technicolor world of Wonderland contrast heavily with the real world. The animation is of good quality, especially with Sana’s Cheshire Cat head. That thing gave me the heebeegeebees. If you look really close at the doors that Ayumu fell into, they are CG. Rather than drawing them in traditional until they had to move, the consistently presented them with CG. That way, when they did move, they still looked the same. The CG on this show might just be getting better, as you have to look kinda close to telling there. As far as voice acting goes, Sarah Wiedenheft and John Swazey did a good job as Sana and Zoroku. I’m starting to note the little inflections Swazey is using to make Zoroku sound as he does. There wasn’t a whole lot of “blow-you-away” dialogue or acting, but the voice actors still gave a solid performance. I give this episode eight floating cat heads out of ten. If you want to take the other two, go right ahead. These things are creepy.