In Wonderland

A short manga published in France as a homage for 150 Anniversary of "Alice in Wonderland".

About plot. Elise, who looks, dresses and behaves very much like Alice, is a little girl born and living in Wonderland among strange people and animals in dresses alike. She is supposed to have hard life living with her adopted dormouse and working to earn some bread for two of them, not able to attend school anymore, but looks rather happy. But then a kind-hearted tortoise working in the school library adopts them both and she starts to have some ordinary living-with-strict-mother-having-to-do-chores-being-not-as-rich-as-her-classmates problems. We will never learn where are her parents, how she met her dormouse and stopped attending school and started to work to feed it, why she has aunt and uncle but was left alone in this situation and how she was enrolled in this prestigeous magic school in the first place. Because it's Wonderland.

The art and character design are really cute and have this dreamlike light feeling about them because of really fine, sometimes dash-and-dot, lines. Besides, the design really reminds of John Tenniel's illustrations for "Alice in Wonderland", only less exaggerated and caricaturical. If you love looking at postcard-like animals in suits and dresses and some victorianesque children for hours, this certainly is a manga for you.

Apart from the art, the manga is mediocre. This is your slice-of-life manga without any kind of plot or character development which makes people drop and hate slice-of-life manga. It is not really funny. It does not explain how characters bond together. Sometimes something kinda happens, but nothing changes, really, even on I-learned-something-today level. Ok, may be there was some I-learned-something today in a couple of chapters, kind of. And it ends with nothing after like two years of slowly changing magical seasons.

I will recommend it to anyone who wants some Victorian-fairy-tale like atmosphere and doesn't care for any plot logic or development. Probably can be enjoyed by children.