Are You Alice?

Throwing his dreams away, a young man enters "wonderland", completely stripped of his memories, heritage... and name. As he reacts to the name "Alice", he is forced to participate in the game of killing the White Rabbit as the 89th candidate, in order to legally earn the name "Alice". With the Mad Hatter at his side, he starts his task and gets to know many different characters, all of them having various reasons for existing in Wonderland and for being in favour or against "Alice".

Are You Alice? started off as a series of drama CDs written by Ninomiya Ai and became her most popular work. It was adapted into manga-form in 2010 by Katagiri Ikumi and as of 2011, a PSP-game was also released. It is obviously based on Alice in Wonderland, but with very individual takes to the original source. The series is remarkable for its complex characters and world as well as for the high amount of well-known seiyuu that star on the CDs.

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Tropes used in Are You Alice? include:

• Ambiguously Brown: The Caterpillar.
• Alice Allusion: This series is obviously based on Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.
• Animal Motifs: Obvious, but other characters get this. In an omake, Alice compared the Queen with a panther, Jack with a dog, and the Mad Hatter with a bear. The Mad Hatter, on the other hand, calls Alice a giraffe.
• Bishonen: All over the place.
• Click. "Hello.": Expect this to happen in just about every scene involving the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Just about everyone in this series seems to have one hidden somewhere...
• Dead to Begin With: The 48th Alice, or "Regret".
• Deal with the Devil: Kill the White Rabbit, and you win! Fail, and you become some freaky shadow monster forever roaming Wonderland, hopelessly clinging to the name Alice...
• Deliberately Monochrome: Several, different examples:
  • The Queen of Heart wears black and white, has chocolate-colored eyes, and has black hair. Irony is that he hates the color red.
  • Splash of Color: It seems almost like Alice is the only one able to wear colors; all three Alices shown in color have, well, color: our protagonist wears a white suit with a blue undershirt and has blonde hair with blue eyes. The Alice from the 49th's past wears the classic colors and looks of white and blue in a dress format, and the previous Alice, the 48th, was wearing shades of pink: from pink hair to pink stockings and so on.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience / What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: Everyone but the most important characters wear colors of black and white, almost to symbolize the Crapsack World Wonderland seems to be. The Alices wear only one or two shades at best, as well as the Duchess.
• Demoted to Extra: The Duchess is forced to act as Alice's 'replacement' in order to stop the Distortion mosnter from killing the real Alice. And all the Cheshire Cat can do is watch...
• Down the Rabbit Hole: Well, not really, but...
• The Dragon: The Queen of Hearts, possibly.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: The 'Queen' of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, and the White Rabbit, with the inevitable Viewer Gender Confusion.
  • Also the March Hare, especially when he's drawn with pink highlights on his outfit instead of green.
• Eldritch Abomination: Wonderland's Mass Creation Distortion/The Duke.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: The Duchess, in a rather diluted sense.
• Grey and Gray Morality: Due to the back stories we've gotten from a few characters, namely Alice's and the Queen's, it's hard to discern who's good or evil. The Queen of Hearts has a very good public face, being showered with gifts from all sorts of girls. He's, however, in charge of killing the ones who fail at their job or break the rules. Meanwhile, the White Rabbit made the game to kill him, and the Cheshire Cat crosses back and fourth from being a hero to a villain, very similar to the animated Disney movie, where the Cat was "the villain" when compared to the books. Alice himself isn't innocent either, having apparently killed Alice Liddel, his big sister.
• God Save Us From the Queen: Would you believe the Queen of Hearts was a mass murderer?
• Identity Amnesia: The 49th and current Alice and the Mad Hatter.
• Living Shadow: The Regrets.
• Lolicon: The Mad Hatter. However, it only becomes really clear when it becomes clear that he is actually Lewis Caroll, who is hinted at having been in love with Alice Liddell.
• No Name Given: "Alice?" can't remember his own name. The reason for that is really sad.
• Off with His Head: Characters that don't play by the rules the White Rabbit gave them, or that aren't needed anymore (most prominently the Duchess) are erased from the story this way. The Queen of Hearts does the deeds himself with his Sinister Scythe.
• Out, Damned Spot!: A mild one from The Queen of Hearts, so mild that it's really hard to tell if he actually regrets his actions or not.
• Petting Zoo People: The Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit.
• Quest for Identity: Subverted. 'Alice' doesn't seem even slightly interested in getting his memories back and simply wants to live in Wonderland.
  • However, he becomes more fond of the name as the story of the original CDs goes on, which becomes the main topic to probably one of the most mindscrewy CDs of the whole series.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Although the White Rabbit's eyes are described as pink in both the English original and the Japanese translation of Alice in Wonderland, his eyes are very red here. And he's quite a Killer Rabbit on top.
• She Is the King: More like 'He is the Queen'.
• Shown Their Work: Even going as far as to incorporate 'minor' elements of the original story, such as Dinah the cat and the whole 'Mad Hatter killing time' thing.
• Spell My Name with an "S": an interesting version. On some CD-booklets and merchandise, the main character's name is written with an additional questionmark to his name (resulting in "Alice?") to tell him apart from 'other' Alices. Of course, it also hints at the fact that he is still in the process of gaining this name or not.
• Talking with Signs: Jack's only way of communication.
• The Mad Hatter: He doesn't seem to be as mad as other versions, though, except for his obsession with his precious tea time. Later, it is revaled that he is actually Lewis Carroll, author of the original story.
• The Wonderland
• Trapped in Another World: "Alice?" ends up in Wonderland without knowing how exactly he got there or how to get away from it (he gets around with this after a while, though). Later in the story of the CDs, he is also in Looking Glass Land without any real clue.
• Verbal Tic: The Mad Hatter often adds a 'Maa' at the start of some of his sentences and the Duchess's fish-butler uses 'gyo' at the end of his.
• You Can't Fight Fate / Screw Destiny: Tropes that seem to be becoming underlying themes of this series.