Perhaps this isn't exactly 'grotesque' in the way that this blog's tagline suggests that my translations here would be. However, I think it fits in that it's what might be historically characterized as 'deviant' erotic art.
To cut to the chase, this one-shot by Rachi Meliae (a pseudonym assumed by mangaka Waho Konoma) is furry shit. Maybe at the time it was released in 1979, it would have been classified as a funny animal comic in league with Robert Crumb's series Fritz the Cat. All in all, it's a short, silly one-shot gag manga with a bishoujo squirrel protagonist who I'd compare to, among other characters, Chibi-Neko from Yumiko Ooshima's The Star of Cottonland, a series which began its run about a year and a half prior, in March 1978. Chibi-Neko is sometimes identified as otaku media's very first nekomimi girl, but because I can't think of a good source at the time of writing, I'm not going to confidently make that claim. I will say, though, that Konoma's character Alice is among the earliest animal girls in the history of otaku media.
Speaking of otaku, I'm behooved to acknowledge that I wouldn't know about this one-shot if it weren't for scholar Patrick W. Galbraith's progressive 2019 monograph Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, which primarily concerns itself with the history of moe, the 2D complex, and state-sponsored restrictions on the ways in which people write, read, and interact with characters in a cosmologically liminal two-dimensional space. Of course, this means that a large portion of the book discusses lolicon and the Lolicon Boom of the early 1980's. Konoma's one-shot appeared in the second issue of the doujin manga magazine Cybele, the magazine which precipitated the Lolicon Boom after its first issue was released at Comiket 11 on April 8, 1979 (Konoma's one-shot, within the second issue, was released a day ahead of Comiket 12, on July 27, 1979). Cybele, a precursor to later bishoujo eromanga staples Lemon People and Manga Burikko, was published by the phenomenally influential mangaka Hideo Azuma and his publishing operation, which he called Mukiryoku Production. Even the manga in Cybele which were not Azuma's own contributions carry a distinct resemblance to Azuma's signature, Tezuka-influenced style, and "Alice the Little Squirrel in Wonderland" is no exception.
This is all to say that Konoma's one-shot is an artifact from a pivotal moment in manga history, during the conception of a style that would go on to define the 1980's and influence works like Urusei Yatsura and Creamy Mami. I hope you enjoy it.
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