Cinderalla was the second published work I found of Junko Mizuno's in English, all the way back in 2002, her first being a short story printed in an anthology work called 'Secret Comics Japan' printed by the now very defunct Pulp comics publisher.
Cinderalla is the first of several adapted fairy tale graphic novels Mizuno illustrated, in her style. In this version, Cinderalla works with her father in a Yakitori restaurant, in a strange fantasy world, where her best friend is a talking rat. Upon her father's untimely death, Cinderalla discovers the zombie world in her graveyard, and the 'Prince', a zombie who rides a turtle and sings at a dinner show. Instead of getting a fabulous dress in order to make it to the ball, this Cinderalla must transform herself into a zombie to get into the club. Instead of a glass slipper, it is an eyeball that Cinderalla loses and the Prince must use to find her.
Mizuno's style is highly sexualized, cutsey, and dark. The women of Mizuno are over the top cartoons with gigantic heads and eyes and very long legs. They are often topless for no real reason. Dark creeping things skitter around, rats and insects are common, and zombies have little issue ripping off limbs. One wicked step sister suffers as her breasts are abnormally large, and when at one point Cinderalla refuses to make her custom bras, the step sister rips off her breasts in anger, exposing her rib cage full of worms. Transformed into a zombie, instead of dancing with the Prince, Cinderalla gets to bed him, in a frame of dripping psychedelia. Printed like an old American Comic, the pages are thin but in full color.
I'm a fan of Mizuno, and in fact my yellowed copy bares her signature, which I got in a now non-existent independent book store on Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade. As a teen, in the world of adolescent manga translated into English, where girls are submissive and virginal and increasingly moe, Mizuno's sexualized cartoon characters of free agency spoke to me. Reading at age 35 I'm less entranced by a topless Cinderalla sewing oversized bras, but there is still some mystery to me in Mizuno's work that fascinates, wondering what comment she is making on the status of women in Japan. Or indeed, she likes drawing sexy cartoon characters, which is also fine.