Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (635 page)

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“There are no slavers in our ranks,” she says and her voice is cold.

I feel as if I have had a fever; tired, but clear of mind. I have never walked so far and not walked beyond a town. The streets of St. Louis are empty. There are few lights. Far off a woman is singing, and her voice is clear and carries easily in the night. A beautiful voice.

“Elizabeth,” Michael says, “she is just a girl.”

“She needs to know,” Elizabeth says.

“Why did you save me then?” I ask.

“One does not fight evil with evil,” Elizabeth says.

“I’m not evil!” I say.

But no one answers.

Japanese animation or anime is medium that frequently features tales of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In fact, it is difficult to know quite where to start a discussion of how anime and the fantastic are related. This is particularly true because anime is not a genre, but a style (“big eyes, small mouth”) and can be used with many kinds of stories and storytelling techniques.

It is probably not unfair to say that at least three elements of Japanese culture—a rich mythology, a cheerful willingness to borrow from the mythologies of other cultures, and a deep interest in both the promises and the dangers of technology—are very much part of anime, even from its earliest days. Even before anime came to television, Japanese animated films like
The Tale of the White Serpent
(1958) were sometimes fantasies based on or inspired by folklore. The first television anime,
Three Tales
(1960), was also fantasy, consisting of three ten-minute animated fairy tales.

Anime begins to use science fiction early on.
Astro Boy
(1963–1966), although
not
the first anime series is probably the first to achieve widespread fame; the show features a main character who is not only a child hero, but a robot. One interesting aspect of the story is that Astro-Boy is very much aware that he is different and sometimes longs for the trappings of a normal life. This goes so far as to have Astro-Boy provided with his own robotic family: robots who are built specifically to take on the roles of his parents and of a tomboyish younger sister.

The 1960s and 1970s saw several other science fiction and anime series which laid out some of the common tropes for later ones. Probably the most familiar of these is
Speed Racer
(1967–1968), which is arguably only borderline science fiction, but can reasonably be claimed by the genre due to the advanced technology featured on the Mach 5 race car. (It also seems to take place in an alternate universe where behavior that would normally get one banned from racing appears to be completely acceptable.)

Among the other well-known anime series from the 1960s is one of the first shows featuring giant robots,
Gigantor
(1963–1966). Another,
8th Man
(1963–1964) is about a cyborg rather than a robot—the life force of a slain police officer is placed in a robotic body—and about a hero with a secret: unlike Astro-Boy or Gigantor, who are both very obviously machines, Tobor (8th Man) walks among us, pretending to be human, his secret known only to a few people. It is also a show that is very much a product of the 1960s—Tobor smokes cigarettes!

Another early anime is the
The Amazing Three
(1965–1966). It is interesting for the nature of the story. Here, three alien secret agents come to covertly observe Earth and determine whether humanity is fit to survive or if it represents a threat to the galaxy and needs to be exterminated. (As their spacecraft comes equipped with a doomsday bomb, it appears that the rest of the galaxy may have been expecting early on that things would go badly.) The aliens decide disguising themselves as local forms of life will help them fit in: they choose to take the forms of a horse, a duck, and a rabbit. The last of these is their sexy female commander who, despite now being a rabbit, is still sexy. Not surprisingly, their disguises are almost immediately pierced by a ten-year-old boy (but not by anyone else) who decides to join them in their adventures. In fact, he is eventually instrumental in saving the Earth when, in the final episode, he convinces the rather irritable galactic council to not incinerate humanity.

By the 1970s, two other genres were becoming popular in anime: space opera and mecha (strictly speaking, mecha stories are about giant battlesuits with human pilots rather than intelligent giant robots with their own personalities, although the two subgenres overlap substantially). Typical titles from the period are
Space Battleship Yamoto
(1974–1975) and
Mobile Suit Gundam
(1979–1980). The appeal of some of these stories has been substantial; for example, more than thirty years after the first Gundam series, new incarnations are still being developed and aired.

By the 1980s, anime was well-established in Japan and was starting to become more popular around the world. Since then, more than one thousand series, OVA (original video animation, usually released directly to home video without a TV or theatrical release), and feature films have been created; a large segment of these have fantastic themes of one kind or another. What follows are a few that might serve well as starting points for anyone interested in learning more about anime.

Some Recommended and Illustrative Anime

Akira
(film, 1988, director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo). This 1988 film is considered a landmark in anime, as it introduced the medium to many people outside of Japan and demonstrated some of its potential for storytelling. It relies on themes common in anime: a grim, near-future world, reminiscent of both film noir and cyberpunk, populist or outlaw heroes who oppose a corrupt or tyrannical authority, and the apocalyptic emergence of a new kind of human being with unusual powers.

The relationship between anime and cyberpunk is a rich one. The exact influences are difficult to trace, but the appearance of H. R. Giger’s Alien (from the 1977 film,
Alien
) in the promotional animated video for the 1983 animation conference Dai-Con IV suggests that Japanese animators were already familiar with the grim and gritty style of this film and similar works like
Blade Runner
(1982).

Blood+
(television series, 2005–2006, principal director and writer: Junichi Fujisaku). The Japanese sure do love vampires. In fact,
Blood+
, quite apart from being a rocking good story with excellent artwork and interesting characters, also works quite well as a primer on many of the things the Japanese love in their anime. Vampires. Characters with secrets (sometimes secrets they do not even know about). Dark conspiracies and secret societies. Schoolgirls. Mayhem. Schoolgirls causing mayhem. Rich schoolgirls who complicate things by falling in love with someone. Plot twists like killing off a beloved major character in the middle of the story. Monsters who can masquerade as humans but who then transform when one is not looking (or when one is looking) and then do really awful things to people. Creepy children who may or may not be monsters. Really cool swords, knives, halberds, and other medieval implements of destruction, not all of them particularly practical in design. Monsters and/or people being chopped into tiny bits with the aforesaid medieval implements of destruction. Gunfire and explosions. More gunfire and explosions. Sacrifice, tragic loss, and heroic determination. You know, the usual. All of these appear in Blood+.

Elfin Lied
(television series, 2004, creator: Lynn Okamoto). This thirteen-episode series again relies on a common plot in science fiction stories: the emergence of a new kind of humanity and the conflict that develops between that race and our own. What makes the story interesting is that it focuses on the personal aspects of this struggle—how those who are different can be brutalized by those who are “normal,” how we react to trauma, what it means to be a family, and the importance of forgiveness. This is a remarkably brutal and tragic series—like
Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai
, it shows just how well anime can handle very dark and serious storylines—and includes some genuinely horrifying acts of violence and unsettling depictions of personal loss. Because of its extreme nature, it is not appropriate for younger or more sensitive viewers.

Full Metal Panic
(television series, 2002, creator: Shoji Gatoh). Along with cyberpunk futures, alternate (or at least altered) history worlds are a common feature in anime. Some of these are rather elaborate, such as the world in
Strike Witches
, where World War II has been pre-empted by an alien invasion—the nations of Earth have united against this common threat, against which they employ the usual combination of conventional artillery and schoolgirls with magical powers. (
Strike Witches
, deliciously ludicrous in so many ways, is not totally without wit. When one of the magic-using girls wonders what the world would be like if the aliens had not shown up, another girl replies that the nations of the Earth would probably just be fighting each other.)

In
Full Metal Panic
, the world has been altered in less elaborate ways. It is a common setting in anime, “a world like ours, but with mecha, which, despite all logic, have turned out to be useful on the battlefield.” This is one of the better mecha franchises—or, rather, two thirds of it is, as the first and third series are mostly serious, while the second one focuses more on comedy and abandons the main plot almost entirely—with a combination of suspense, intrigue, and interesting character studies. It is still guilty of relying heavily on certain clichés, such as a petite girl genius serving as the commander of an advanced submarine, but its flaws are not too egregious.

One aspect worth mentioning, which is sometimes played very effectively for comedy even in the midst of more serious story arcs, is the main character becoming an undercover bodyguard for the heroine. Sousuke Sagara is a young man who has lived as a guerilla fighter and then a mercenary for as long as he can remember, but who is suddenly being thrust into the highly nuanced social world of a Japanese high school. He handles it with a combination of dead serious professionalism and childlike innocence: he is, for instance, a young man who thinks the most important use for a condom is that it can serve as a water bottle if one does not have a canteen.

Ghost in the Shell: Innocence
(film, 2004, director: Mamoru Oshii).
Ghost in the Shell
is a Japanese multimedia “franchise” that includes manga, anime series, and films. This is the second movie in the series, and it might be a little difficult for some viewers because we are, in effect, joining the story in the middle. The important thing to remember is that the main character is a cyborg police detective whose former partner, also a cyborg, has “transcended” normal physical existence to live as a bodiless artificial intelligence. The movie combines some genuinely beautiful artwork with powerful and suspenseful action sequences and wide-ranging discussions on the nature of consciousness, perception, and reality. Like many anime, it has a cyberpunk setting, a near future world that has been transformed in various ways by the new technologies but at the cost in some regions of profound damage to the environment and severe social dislocation. Of particular interest are the scenes where one or more of the characters, many of whom have cybernetically enhanced senses, have their perceptions “hacked” and are plunged into hallucinatory states. Some of the images are disturbing and the main character is investigating some rather grisly murders, so, again, this film may not be suitable for younger or more sensitive viewers.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
(television series, 2006, creator: Nagaru Tanigawa). This is a series that takes the concept “What if God was one of us?” and runs with it. (In fact, it might be more accurate to say it picks up the notion while driving a Lamborghini Diablo and then the two of them head for the border at high speed and with little regard for either traffic laws or public safety.) What if a goddess capable of creating and destroying entire universes had taken the form of beautiful and athletic high school girl, but in doing so had apparently lost her memory of being a goddess? What if she was annoyingly enthusiastic and self-centered, practically to the point of being a borderline sociopath? (Actually, when you think about it, this makes a great deal of sense—it really is a fairly accurate description of how a lot of mythological gods behave.) What if the story also included psychics, time travelers, and aliens? What if some poor schmuck—I mean, our hero, a likeable Everyman and a classmate of the goddess, was dragged into all of this against both his will and his better judgment? Finally, just because our heads were not already about to explode, what if the producers of the series decided it would be a good idea to broadcast the episodes out of chronological order? Suffice that this is an intriguing series, but only for people who like to think while they are being entertained.

Planetes
(television series, 2003-2004, creator: Makoto Yukimura).
Planetes
is unusual in that many anime science fiction series have elements that make them similar to fantasy or space opera; at the very least, they are often cinematic in their action and storylines. Mecha frequently employ the physics of plot and genetic mutants often have powers that look suspiciously like magic.
Planetes
, however, is a straightforward hard science fiction story that realistically examines a potential future threat: orbital debris. Set in 2075, the story looks at the problem facing a growing space industry by the thousands of old satellites and other man-made objects sharing the sky with inhabited space stations and spaceships. It is a good balance of comic and dramatic moments, with an interesting love story, but the series also examines relationships between the industrialized world and developing nations, the ethics of terrorism, and how one should deal with betrayal or tragic personal loss.

Princess Mononoke
(film, 2001, director Hayao Miyazaki). Fantasy, rather than science fiction, but Miyazaki is one of the figures who simply cannot be ignored in any serious discussion of anime. This is one of his best and most accessible films, with its stunning images (in many ways, the film is practically a visual hymn to nature), compelling story, and nuanced discussion of the relationship between humanity and the environment.