Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (636 page)

Miyazaki has directed several films that contain science fiction or fantasy elements. Among them are
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
(1984),
My Neighbor Totoro
(1988),
Kiki’s Delivery Service
(1989),
Spirited Away
(2001), and
Howl’s Moving Castle
(2004). All of them are very much worth watching.

It is worth pausing at this moment to mention a common trope in anime—the tendency for a storyteller to stop the action and allow the viewer to dwell for a moment or two on the beauties of nature, which will have been drawn and animated in painstaking detail. (This is sometimes jokingly referred to as “scenery porn.”) Miyazaki is, depending on how you feel about this sort of thing, either one of the masters or one of the most serious offenders;
Princess Mononoke
includes many such scenes. These include panoramic views of mist-covered mountains at dawn and close-ups of forest vegetation or raindrops striking stones. An interesting variation in many anime series, particularly slice-of-life stories, is that food, when it has been artistically arranged by one of the characters, is sometimes also shown in the same manner.

Ranma 1/2
(television series, 1989–1992, creator: Rumiko Takahashi). A classic anime series,
Ranma 1/2
is one of the ultimate gender confusion comedies, thanks to the miracle of fantastic elements like cursed springs and ridiculously over-the-top secret martial arts techniques. Ranma, our hero (and, sometimes, our heroine), is a young man living with a curse: he changes into a beautiful young woman whenever he is splashed with cold water and must be splashed with warm water to return to his original form. His life is further complicated when he learns his overly enthusiastic and rather self-centered father (who is indirectly responsible for the curse and is himself under a curse that sometimes changes him into a panda) has arranged for him to marry one of the daughters of his old friend and fellow martial artist Soun Tendo. The show is noteworthy for its farcical comedy and the slowly developing relationship between Ranma and his betrothed, Akane. It is a relationship that is complicated by everything from the appearance of Ranma’s old enemies to the fact that, when he is female, Ranma has larger breasts than Akane does, which he will sometimes point out to her if he is annoyed at her for some reason. Rarely has an anime hero been called an idiot so many times. Rarely have fictional young people suffered so much and in so many totally ludicrous ways for our entertainment. It would be a shame for you to miss it.

Anime also offers an excellent lesson in cross-cultural differences in humor. Even as early as
Ranma
, anime features scenes showing female characters topless (usually when bathing) and many series have characters who have a panty fetish or which feature what are sometimes rather rudely called “upskirt” shots, providing the audience with a glimpse of the underwear worn by female characters, sometimes without their knowledge and sometimes in ways that humiliate them. This appears to be normal for anime. It might be fair to say that, by the standards of the Japanese, we Westerners are rather prudish, with our practically Victorian phobias about nudity and group bathing and our eye-rolling contempt for sexually-charged slapstick humor. By our standards, many of the people responsible for the creation of anime appear to have borrowed the souls of horny thirteen-year-old boys. Who am I to say who is right or wrong?

In fairness, it should be added that female characters are often very modest and ladylike in their attitudes and behavior. Group bathing is normal for the Japanese. Further, it is one thing to giggle about the possibility of being seen naked by a boy on whom one has a crush, but if it actually happens (and when it does, it is usually by accident), the wrath of the maiden will be unleashed on the hapless doofus! This is not always true—sometimes the joke is actually inverted and the humor is built around a sexually aggressive woman pursuing a modest young man (or, in some cases, an aggressive gay character pursuing a modest young straight one; from the 1990s on, anime has been very comfortable with gay characters). Even here, the point is that anime often appears to be “naughty,” relying on rude sexual humor that seems to treat women as objects, but is really just making fun of anyone, male or female, who allows himself or herself to be ruled by his or her glands. Further, anime often implies that actually behaving like a lecher is unacceptable. People, especially men, who actually transgress, whether deliberately or by accident, or who even spend too much time thinking about sex, are often punished or humiliated in some way. Such people are at the very least often made to look ridiculous, while those who are attempting to protect modesty or purity are usually seen as sympathetic. One final twist on all this, of course, is that any activity or viewpoint taken to an extreme seems to be an appropriate target for ridicule in anime. While modesty generally seems to be respected, a woman who is too modest and who reacts with childish hysteria when people talk about sexual relations or sexuality is also sometimes a target of humor.

Rizelmine
(television series, 2002, creator: Yukiru Sugisaki). I am including
Rizelmine
because it is a personal favorite; in fairness, it is only average as an anime series, and it is a little rude at times, although it is also genuinely funny in places and the love story is really rather sweet. It is, however, a good example of how anime does not always take itself very seriously.
Rizelmine
cheerfully draws on many of the commonly used elements of anime and then deliberately turns them on their heads. This is not only a story about an arranged marriage or about a genetically engineered superhuman or about mecha or about romantic polygons, it is a story about all of these things at the same time. Our fifteen-year-old hero, Iwaki Tomonori, who has a crush on his large-breasted homeroom teacher and whose eyes are normally drawn with very small black pupils in order to express his ongoing horror and outrage at how the universe is being run, finds himself married against his will by the government to Rizel (which rhymes with easel, in case anyone cares), a genetically engineered superhuman who looks like she is only twelve years old. The story progresses to include romantic polygons, mecha, trips to the beach, mind control devices, underwear fetishes, elegantly prepared lunches, stray dogs, lecherous idiot fathers, death-defying rescues, and, of course, hearts connected by the red rope of fate.

Simoun
(television series, 2006, creator: Junji Nishimura). One of the most important aspects of the fantastic is “what if?” Science fiction, fantasy, and horror all allow us to explore a range of philosophical questions and aspects of what it means to be human by posing special cases that bring certain issues into focus but which could not ordinarily take place in realistic stories.
Simoun
is set on a world that seems like a strange mirror image of Europe during the early years of the twentieth century, but with an interesting twist: Everyone is born female and, when they turn seventeen, visits a mystical spring and gets to choose their gender. The catch is that one must choose carefully. Further, one must be ready to make a choice, or the mystical spring will choose for you. The story that results from this concept is a lyrical treatment of gender, friendship, and the futility of war.

Sky Girls
(television series, 2007, director: Yoshiaki Iwasaki)
.
This is a delightful, feel-good series that uses a well-plotted storyline involving superscience, political intrigue, and a desperate struggle to save humanity from an enemy they may have themselves created, combined with some excellent animation, particularly of mechanized aerial combat, to make up for the fact that it is totally ridiculous. It is the future. Earth has survived a devastating war with alien creatures, but at a terrible cost; much of the planet is now underwater and most men between the ages of 15 and 50 are dead. Thus, when new aerial combat technology is developed in the form of the Sonic Diver (there is never any reason given for why these flying mecha are called Sonic Divers) it is only logical that schoolgirls are recruited to fly them. Not surprisingly, one of them is a shy genius, another is a businesslike professional soldier, and another is a plucky tomboy trained in swordplay. They are eventually joined by a petite blonde firecracker pilot prodigy from Germany. Together, they are the sky girls. In addition, for some reason, flying the Sonic Divers require these young women to wear eccentric but revealingly tight costumes. And then the monstrosities, long thought dead, return, and do really awful things to people, so our heroines must rely on teamwork, heroic determination, and the power of friendship to save humanity from destruction.

Tenchi Muyo!
(television series, 1992, creator: Masaki Kajishima) This is the first of several series and animated movies featuring the hapless Tenchi. The series is a mixed bag, with some good episodes and some disappointing ones. For our purposes, it is most noteworthy as an example of both space opera in anime and what is known as the harem story. Harem stories simultaneously pay tribute to and make fun of the typical teenage male fantasy of sharing a house with several beautiful women all at the same time, usually without much (or any) parental supervision. The reasons why this happens will vary, depending on the series, from fairly plausible (and sometimes rather tragic) to utterly ridiculous. In Tenchi’s case, he accidentally releases an alien space pirate (who is initially assumed to be a demon) who has been imprisoned in a cave for seven hundred years. At this point, her old enemy, a space princess, shows up to do battle with her. Naturally, because they have nothing better to do, they both fall in love with Tenchi. Then other beautiful aliens show up. Explosions and comedic hijinks ensue.

* * * *

More Series and Films Worth a Look: A Very Abbreviated List

11 Eyes*

Basilisk

Bleach

Code Geass

Cowboy Bebop

Death Note

Fruits Basket

Gunslinger Girl

Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai*

Inuyasha

Kamichu

Karin

Kaze No Stigma

Metropolis

Mnemosyne

Paranoia Agent*

Read or Die/ROD the TV (
the OVA and follow-up series are a single extended story)

Sailor Moon

Shikabane Hime

Shuffle!

Sola

Steamboy

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Trigun

Zombie Loan

* Indicates a series with particularly graphic violence and/or other things that might give you nightmares or possibly cause an angry mob of your parents to show up at my house with torches and pitchforks. Please do not watch this if you are easily freaked out.

Extra Credit

Did you know there is a live action version of
Sailor Moon
?
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
(2003–2004) covered the first major story arc (i.e., Queen Beryl vs. All Things Good and Decent) in 49 episodes. Even more disturbing than the fact that such things even exist is that the show actually works fairly well, assuming one is in the mood for some rather over-the-top science fantasy featuring romance and less-than-overwhelming special effects.

* * * *

Dr. Mark Gellis
teaches professional communication, speech, literature, and humanities at Kettering University.

(1960– )

Although he’s been successful in a variety of media, Rob Sawyer has probably contributed as much to the field through organizational involvement—helping to organize writers, to teach new writers, and also at the center of the vibrant Toronto SF community. That’s not to minimize his writing: since he became primarily a hard SF writer in 1989, Rob has won the top SF awards in the United States, Japan, France, and Spain; his novels have been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish.

Born in Ontario to economist parents, Rob is a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. After earning a degree in radio and television Broadcasting at Ryerson University in 1982, he stayed on to teach television studio production techniques until becoming a full time writer. While in college he made his first professional sale, the story “Motive” to a planetarium which produced it as part of a star show. The first six years of his writing career, Rob primarily wrote non-fiction essays in Canadian and American magazines on topics ranging from computing to personal finance. He also wrote and narrated five radio documentaries about science fiction for CBC Radio’s
Ideas
series.

Since becoming a full-time SF writer, Rob’s topics nave varied widely, with the common ground of exploring hard SF ideas. His first novel was Golden Fleece (1990) which won an Aurora Award. He followed that up with Far-Seer (1992), Fossil Hunter (1993), and Foreigner (1994, a trilogy set on a planet of intelligent dinosaurs). He won a Nebula for The Terminal Experiment (1995) and a Hugo for Hominids (2002). Starplex (1996), Frameshift (1997), Illegal Alien (1997), Factoring Humanity (1998), Flashforward (1999), and Calculating God (2000) were also award finalists or winners. Although known mainly for his novels, Rob has published three collections of short fiction, and has edited several anthologies. He’s a frequent guest at SF conventions (which is where I know him from) as well as on television.

He served for three years on SFWA’s Board of Directors as the first Canadian Regional Director (1992–1995), and was briefly president of SFWA. He has also been active in other writers’ organizations, including the Crime Writers of Canada, the Horror Writers Association, and the Writers’ Union of Canada.

He lives in Toronto with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.