Was it alcohol that the kids drank that night?  Yes, it was.

We’ve seen this all before.  Shows have episodes with underage drinking all the time (I can’t remember a single example right now but trust me, they do).  This allows the shows to explore all sorts of characters’ relations and frictions, the underbelly of the beast as it were.  But of course underage drinking is bound to upset the censors, so the writers have to put in a disclaimer at the end: it wasn’t alcohol at all!!  This is as silly as the ending to Dorian Grey.

But here’s the deal, to do the trope correctly you have to create a misunderstanding.  Yukiko, for one, should have been told that she was drinking alcohol before she “got drunk”.  But she wasn’t.  Yukiko thought it was a regular drink, otherwise she wouldn’t have even taken a sip.  And yet the drink got her drunk.  Therefore, this was truly alcohol and not a soft drink QED.

The only evidence we have against this not being alcohol is Naoto’s statement?  Are we really going to believe Naoto??!!  Of course not.  Fine, the detective can take his liquor.  We wouldn’t expect less of Naoto, now would we.

I loved this episode.  Chie seems well on her way to becoming Yuu’s girl, there’s a hint of returning darkness at the end of the episode, there’s a fantastic love triangle developing (Teddie, Yosuke and Kanji), God’s in his heaven, etc etc.

Mouretsu Pirates

Now, this thing on the other hand…

I couldn’t bring myself to comment on anyone’s posts on this episode because I’d just end up soiling their comment threads.  I was bored, end of story.

[A new Space Pirate Captain Harlock fansite is online today.  The French site is [here] and it’s the product of a collaboration between various Francophone Leijiverse superfans.  In addition, it features content by starblazers.com‘s Tim Eldred and a review of a Harlock video game by myself.  Since the review on the site is in French, I’m posting below the original English version for those interested.  Do check out the site.  It’s gorgeous!!]

“…Tochiro finally broke through to where Emeraldas and Harlock were already fighting Commander Nurem.  They knew that the Mazone leader would not surrender and that this would be a fight to the death.  As it turned out, Tochiro didn’t have to do anything.  He just watched as Emeraldas fired one well-placed gravity beam and the Mazone burst into flames, howling as she went.  The invasion had been thwarted for the moment, but Miime and Yuki lay dead, never to return…”

No, this is not my feeble attempt at fan fiction.  It isn’t a dream I had either (in my dream it’s Daiba that dies).  This is actually what I did the other day, playing the game Space Pirate Captain Harlock (SPCH) and beating Stage One in 7 turns, but at a terrible cost!

This turn-based strategy game will be 20 years old in 2012 (it originally came out for the PC-98, if you know what that is).  The game was produced under the supervision of Leiji Matsumoto and it shows.  It’s extremely faithful to the Harlock franchise and thus bound to be of interest to every fan.

The Goal

The goal for each side is to eliminate the leading unit of the opposite side (like “checkmating the king” in chess).  When playing against the computer there is also a turn limit.  If you are unable to achieve victory within the limit you lose, regardless of the situation on the board.  This happened to me in the first stage: after 30 turns I was told I had lost even though I was ahead in terms of units and could have won in 4-5 more turns!

Gameplay and Units

The manual compares the game to chess and go.  It’s a very loose comparison.  Chess is played on an 8 x 8 board and go on a 19 x 19 board.  SPCH uses a 39 x 54 board, and even though some of the squares are unusable (walls, rocks, etc) it’s still a huge playing field.  The game units have varying amounts of MP (=movement points, how many squares the unit can move in one turn) but the highest MP for a unit is 6 so it takes ages to go from one side of the board to another.

The board is on the right. A zoomed area is on the left. Harlock is practically surrounded by Mazone, with a lone Earthling citizen (the weakest unit in the game) about to be eliminated.

The game recreates the confrontation between the Mazone and Earth, where the Earth forces include a mixture of the Arcadia crew and regular Army elements.  You can choose to fight in either one of two settings: Fleet Combat and Hand-to-Hand Combat.  The mechanics of both settings are basically the same, but the units look and behave somewhat differently.  Since I started playing the game I’ve been focused on the Hand-to-Hand Combat setting, so I’ll review that one here.  I will say something about the Fleet Combat at the end of the review.

For each of the two settings you can choose one of two modes: Scenario and Campaign.  Scenario Mode gives you a choice of 5 scenarios.  Here you can choose to play either the Earth side or the Mazone side (player against player is also possible).  Campaign Mode takes you through five stages (similar to, but not the same as the scenarios) and you must play on the Earth side.  As you clear each stage your surviving units increase in experience and become more formidable.

Every turn each side gets to maneuver each and every unit as they please.  Each unit type has evasion, protection and combat ratings.  And most units  can do two things each turn: move (1 to 6 squares, depending on the unit’s MP) and attack.  Each type of unit has 1 to 4 weapon types, plus all units can fight hand-to-hand if they run out of ammo.  In addition, a unit can choose not to attack but shield itself against a possible attack when the opponent’s turn comes.  The game shows a lot of nuance in the balance of movement and attack possibilities.

Tori-san boldly strikes at a Mazone regeneration facility. The result is inconclusive.

For example, on the Earth side you have Tori-san and Emeraldas with the maximum 6 MP.  These units have a lot of mobility.  As you can expect, however, Tori has a very low protection rating and can be killed in two shots if the opponent is lucky.  Tori doesn’t carry any weapons, either, so the bird depends on getting close to the enemy, attacking and moving out before it gets too hurt.

Emeraldas on the other hand is better protected and has an impressive arsenal: Gravity Saber, Cosmo Dragoon and HT Knife (Hunting Knife?).  Tochiro and Harlock have the exact same weapon set but Emeraldas has more ammo.  This is balanced by the fact that Emeraldas has less protection.

Yattaran has a solid weapon, the Cosmo Percussion M78, and he is extremely tough, with more protection than any other unit in the game.  But he is very lazy and can only move 2 squares per turn.  Kei Yuki carries the M-78 plus an HT Knife and can move 4 squares at a time but she is far less protected than Yattaran.  I could go on, but I think you get the picture!

The text on the blue background above Harlock reads: "Target has been surrounded." This spells trouble for the pirate.

To add to the complexity, a fight between two units is influenced by the surrounding area.  If Harlock attacks a Mazone trooper who has nearby support, the enemy will evade him more easily.  If Harlock is surrounded by the enemy (as in the screenshot above) he will have a higher chance of being hurt every time he is attacked.  This encourages units to move together to increase offensive and defensive power.

Reinforcement and Recovery

Every turn that passes each side accumulates reinforcement points.  For some reason the game calls them VP (victory points?).  Players need to keep track of their VP and make difficult choices: should I use a lot of VP and introduce a strong unit?  Use two turns to bring in 2 weaker units?  Each side has special units (regeneration centers and man-eating trees for the Mazone; hospitals for the Earth side) that can bring in reinforcements.  These units may also serve as recovery zones.  You can have your wounded units go into a hospital (Earth) or a regeneration center (Mazone) and nurse themselves back to health to fight again.  Recovering doesn’t cost points, but there is a limit to how many units can be in a recovery unit at one time.

The most confusing aspect of the game is this issue of leaders, reinforcement units and recovery units.  There is a lot of overlap, but it all depends on the stage/scenario.  There is one scenario where the Earth side has no hospital.  After a lot of clicking and checking, I discovered that in that case Harlock is both the leader and the reinforcement unit, and there’s no recovery unit!

In the first stage of Campaign Mode Commander Nurem (who featured in episode 5 of the anime, if you recall) is both the Mazone leader and the reinforcement unit, with no recovery unit available.  The Earth side has a hospital that serves the three roles of leader (!), reinforcement unit and recovery unit so presumably in that stage killing Harlock does not mean automatic victory for the Mazone.  The aliens must destroy the hospital.  The manual doesn’t go into any of these things so it’s really trial and error for the player.

The caption reads: "Earth Forces achieve a temporary victory in the 7th turn. Harlock's (group) had a survival rate of 72%" These 7 turns took me an hour of play!

Difficulty

The Campaign Mode is particularly challenging because the best units on the Earth side (=the crew of the Arcadia) are all, except Tori, irreplaceable.  If Miime dies in Stage One, you are forced to keep playing without her.  As a consolation, units that survive improve in evasive abilities and I imagine a better player than I can do better than to lose two key members in the first stage!

Graphics and Sound

The game is old and it shows, but it does very well with what it has.  When an attack is in progress you get to see both units using their selected weapons.  My favorite is the Hallucination attack that all of the high-ranking Mazone units possess (Lafresia can fire off 20 of them!).  It reminds me a lot of Daiba’s struggles with the devious Lola

The soundtrack consists of a series of screeches, annoying beeps and your typical MIDI background track.  If there were something I could change in this game it would be the sound.

Fleet Combat

I’ve only played this a couple of times, for two reasons: I prefer to concentrate on one setting before I jump into the next one; I prefer animation with pirates and Mazones shooting at each other over the ships in space.  But I suspect I might be in a minority in this regard, so let me describe Fleet Combat briefly.

The zoomed area shows the Arcadia. The Queen Emeraldas is at the opposite corner of the board in the bottom-right (green square).

Most of the units are spaceships, from Cosmowings to the Arcadia, and from the Zoness to Queen Emeraldas.  Even the Stanley Witch turns up as a Mazone unit!!  An interesting aspect of Fleet Combat is that units like the Arcadia can hold several smaller vessels, and one possible strategy would consist of hiding your weaker units in the battleship, carrying them to the enemy and then releasing them for maximum damage.  You cannot do that in Hand-to-Hand Combat mode because, well, hospitals don’t move.

Stage One of Campaign Mode is a great example of how faithful this game is to the dynamics of Leiji Matsumoto’s universe.  The Earth side begins with only two units: Queen Emeraldas and the Arcadia.  Between those two units are 20 Mazone ships!!  The pirate ships are so strong that often you don’t have to attack a Mazone ship to destroy it.  When a ship attacks the Queen Emeraldas, for example, the pirate zeppelin’s (automatic) counterattack is usually fierce enough to destroy it.  I almost suspect you could make yourself a sandwich and watch the pirates destroy the opposition while you eat!

GOOD SOPA.

It’s tempting to think this way: “let me check out which of the politicians that I like happens to be against SOPA and I’ll support that one”.  That sounds clever, but the politicians are way too clever for you and once you start researching you’ll realize that right now practically all the presidential candidates (both Democrat and Republican, with the possible exception of Santorum, although even his statements are not very assertive) are against the bill.

You might think this is a ludicrous situation.  If everyone’s against the thing then how come it’s out there in the first place??  Clearly, the candidates are simply trying to score political points, seeing the wave of discontent against the bill.  But as the current administration’s strike against Megaupload makes evident, there’s very little in the way of principled opposition to something like SOPA and a lot of desire to support certain lobbies and industries…

BAD SOPA.

So what I suggest is you try to look for politicians who are against SOPA because they are unequivocally for freedom and they recognize that bills like SOPA systematically chip away at that freedom.  And right now quite frankly there are very few of these men and women.  Among the major presidential candidates there’s only one: Ron Paul.  I suggest if you’re an American and this SOPA thing worries you, and more importantly, if  the whole environment that generated this drive to restrict your freedom to begin with worries you, you consider voting for him.  That would be a real step in the right direction and not just rewarding politicians who blow with the wind.

Sensei has the girls rattle off the list of idol “qualities” that fans like.  The first one that gets thrown out is “loli”, then “tsundere”, and the list goes on until it ends in “alien”.  Then sensei concentrates on hairstyles and how an idol group can use hair to distinguish its various members and give them distinct “personalities”.  Sensei only manages to discuss two hairstyles, and each of them gets its own catchphrase.  Thus

1. Pony-tail: the Eternal Standard

Innocuous sounding, to be sure, but Aya goes out of her way to explain that men are aroused by the exposed nape of the neck (so very touchable) and the stray hairs that are invariably formed with this hairstyle.  Also, she tells us that there’s a certain allure to a girl’s (messy) hair when she unties her pony-tail.

2. Twin-tails: the Double Arches of Worldly Passions

The catchphrase says it all.  It’s ironic that sensei teaches the girls that only the young ones should wear this, and yet the effect of wearing them is to arouse the most tempestuous desire.

My assessment of the acting continues to be the same: the main girl (=Umika) is good for the part, the other ones are OK in their supporting roles.  Aya got to do an anime meganekko interpretation which came off very forced, though ultimately that’s the script’s fault I guess.  Umika’s retort here (that sensei wasn’t actually trying to teach them anything but was just using that as an excuse to play out her own fantasies) was appropriate and funny, but not funny enough to make up for the unnaturalness of the scene…

Mouretsu Pirates

The episode does everything right.  The story is getting set up very carefully and yet in an entertaining way, and I don’t have any bones to pick with the way things are going..  but I do want to beat up two of the characters, not because they’re being done badly, but just because of my particular tastes: Ririka and Kurihara.

(In Japan this would be the cue for someone to hit me over the head and yell “But those are 2 of the 3 main characters?!”  I’m glad I don’t live in Japan anymore.)  Anyway, either of these characters could beat me up with their pinky finger, so I’m thankful they’re only 2-D and can’t really hurt me.

Is Ririka hip and accessible or cool and distant?  She seems to be more of the former than the latter, but her eyes and her voice want to lead us in the latter direction.  Pick one!!  Also, tell your daughter to call you Mom!!  I feel like punching her.

Kurihara has a squarish face thing going that’s just ugh.  It might have something to do with parfaits and planetary gravities, I don’t really know.  But it kinda makes me want to punch her every time I see her.  Also, I don’t like seeing a character behave like that (serious, stoic, monotone) every single second of the day.  I know we’re being fed a popular database character here, I do.  And I know she’ll break out of her shell soon enough.  But I just feel that if you’re going to make a character behave like that then you’d better make her look like Rei Ayanami.  Otherwise I’ll be wanting to punch her throughout.  All in all I prefer a more mixed character à la Stocking.  [Is Gainax doing anything this year?!]

I love the ships, and I love the fact that the author behind this series loves ships.  It’s such a good sign.  Words cannot describe what a beautiful choice for a ship name Odette II is.  I imagine the Odette II’s interior was repainted by the schoolgirls, huh.  It looks like a perfect place to eat a parfait, though Kurihara please restrain yourself.

QUESTION: Is this character Indian?  If she is, is she married??  I have a couple of acquaintances from India but since every time that I meet them I end up interrogating them on the mysteries of their civilization I’d rather ask here.  Otherwise I might be the one to get punched.

Persona 4

Here we have another eminently punchable character.  Velvet Room lady, let me say this once and for all: you haven’t been given that awesome of a character design, so why don’t you stop trying to come on to the main character?  You’re not gonna get anywhere.  Drunk nurses don’t get anywhere with him, what makes you think you will?!  Please.

This was a great episode, and it manages to put the last one into context and improve it as well.  As the episode progressed I couldn’t help putting myself in Yuu’s shoes and pondering how I would have reacted to each situation.  I realized that I am an anti-Yuu.  My inclination would have been to do the opposite of what he did each time (NOT help the old lady out, DO take the nurse’s offer immediately, etc).  But then I reflected that if a cute fox had told me to do it all then I would have, because I like magical stuff like that and anyway I’d be really scared of a preternaturally intelligent fox-being cursing me or something.

So my actions would only agree with Yuu’s because of a magical element (the fox).  And since such a fox does not exist in our world then I don’t have a motive to behave like Yuu and my life is utterly different.  This is not a bad thing at all, mind you.  If you live long enough you will get a drunk nurse asking you out at least once, and as much as I love Yuu and respect his decision-making, I think 9 times out of 10 it pays to take such an offer.  Still, it’s fascinating to see this man and how he operates.  Plus the script itself is hilarious, it really is.

The only thing that was supremely disturbing was the woman with the problem child at school.  To get beat up like that, seemingly without any legal repercussions, that just doesn’t send a good message.

Let me bring Leibniz into the discussion:

“It follows from the supreme perfection of God that he has chosen the best possible plan in producing the universe, a plan which combines the greatest variety together with the greatest order; with situation, place, and time arranged in the best way possible; with the greatest effect produced by the simplest means; with the most power, the most knowledge, the greatest happiness and goodness in created things which the universe could allow” (section 10 of Principles of Nature and of Grace, Based on Reason, tr. by Leroy E. Loemker).

Studying Leibniz for the umpteenth time I feel as if I’m finally able to go past the Voltairean critique and actually understand the man.  But this is not about me, it’s about Frontier!!  Notice that Leibniz’s description of God’s choice is really similar to a fiction writer’s.  It’s no wonder Tolkien called what he did sub-creation.  Substitute Kawamori for God there and you get a description of what Macross Frontier is aiming for.  I don’t think that Kawamori wants either Ranka, or Sheryl, or Alto, or Ozma or whomever to suffer needlessly.  It’s just that logic indicates that in order to maximize the goodness and happiness of the show some suffering will be had.  Of course in fiction this happiness usually belongs to the consumers (readers, viewers), but I’ve found that when authors develop a long-running franchise they care as much about the characters’ happiness as the consumers’.  I see this in Tolkien and in Matsumoto, and I imagine it’s there in Kawamori too.

Think about is this way.  Sheryl was led by Grace [how theologically warped!] to fame and glory.  Does the dark realization in this episode wipe out the joys Sheryl had along the way?  Surely not.  And Sheryl is still on course to regain happiness later on, and this happiness will be greater because of all the misery.  At the same time, consider that Sheryl’s fall provided a space for Ranka to blossom.  If Sheryl had not fallen to some extent then Ranka would probably have not risen as high as she did…and if Sheryl had not risen before her then Ranka might not have even begun singing in the first place, since it’s clear Sheryl has served as an inspiration.

Say Sheryl dies before the series is over.  (I hope she doesn’t but bear with me!!).  The Sheryl fan, who has a narrow view of things, will look on it as a tragedy and damn the world for it.  But Leibniz would argue that God (or Kawamori) is looking at things from the widest perspective possible, and that Sheryl’s life will not have been in vain but will have played a key role in generating the best possible world (or TV series).

Now, you might argue, as everyone who’s confronted Leibniz invariably does, that if God was omnipotent then he could have arranged things so that everyone would be happy all the time period.  Leibniz’s response is simply to say that God doesn’t go against Logic.  If Sheryl’s maximum happiness would be to become the greatest idol of all time (or marry Alto, say), and Ranka’s is the same, then some disappointment must take place.  God arranges things so that the best result possible (that is, in accordance with Logic) ensues.  This includes Judas in our world and it includes Grace in Macross Frontier, along with all the people on the Frontier colony who have benefited from both idols’ songs in a manner which we couldn’t even begin to calculate, poor limited beings that we are..

There’s another key point that Leibniz makes over and over, and I think it’s really applicable to this show as well as to anime in general, in how to determine whether a series is done well or not.  Leibniz says that people always have free will.  God doesn’t make anyone do anything ever.  HOWEVER, God does choose who will be born, and he has foreknowledge of how each person will act, and chooses accordingly from an infinite array of possible people.  Then he puts people in the world and lets them do their thing.

I think the strong shows are those where the writer/s choose the best characters and let them act the way they do, just like God in Leibniz’s system does.  It’s a matter of sitting down and thinking really hard about what kind of characters (personality, motivations, strengths, weaknesses) would work together to make for the best show.  It is NOT about coming up with pretty character designs and then making the characters do this and that in order to fulfill the needs of the plot in each episode.  It’s a huge difference.

Kinda of a creepy snapshot right there. How do we know they have proper faces??

The new Japanese sitcom with Aya Hirano started and of course being a fan I had to give it a look.  An accurate translation of the title would be: “This is isn’t the way idols are, is it?!”  The translation fails because the original has a pun with the number 9, and this is relevant because the series is essentially promotion for a teen idol group called 9nine.

I don’t know anything about them, nothing at all.  I’m just watching it for Aya, and I have to say I set my bar pretty low.  And then when I realized the episode was only 15 minutes long (and that’s including commercials and stuff) the bar practically fell to the floor.  So there was very little chance that I would not watch the show.

The plot is typical: five girls (=9nine) want to set up a club for becoming idols.  Their teacher (=Hirano) is an expert on the industry and is more than eager to help.  I read elsewhere that the teacher is meant to be a frustrated idol herself.  So basically this is K-On! in 3d without the instruments.  The resemblance is even closer: the way this first episode went it feels exactly like a 4-koma adaptation.

For a 4-koma adaptation to work ideally you gotta like most of the characters and like most of the jokes.  Luckily, the girl that was cast as the main character (who I imagine is the leader of the group) seems to also be the one with the most talent for acting.  She plays the “normal” person in the show who wonders if idols are supposed to be like the teacher and her classmates make them out to be.  The story will probably revolve around her and that’s good news.  Hirano for her part fluctuates between attempting to channel an anime girl and trying to be a proper 3d actress.  It’s a bit jarring, but I’m sure given enough time she’ll manage the transition.

But what a troubling vision of stardom these women have!  The teacher is convinced that these girls’ fans will mostly be men, and she teaches them what sort of fetishes the lads will enjoy (loose socks, zettai ryoiki) and what precise angle of exposed midriff skin is most delightful to a man’s gaze when an idol lifts up her arm (it’s 37 degrees).

It’s hard not to giggle when the teacher tells the girls that an idol’s job is to be loved.  We know what awesome tempests Aya has inspired in her fandom and anti-fandom.  But the most talked about element of the episode seems to be Hirano’s chest.  It seems to have…grown.

There's a lot of talk about school uniforms..

Speculation is of course rampant on both sides of the Aya divide.  Most people think she’s using padding though others believe she’s gone through an augmentation.  The hilarious thing is that her character is wearing a T-shirt that alludes to the Event.  On the front it reads “The Fifth” and on the back “Growth Spurt”.  One commenter suggested that it was her way of making fun of herself, of being a masochist.

I did some research to try to figure out how many growth spurts have identified in Japan.  It looks like the number is two.  One is at birth (up to 3-4 years of age) and the other at puberty (teenage years).  But I did find something very interesting.  About a year ago a Japanese blogger who deals with older people identified two other “growth spurts”.  These are probably more psychological than anything: the 3rd occurs at 38-42 and the 4th at 50-54 years of age.  Is it possible that Aya Hirano has, through some sort of random genetic mutation, has hit upon a 5th growth spurt in the chest area?

I don’t know the answer to this critical question.  But the funny thing is that she herself blogged [here] that rather than commenting on her acting people are all asking about her increase in size.  She joked that it wasn’t polite.  A fan commented that, on the contrary, it would be impolite not to comment on it.  I ignored the whole issue and thanked her for teaching us so much about the finer points of zettai ryoiki etc.  These are truly inexhaustible topics.

[I'm proclaiming this sitcom an honorary anime...which means I'm watching 3 current shows this season, the highest in several eons.  Hooray me.]

I commented elsewhere that since Leiji Matsumoto is very much into ancient astronaut theories as well as into the Mayan civilization, all of his activity recently might be linked to the year 2012.  That’s a joke, maybe..

What’s no joke is my suspicion that there’s been some major development in the Yamato legal battle that we’ve not been made aware of.  Over in a couple of 2ch threads the fans are going crazy speculating on what can and cannot be shown on Nishizaki Jr’s upcoming Yamato 2999 remake and on Matsumoto’s Mahoroba film (which will feature Yamato in some way or another).  I think the debates are pointless because it’s looking more and more obvious that the two men are letting each other be.

I mention this now because Nobuteru Yuki is listed as co-character designer for this project, and at the same time he’s doing character design for the Yamato 2199 remake.  I don’t think he’d have been able to work for both sides at the same time like this if Nishizaki’s son and Leiji weren’t getting along to some degree.  But maybe I’m wrong.

THE ACTUAL THING

So it’s going to be 6 episodes to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a TV network.  The episodes will air Friday at midnight, and in the weeks prior to these the same network will be showing older Matsumoto shows (Harlock Saga etc) to whet people’s appetites.

This site [here] has tons of info in Japanese on this “out of the blue” project.  There’s so much info that considering the fact that this is only going to be 6 episodes long I’m afraid there won’t be much left to watch.  The setting is dystopic, in a future where Earth is full of deserts.  The main guy, Sam Coin, reminds me of Susumu Kodai.  He’s running around doing stuff in the desert and intends to avenge the death of his brother, who’s apparently died at the hands of a mysterious creature called Ozma.  There’s a blue-haired character called Maya (though I imagine Leiji might prefer we spelled it Maja) whose story seems Akiraesque: she’s one of a group of ideal children, and is running away from the military.  Then you have Mimei and Bainas.  Mimei is a crew member and Bainas is the captain of a sand pirate ship, and they’ll of course will be helping Sam and Maja out.  The blond Mimei’s name is practically Miime (with the “i” switched around) and Bainas is likely based on Venus.  Oh, and she’s basically an Emeraldas or Harlock.

WHERE IT COMES FROM

Matsumoto released a manga called Lightning Ozma in the 1960s.  I haven’t read it (though I’m extremely tempted to get it from ebooksjapan) but from what I gather this looks to be somewhat vaguely related to it.

The notable thing about that manga is how it was a grandfather to the Space Battleship Yamato franchise.  Starblazers.com has a great article on this [here].  There’s also a nice review of the manga on the page [here], about halfway down.  If any of you actually read those links I want you to keep them in mind for the inevitable occasion when someone watching this TV show will say: “But he’s just ripping it off Yamato!”  And then you’ll be able to tell them: actually, he’s just rehashing what he himself was working on a decade before Yamato

tokyo beckons

Adachi’s new hostelmate, Masami, invites Adachi to a “party” at a snack bar called Capricorn.  This Masami is a remarkable fellow.  He speaks and acts in a stereotypically effeminate way while hanging out and sleeping with knock-out babes.  Adachi is lured by the promise of women and pays the cover charge, then gets told to undress.

It dawns on Adachi that the party is basically going to be an orgy.  He says to himself: “I’ll do it!  When you compare my body trained on simple meals with the fat, sissy body of that fag it’ll be like comparing Yukio Mishima to Yukio Aoshima.”

I’m not really sure how Leiji actually wants us to see the comparison, but let me just lay the data out.  Yukio Aoshima (1932-2006) was a multi-talented figure in Japanese life for many years (from actor to politician and everything in between).  In the late 1960s he was best known for doing the title role of Ijiwaru Obaasan (=Granny Mischief), about the adventures of a very nasty grandmother.  So Adachi’s reference to Aoshima must be to this grandmother character.

Yukio Aoshima

I don’t think that Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) needs an introduction   What we need to remember is that in the last years of his life he took up kendo and bodybuilding in an attempt to make his body into a warrior’s work of art.  It makes sense for Adachi to look to Mishima’s body as an ideal of manly perfection.

Yukio Mishima

What makes the comparison confusing is the issue of sexual orientation.  I’ve never heard anything to suggest that Aoshima was gay.  His famous role was obviously just that, a role.  Yukio Mishima, on the other hand, was gay.  So it’s like Adachi is making a comparison between a man who walks and talks like the womanliest of women (and is not gay) and a man who walks and talks like the manliest of men (and is gay).  And he compares his effeminate neighbor to the first man and himself to the second.  I don’t really know if this was Leiji’s way of having a joke at the expense of Adachi’s ignorance, or if Leiji didn’t really know that Mishima was actually gay, or what.

Another complicating factor is the timeline.  This manga began serialization on June 27, 1970.  Yukio Mishima committed suicide on November 25, 1970.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find the specific publication date for this chapter.  In Leiji’s non-SF comics the internal time of the story is usually more or less in sync with the external time of publication, and the characters in this chapter are all talking about the cold weather and how the year is about to end.  Logically, I’d put the publication of the chapter in December.  But Adachi speaks of Mishima as being alive and well, which tells me that Leiji probably wrote the chapter in October or November, with an eye for publishing it in December.  And I don’t think Leiji would have even mentioned Mishima if he was writing the chapter after the famous author’s very public death.  There’s an eerie feeling to all of this.

Halfway through this chapter I went and googled Leiji Matsumoto and Yukio Mishima, trying to see if I could find any comments of the former on the latter.  The only articles I could find linking the two men did so by way of Richard Wagner.  This shocked me a bit as I’m in the midst of a Wagner consumption binge.

Richard Wagner

One of the articles was really just a question about the most representative Wagner pieces of music, but the Japanese fan introduced it by calling all of the following people “Wagnerians”: former prime minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi, Leiji Matsumoto, Yukio Mishima and Hayao Miyazaki.

The second article is a blogger’s report on a Wagner concert held in Japan.  The author hates Wagner but admits the man is popular around the world and  gives us two examples of Japanese Wagnerians: Yukio Mishima and Leiji Matsumoto.

The third article (celebrating the anniversary of his birth) is a bit longer, but it begins in the same way by giving a list of famous Wagnerians.  The list runs as follows: Dali, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Renoir, Thomas Mann, Adolf Hitler, Takuboku Ishakawa (a poet), Yukio Mishima, Leiji Matsumoto and Jun’ichiro Koizumi.  The author then goes on to discuss how even though Wagner’s thought is associated with manliness, the man was obsessed with women and the feminine.  It’s an interesting line of thought but I don’t know enough about the issue to discuss it properly. (BTW, the author also clarifies that Nietzsche was a virulent anti-Wagnerian in his later years).  [sources here, here, here]

One of the things Wagner is best know for are his stories of doomladen romance (Siegfried and Brünnhilde, Tristan and Isolde) and interestingly this same manga chapter begins to develop the same motif here.  Adachi can’t go through with the orgy once he notices most men are extremely well-built.  But on his way out the women from a nearby hostess bar grab him and try to get him to pay them for services.  The one to rescue him is Jun, his neighbor, who happens to be employed at the same bar.

The Triangle

Jun lives with her yakuza boyfriend, but she’s slept with Adachi a couple of times and she seems to have a sweet spot for him.  Later on that day Jun tells her boyfriend Juri (yes, it’s an odd name for a guy) that she’s leaving the place.  The reason, she finally confesses to Adachi, is that she’s ashamed to have been seen by him in a place of ill repute.  Jun decides to stay when Adachi swears he doesn’t have any contempt for her [poignantly, Jun tells him she'll do fine just as long as Adachi pretends not to despise her, even if he does].

This is a twisted love triangle with an intensity not found in Otoko Oidon (where Oyama could never get very far with women).  Juri the gangster is very dependent on Jun, and he literally begs her to stay.  Jun’s love for Adachi seems to be based on his honesty as an individual, something she feels she’s lost..but we get the sense that she won’t leave Juri’s side until Adachi is able to support her financially.  Jun knows what she’s doing and upset by it.  Adachi for his part just seems very confused.  The storyline promises some Wagnerian drama after all!

Adachi is alone in his room eating sukiyaki.

(Sukiyaki has existed for hundreds of years, but it became especially popular when the Japanese added beef to their menu due to foreign influence in the 1860s.  So sukiyaki as it exists today in Japan is in some sense half-foreign.)

An American barges into the room (long-haired, mustached), spots the sukiyaki, says he’s very hungry (in English), grabs some and leaves.  Adachi is shocked and says: “What’s with that ketou just now?  Are they going to start invading my food now?”

(Ketou 「毛唐」 is a new word for me.  The characters for it are literally “hair” and “Tang”.  Tang refers to the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907).  This was a glorious time in Chinese history and it’s easy (and logical) to find many words in Japanese that use this “Tang” character (pronounced “Tou” in Japanese) to refer to China and matters Chinese.  However, in more recent times the norm has become to call a country by the name they use themselves.  To refuse to do so is a sign of contempt.  For example, during the last dynasty in China (the Qing, 1644-1912) the most politically correct name for China in Japanese would have been “Shin” (the Japanese pronunciation of Qing) and not Tang/Tou, even though arguably the Tang Dynasty was much superior in cultural terms to the Qing.  The point is that the Chinese call themselves a certain way and Japan should follow suit.  In any case, this word “ketou” is a bit of a mystery, because the Chinese don’t tend to be much hairier than the Japanese.  One of the theories as to the origin of the word is that it’s a compound: “hair” stands for Westerners (with peculiarities such as: blond hair, red hair, arm hair) and “Tang” stands for Chinese.  So the word is essentially a catchall racial slur: “Westerners and Chinese”.  Apparently it is extremely rude and it’s mostly used today against Westerners.  As I said before, I’d never heard of the word…)

A fellow with long-haired comes in and apologizes for the American.  He says he’s just moved in next door.  He’s named Masami and speaks feminine Japanese.  Masami says that the American is a deserter hiding from the Army.  Adachi tries to get back to eating even though the new neighbors are being incredibly noisy.  At one point a group of Masami’s friends barge into Adachi’s room by accident and knock him into the sukiyaki.  Then they leave.

Adachi is angry.  He yells “Hey, you shemale ketou” and goes inside the neighbor’s room.

(By “shemale ketou” I imagine Adachi means to include everyone in the group: the foreigner as well as Masami and his (presumably gay friends).  Then again he might simply be referring to the American, whose long hair Adachi might associate with femininity.)

When Adachi opens the door he runs into an orgy.  Both the American and Masami are having sex with women.  Adachi gets an erection and makes as if to leave.  The American grabs him and says “everyone is my friend”.  Adachi screams that he’s normal and not gay.  Then the landlord comes into the room.

The landlord sports a Japanese headband with the rising sun (no characters) and an bayonet blade attacked to a broomstick.  He yells to everyone to stop and then gives the following speech:

“All these years since we lost the War I have devoted myself to running this hostel thinking that this too is my way of following the will of the Emperor.  Ah, I think back of all the toiling and patient enduring I’ve done ever since the day I lost my only son at Guadalcanal.  And now in broad daylight I find this orgy…you have stripped our traditional Japanese beauties naked and disgraced them in the worst possible way!!  You asamara.. I mean you kisamara, I don’t remember ever letting out a room to stateless people like you!”

(The old man makes a mistake and says asamara instead of kisamara.  Leiji is punning here.  Asamara breaks down into asa + mara (morning + penis) and refers to morning erections.  Since the orgy is occurring in the daytime this was probably on the landlord’s mind.  Kisamara is kisama + ra (bastard + [plural]).  The mention of stateless people is interesting.  Maybe the landlord knows that the American is a deserter, and in his mind that means he’s given up on his country and he’s thus stateless.  Or it could be that for him the Japanese in the room aren’t Japanese anymore because of their sexual deviancy.    All of these people do seem to get lumped together in the landlord’s eyes as well as Adachi’s.)

The landlord tells the American to get out or he’s tab him with his son’s bayonet.  He then tries to stab him screaming revenge for his son but falls down and misses (barely).  When the dust settles the landlord has passed out and Masami is irked at the landlord’s actions.  Adachi gets angry because Masami seems to be downplaying the old man’s feelings for his dead son.  He tells Masami to step out and fight it out.  As can be expected, Masami punches Adachi and knocks him out.

Adachi is broken, as in his mind he has lost to a woman.  He says he’ll show everyone how a Kyushu man dies, barges into his yakuza neighbor’s room, steals a knife and goes back to Masami’s room.  The American gets another scare and his Japanese friends tell Adachi to stop.  The American has lost control of his bowels.  He says goodbye to Adachi and walks nervously out of the room.  A policeman comes and arrests the landlord for illegal possession of a weapon.  He also informs Masami that the American isn’t a soldier at all, but a vagrant who suffers from 3rd stage syphillis.  Masami is shocked and he immediately takes a bath…

(It’s possible that Adachi intended to kill himself in Masami’s room for everyone to see..to show that he was disgusted by what was going on and apologetic to the gods that he was too weak to do anything about it.  It’s also possible that he simply wanted to kill the American and Masami and be done with it.  It’s really hard to tell.)

That night Adachi is trying to sleep (on newspaper) and is sneezing lots.  Masami feels bad for him, sneaks into his room and puts a blanket over him.  The yakuza’s girlfriend feels the same way and she forces her boyfriend to put a blanket over him too.  Adachi ends up sleeping with both blankets, unaware of the kindness of strangers.