Let me wish all of you a merry Xmas!

Here are some Jewel Pets in Xmas attire:

Collect them all

Also, check out the Xmas present the Rabbits over at Club Cowslip arranged for me: it’s a Harlock doujinishi! But be warned, the pic below is about the only non-NSFW one of the lot:

proof enough that this doujin has good, accurate art

A well-crafted episode.  Jewel Pet has essentially two parallel storylines: the Pets’ struggle against Diana [evil black kitty] and her oniisama Dian [evil gray kitty], and Rinko’s excruciatingly painful quest for her knight in shining armor.  In this episode, the two strands intertwine.

Diana kicks King = STICK

A recap from last episode: King [pink French Bulldog] was sad because his girlfriend Lapis [Russian Blue kitty] had gone missing.  It turned out she had been captured and turned evil by Dian.  As usual, the only way for King to save her was by winning a Jewel Game, but he lost, and by losing was forced to join Dian’s forces alongside his still twistedly evil ex-girlfriend Lapis.

Lapis pretty pleases = CARROT

King folds = Men are Rabbits Q.E.D.

In this episode, King refuses to help Dian and Diana against Rinko and the Jewel Pets.  Lapis, however, uses her feminine guile (via a devastating “pretty pretty please” look) to get him to spill the beans on Rinko’s weak point: Rinko is obsessed with finding the perfect boy, a.k.a. prince on a white horse, etc.

So Dian uses his magic powers to turn into a bishie, that looks a lot like Lelouch from Code Geass [with voice actors being the same ], and proceeds to infiltrate Rinko’s school by posing as a transfer student.   Diana promises King she will have Dian turn Lapis back into a nice pet if he cooperates, and so they head to school to back Dian up.

Teacher introduces the new transfer student.

Rinko oversleeps and forgets her lunch box.  When lunch time comes, “Andy” the transfer student offers her a lovely lunch box and asks to meet her later.  At that point, he proposes holy matrimony to Rinko.  Before she can reply, though, Nanase (fuming with jealousy, the little brat) steps in and challenges Andy/Dian to a basketball duel.  In the meantime, Rinko’s mother has called Tatewaki over and asked him to deliver Rinko the lunch box that she forgot.  Tatewaki goes to the school, notices everyone going to the basketball court, and makes his way there.

So 15 minutes into the episode, we have Nanase and Tatewaki, the two lads Rinko kinda sorta dreams or thinks or ponders about, in the same spot, reunited by her worst enemy Dian!

Highly illegal somehow.

Despite flagrant misuse of magical powers to repeatedly score and dunk the ball, Andy loses the match.  Failing to realize that one must shoot at one’s own basket for the points to count…also playing with the ball on the ground like a cat would…Dian’s human skills are still quite coarse.  And after the match he begins to transform back into a cat so he scrams.  But he swears he will remember his new enemy: Nyanyase.

Dian muses, Diana assuages.

All in all this managed to be an entertaining episode although Rinko’s situation has still not advanced…at all.  Tatewaki was told by the pets that Nanase has a crush on Rinko, but that she remains clueless.  In any case, Rinko was simply not about to sound her spiritual depths for her true feelings vis a vis Tatewaki and Nanase in this episode, as she was so smitten with bishie Dian/Andy.

This Mazone just died

This show is all about guts and valor, and episode 06 exemplifies this:

1) Harlock has Daiba go out with him to inspect a Mazone wreckage, and they run into a live Mazone ship instead.  Daiba is forced to destroy it.  “You passed” says the captain.  Now they can inspect the wreckage.

2) Mayu, in the midsts of her living hell, writes to Harlock about how things are all fine with her.  Harlock can tell she’s lying by the tears that have left their marks on the letter.

Unique

Mimay and Harlock recall how they met: Mimay’s planet suffered a nuclear holocaust.  The radiation mutated plants into monsters that destroyed the remaining inhabitants.  Harlock found and saved the last survivor, Mimay, and took her aboard his ship.  Whether this is actually related to the Mazones or not, the resonance with the vegetable menace to Earth is obvious!

***

Resonances, reduplications are all over the place in the Leijiverse.  Episode 07 is important in this connection…

Earth shows up on the Arcadia screens as if it were split in half, with the splitting line running down the Bermuda Triangle.  When Harlock and crew approach the planet, the line cannot be seen any longer.  The Arcadia submerges [!] and begins inspecting the sea floor.  A depth charge reveals a large pyramid.  Harlock decides to investigate.  A Mazone lies in her grave.

This Mazone died long ago

The pyramid is probably beaming signals to the Mazones in outer space.  Harlock calls the dead Mazone a hero to her people and leaves her undisturbed.  The ancient presence of alien Mazone on Earth is now confirmed, Daniken is proven right after all!  Not only that but an iron link is thus established between this series and two classic Matsumoto shows (Galaxy Express 999 and Millennial Queen) insofar as the main threat to humanity in both of those shows is an alien race from the planet LaMetal who has had a (secret) presence on planet Earth for eons and eons.  LaMetalians and Mazones are two versions of the same fundamental thing.

The systematic assassination of undercover Mazones that follows, as the Arcadia has spotted them hidden around Earth, is fantastic.  You can argue the Mazone have shown themselves to be rather merciless and that all means are acceptable when the future of the race is at stake.  The matron of Mayu’s dorm we won’t feel any pity for…and a supermodel Mazone could just be adding to humanity’s lethal stupor.  But plenty of Harlock’s and Daiba’s victims here are just that, victims.

This Mazone is in the process of dying

The scene, extended as it is,is a good corrective to Harlock’s attitude toward the Mazone in her pyramid grave as seen earlier.  That is, respect the enemy dead, but if the enemy is alive, then kill her.  End of story.

***

As for episode 08, after Daiba blows up a ship carrying a Mazone diplomat whose life Capt. Harlock has just spared, some of the debris knocks out his own ship’s controls, communications and oxygen system.  I think you could argue that the Mazone drifting in space actually kept him alive (plants release oxygen after all).

This sets up another bout of Daiba madness once he’s been rescued by the Arcadia, where he ends up filling up a bathtub with water and playing with Yattaran’s model Yamato battleship.

can you say cuckoo?

The fight against the Mazone fleet was ridiculously easy, but it should be pointed out that Harlock recognizes this.  In fact, the Mazone have made the correct calculation that the only threat to their plans for Earth is the space pirate.  As such, luring the Arcadia out to space and sneaking the main fleet behind it to approach Earth makes sense.  Why mess with Harlock??

But Harlock’s not about to take that bait~

NOTE: Not only the dead are to be respected, but diplomats too.

Diana is oh so happy with his big brother Dian.  And Dian seems satisfied.  Heaven and Paradise are within reach…

fraternal bliss

So what could mar this?  Money, merchandising, Mammon, that’s who!

Many would say the sole raison d’être of the Jewel Pet anime series is to sell Jewel Pet goods, but in this episode we find the same commercialization going on within the show!  Is this a brilliant marketing scheme [get your Ruby keychain, Rinko has one]?!  I don’t know, but it’s charming to see the plotline of the show affected by this merchandising.  Sort of a vicious cycle.  Or a virtuous cycle.  The product sells itself.

BUY BUY BUY

The town of Takaragaseki is flooded with Jewel Pet products.  By far the most popular line is Peridot’s.  Let’s remember Peridot is the Stars & Stripes bikini-wearing American Papillon.  All of her products have sold out, which is either a testament to American ingenuity or a sign that Japan is finally leaving the postwar mentality behind, or both, or neither.

Haro Eburibadii!

Ruby and Garnet aren’t happy about this development.  Saddest of all, though, is the ugliest pet of the bunch: King the Frenchie.  King’s products haven’t sold at all!

crownfallen

But in actuality, King doesn’t even know about the sales situation.  He’s moping because he misses his girlfriend, the Russian Blue Lapis [interracial love is tough].  Lapis has been missing, and is actually one of Dean’s captives.

too bad she's evil now..

So in order for the Jewel Pets to get her back, they must join the Jewel Games.  This week’s Jewel Game was dodgeball, and the match came down to King and Lapis.  King, torn between his intense dislike for smacking his girlfriend in the face with the ball and the need to do so in order to win the game, fails miserably.

According to Jewel Game rules, this means Dean and Diana get to take one of Rinko’s group with them.  Diana chooses Rinko, but when the little game umpire tries to zap Rinko to give her to Diana, King steps in-between and the evil kitties end with him instead!  A picture speaks more than a 1,000 words so here you go:

This is possibly the biggest defeat for Rinko and crew yet.  Not only did they fail to retrieve Lapis, but they lost King too.  Then again this might be a good thing: King is ugly and annoying, as his low sales in Takaragaseki indicate…

moe

We learn that the diver in Vachi City goes by the name of Ting.  This is a Chinese name, as Nagano writes it with the character of 丁 (in pinyin it would be transcribed as Ding).  If you’re wondering, Tomoe Senkohkei also has characters (泉興京　巴).  99% of the characters’ names in FSS are written in katakana, which the Japanese use to spell foreign names.  Exceptions include the two I’ve just mentioned, Ssizz, the great Amaterasu (although more often than not his name is spelled with katakana), etc.

Taking into account that many of Nagano’s characters are named after people, gods and personalities everywhere, the question arises whether there is any actual distinction to be made between the Japanese/Chinese characters and the rest.  Probably not.  I mean, we have Greek names, German names, etc.  The fact that all of these are written in katakana doesn’t mean they’re homogeneous.  If there is any significant dividing line, and I’m not ready to say that there is, is between the Japanese-named characters and the rest (Chinese, Western, etc), simply because Nagano is Japanese.  This might be something to explore later on…

Ting gets into the structure of the Mirage Knights for Palu’s benefit, and we get to listen in (I love it!!!).  There are Right Knights and Left Knights.  The Right are supposed to be 19.  The number of the Left are unknown.  So basically we have a structured, regular Mirage Knight roster, and an irregular, shadow group.  Ting and Palu are in Kastepo are on the lookout for potential new recruits into the knights.  Ting is also about to meet up with Aisha, who has forgotten her credit card.

In the meantime, Muse is looking for a bar called Wax Trax, which Voards Viewlard told him about!    He runs into a bumbling Aisha and it becomes quite hard to say which one’s cuter in the scene that follows [alright, it's Aisha, but you gotta grant Muse is lovely here too!].

there's more than one way to feather one's nest

Two comments about Aisha: 1) her undies actually remind me of Jabo Beat’s disparaging comment as to Lady Codante’s age and 2) her facial expressions remind me a lot of Ladios Sopp.  Those two are a match made in heaven, are they not! [curse the Fatimas!]

Oh, and I’m not sure what to make of the daikon radish.  It’s a quintessential Japanese vegetable so it’s just an adorable little big detail perhaps…

Ting meets up with Aisha and we get even more giggles.  The English translation is rather bold here, as the Japanese original has Ting saying that you could see everything (there’s NO talk of beavers).  Also, in the Japanese, Aisha tells him he’s a stinky anpan (she doesn’t tell him to go to hell).  In fact, you can see his face looks like an anpan and it even reads Kimuraya, which is the original anpan shop.  Ting’s way of dismissing himself, BTW, is totally rad.

The action switches over to a swanky restaurant, where Muse, Hitter and Jabo Beat all happen to be sitting at.  It’s another game of identity hide-and-seek.  Muse spots Jabo and immediately suspects it’s her.  Then Hitter comes over and discourages him from that opinion.  Muse leaves for Wax Trax and Hitter stars talking to Jabo, clearly aware of who she is.  And Jabo calls him Dougulus, 100% sure of his identity!  Then she asks him about the man who just left, and Kaien readily responds: Muse van Reyback, Cardinal.

headdliners attract (Jabo and Hitter/Kaien)

Then we see Tomoe meeting up with her employer, Bishop Iler from Mejojo (in the far east of Both).  There’s quite a bit to talk about with this Iler.  He looks like Frankenstein…I mean, he is Frankenstein, and this quite funny.  Also, he mentions very clearly something that crops up here and there in FSS, and it’s the concept of the Big Three mortar headds.

If you study business in Japan you” be familiar with the Japanese penchant for grouping industry leaders into  Big Threes, Big Fours, Big Fives, etc. [usually by market share].  The Big Three MHs are the Sirens from Fillmore, the Bang Dolls from Cobalkan and the A-Tolls from Hathuha.  Notice that in this single town of Vachi we have headdliners operating these exact models: the dude with the moustache and hat, Muse and Jabo respectively.  It looks like Iler will have to prove his boast regarding Mejojo’s own Ashura Temple [which we saw a glimpse of earlier] very soon.

There are also 2 curious things here: 1) the protagonists of FSS do not sport any of the Big Three MHs.  Amaterasu and the Colus dynasty, the various Mirages and Jünchoon, seem poised to supersede this Big Three lineup.  2) Iler is called a Bishop, and as I remarked at the beginning of the volume, he is set into an opposition with Muse, who we now find is called a Cardinal.  Is this a holy war??

the Bishop

Whatever it is, Muse first makes his way to Wax Trax, the master of which is a member of the Iota Space Knights.  These are a non-state headdliner force, something like what the Boowrays are thought to be (but in fact aren’t!!).

There’s just been another murder by the evil monster headdliner [Iler?] and master proposes to begin the story at the beginning…right around the time Ulicul died in the land of Colus… At the same time, we see Dougulus Kaien telling Jabo Beat what he’s been up to in Kastepo…

[covered VOLUME 9: from page 39 to page 53]

First off, this image is awesome:

...

You gotta love how Chrona’s longsword slices through the left page, even as Black☆Star is unleashing his three blades.  No matter what Tsubaki says, I don’t think Star is kidding when he talks of his third weapon.  The joke is on Chrona though…I wonder what prompted Ookubo to address this gender issue so directly at last?!  And then avoid an answer!!

Now, as much as I love Medusa, I must criticize her here.  Usually, when you want a subordinate to perform well, you use what they call the carrot and stick method.  Medusa, though, is all stick!!!  It would be so simple to make a nice-looking Black Clown for Chrona, maybe make it look like Maka (Chrona would like THAT!), instead of having her put up with yet another monster…  Let’s be frank here, Chrona’s performance would be much better if there were some perceived benefit to her here…just saying.

The chapter was a rollercoaster for me. It started with Noah and Gopher, and I went “yuck”.  Then it switched to Chrona, Star and Tsubaki.  Of course I was pleased, although in the back of my mind I thought it was silly to show Noah just for a few pages and then leave him hanging.  But then, just as I was starting to get tired of the usual Chrona melodrama, Justin Law pops up at Medusa’s to link the two villains up…and even better, Eruka and the Mizunes showed up to back Chrona up!

"Kaeru" means frog AND to go home.

So it was a crazy chapter, and probably not as good as other more focused ones, but it set up a lot of interesting possibilities that will me even more impatient for the chapters to come.

Wouldn’t it be smart for Medusa to take control over the witch leadership and use them to fight?  I guess that’s easier said than done…For the moment her little band of rogue witches is getting beaten up!

The last pic seems to suggest that Medusa will be apprehended and manhandled.  This is par for the course…as she is the S a& M queen of the series.  Next chapter is called “Execution Begins”.  Yikes!

Eruka is too clever for her own good.  Opting not to fight against the overpowering Star might let her live to fight another day, but at what cost?  Maybe Eruka is next in line to request asylum in Shibusen…

As for Justin, it’s nice to see that he feels as if the Kishin is his God…because it’s consistent with his outlook.  Artificial construction of a clown, blasphemy indeed!!

Even now, the hairstyle holds...

I can’t really post 50 titles, as I have barely seen 50 titles from all time periods combined!  Also, looking through the list, I’ve kinda figured out that a lot of my favorite anime came out in the Nineties…  One thing I must say, though, is that I tend to drop series when they start to turn sour, so that most anime that I do finish are shows that I really, really like.

Anyways, these are 5 anime that I really love from the 2000-9 period.  The reason is usually that they show a lot of intensity or have a nice sense of mystery.  In real world terms: these are shows I would take with me to a deserted island.  I will line this up in alphabetical order.

a. Code Geass

This show is all about Lelouch: his agony and his triumphs.  He is an intense fellow.  And he isn’t Japanese.  There is something to be said for an anime series where the protagonist is a gaijin saving Japanese people.

b. ef

Talk about intensity!  The pain in this show is absolutely wonderful!!  My feeling toward melodies is about the same as my feeling toward Geass R2: they are both fine as long as you take them as supplements to the first season.  Anything good in these second seasons you can take to the altar of the first season, the bad you can simply forget.  Enough!

c. Interstella 5555

Now we get into the mystery, by which I mean the sense of something utterly unknown coalescing around the edges of a book whose single page you cannot take your eyes off (and the page reads simply: NOT THIS).  Or like looking at a green wall and getting the feeling that it’s actually an enormous snake which you’ll never really get to see in toto, although if you put your hand to it you can feel it breathing and you can (no, you must) marvel.

If you notice, the movie begins and ends with pretty much the same concert…

Of course, this movie was my gateway to both Leiji and Daft Punk, so how can I not love it!!

d. Shin Mazinger

The thing about victory is that its sweetness is proportional to the pain suffered on the way toward it.  Basic stuff, right?  This show was intense!

e. Space Symphony Maetel

Watching Maetel, Emeraldas and Promethium duke it out in frigid LaMetal is like getting a time-ticket to watch the champions from Athens, Sparta and Thebes do the ultimate smackdown…at least to me it is!  In its best parts it combines both intensity and mystery.

The concept of chivalry is very important in the Joker Galaxy.  The headdliners in particular have a code they must follow, a typical and acceptable manner of behavior.  We begin our sojourn in Kastepo with an opposition between the two ends of this spectrum: an elite Lown knight named Muse von Reyback and a lawless headdliner.

Master and Ssizz

The Lown (= Rune) Knights belong to the Holy Cobalkan (= Kubalkan) Empire, which we haven’t heard of before.  Cobalkan is a theocracy with a Pope for a leader (Rio Spanda).  This, plus the fact that Muse wears a large cross would suggest a devout Christian nation.  But the point is that it is a religious nation [but see note at the end].  The official name for the Cobalkan polity, 法国, means Land of the Law, or Dharma-Land, as DESIGNS has it.  Also, 法王, Spanda’s title, is nowadays used primarily for the Catholic Pope, but it’s also a Buddhist term applied to Shakyamuni in some sutras.  Not to mention that the Lown Knights are in the original Japanese Rune Knights, and runes are associated with Germanic religion.  And the Muses are pagan Greek deities.

So we don’t really need to focus on whether it’s Christian or Buddhist or what: the point is Cobalkan’s devotion to principle.  Oh, and the fact that they’re the second most powerful nation on Kallamity, occupying the western extremity of the same mainland as Fillmore.

The linguistic situation of Cobalkan is pretty funny.  In the original Japanese manga, Muse and Ssizz speak in English.  The English edition has them speaking in Japanese.  So far we haven’t seen any kind of communication problems between folk of different nations, or even hints of dialectal differences.  Therefore my preliminary conclusion is that there is a common tongue in the Joker Galaxy (something like Westron in LOTR) and that Cobalkan has made it a point of keeping up with an older (or just different) tongue named Lown (or Rune) with a peculiar Cobalkan accent.

The antithesis to Muse and those like him is the nasty headdliner who messed up the Poerlan MH and didn’t even bury his enemies, an important part of the code.  We once more get to see a mangled Fatima…how many Nagano, how many??

The appearance of the Thunder Dragon was phenomenal, from the prior disappearance of the gathering Gamala wolfy creatures through the supersonic combat jet silhouette to that winsome draconic smile.

Muse goes into Vachi City and we start getting introduced to other characters that will feature in this arc.  There’s a bounty of 100 million feathers for swordsman Dogulus (=Douglas) Kaien.  Then we see an over-thet-top playboy lord named Viscount von Hitter!  Reflect on the fact that to “hit” can be an aggressive move toward the enemy as well as toward a potential mate, and even if you don’t connect the dots the blurbs at the beginning of the volume will clue you in: Hitter = Kaien.

Next we get to see one of the regular Divers in action.  This is your classic Hollywood bit: the mild-mannered guy steps in, the bad guys tell him to scram, he doesn’t, they go for what they think will be an easy kill, he turns out to be a beast from hell.  Kinda stale.  The original Japanese doesn’t have anything like the word “coolie” in it (instead they call him a “commoner”, i.e. non-headdliner), but I think the translation works because this is a very stereotypical Japanese view of Chinese people [as a rule, Chinese people are treated very peculiarly in manga, this is documented and I read a good article on it long ago but I can't remember where or by who...]

Things are already getting extremely complicated here.  The crowd gathering around the Diver and the rogue headdliners includes Palu Swain (=Suyene), which we recognize from the intro blurbs as an attendant of the Emu Kingdom’s prince [Emu is one of the members of the AKD, although not one of the 10 original states].  How hard is it for us to conclude right now that the “Chinese” Diver is none other than this Prince Ko from Emu?

The man that stops Muse von Reyback from intervening does a great Sherlock Holmes impersonation, but looking through his letter we realize he is from the Fillmore Empire (his daughter has a crush on Bruno Canzian).  And he helps us out by identifying Viscount von Hitter’s companion “Ayako”’s real name as Tomoe, a ninja of some sort.  And here I must retract my words a little bit, as Nagano does seem to be trying to do specific East Asian character designs (the Diver, Ayako/Tomoe, and Muse’s Fatima Ssizz, whose name is basically Japanese “Shizu”, meaning “quiet”).

Once again Nagano has thrown a bunch of superstars our way, each of whom is disguised and each of whom knows at least some of the others’ true identities.  Look at the grin on “Viscount von Hitter” when “Ayako” asks him whether he knows who that “stranger” recently arrived is.

Kaien = Hitter = Dragon! (kidding)

If anything, that FACE reminds me of the Thunder Dragon itself!

And all of this is happening in December of 2989…what a year!!!

NOTE – NAGANO ON RELIGION IN FSS:

Question 16 of the Q&A book Questionia is about the place of religion/s in the Joker Galaxy.  This is Nagano’s reply:

“There are no religions!  Absolutely none.  There is no belief in gods, there are no teachings.  It would be funny if Christianity showed up in Greek mythology, right?  FSS is a tale about the gods!!”

[covered VOLUME 9: from the beginning of the volume to page 38]

We start the volume off with Shima and Yuki having to deal with a fearsome enemy: Prof. Mass from the 69th century.  He is a time-traveler who systematically goes around impregnating all the important women in history so that his seed shall rule the Earth at all times.  He tells Shima his victims include: female chieftains of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon varieties, Himiko, Yang Guifei, Cleopatra, Ono no Komachi, Yodogimi, Catherine the Great…  Oden Takahashi was too strange so he couldn’t stay long with her.

They finally track Mass down, but before that Shima teleports briefly in Hitler’s bedroom and unsuccessfully attempts to get his signature.  Hitler calls security and Shima disappears, so the Führer wonders if it was all in his imagination.  His staff mutters, “if he’s starting to hallucinate we’re done for.”

the end is near...

Further on in the manga, there’s a hilarious euphemism for sensual climax.  Shima meets an enslaved woman named Yura, he frees her but she won’t let go until he proves it’s all not a dream, one thing leads to another, and we see Yura sprawled with volcanos spurting in a Paelozoic landscape and two trilobites making sweet love.  Shima doesn’t even show up in the scene, well, except for the volcanos.

love the trilobites...

Throughout the course of the Kamiyo Plan, the G Bureau has been plugging endless intelligence leaks.  At one point Shima goes up to his boss and asks: “If this is top secret how come we keep getting these leaks?!”  His boss replies that all of this is happening with the consent of the powers that be, and that Shima doesn’t need to know much else.  The boss himself claims not to know what’s really going on either.  Both Shima and boss are but cogwheels in a system they cannot comprehend.

There’s another interesting development pertaining to Yuki and Shima’s relationship.  As a Sexaroid, Yuki is insatiable and Shima gradually gets more tired and tired.  He likes to eat fried eggs to get his energy up, and on one occasion he tells Yuki to fry 30 eggs, hoping to convey to her his exhaustion.  But Yuki makes all 30 and gets him to eat them.  Even the pervy robots start to get tired of seeing Yuki and Shima make love…The exhaustion is partly psychological, as Shima remains very interested in exercising with other women, though!

In true Matsumoto fashion, the Kamiyo Plan ends suddenly and without much fanfare: the government conducts a secret survey of the general population on the idea of leaving Earth and moving to another galaxy, and the results are unanimously negative.  Even if the Earth is crumbling, the Japanese would rather remain in the land of their ancestors.  So the Kamiyo Plan is dropped.

Here begins the Yayoi Plan Arc

The first we hear of Yayoi is that a shipment from space is intimately related to it and our heroes from G Bureau is sent to protect it.  Shima and Yuki open the cargo hold and find a bunch of space rocks.  Their boss tells them these rocks will change the course of human history, and of course that’s all they need to know!

Shima and Yuki’s relationship continues to get rockier.  On their next mission Shima and Yuki have to pilot a spaceship full of mining robots all the way to the 10th planet, where the space rock was found.  Shima complains he’s bored, and Yuki tells him “Well, at least you have me!” and Shima replies “Taking a woman you know well on a trip is like taking a packed lunch to a restaurant”.  She smacks him.

In another story, we see that the Japanese are developing new engines with this space rock, known properly as cosmonite, for fuel.  Cosmonite releases an unbelievable amount of energy.  The G Bureau figures out that a scientist by the name of Necrophyll has stolen some of the space rock.  Shima goes over to Dr. Necrophyll’s spooky mansion to recover it.  There he meets a beautiful ethereal woman named Karmira, who coaxes him into bed.  In the meantime Yuki is captured by Dr. Necrophyll.

something odd with this woman

Shima and Karmira find Necrophyll and Karmira shouts angrily at the mad scientist.  The truth is that Karmira is his wife, who committed suicide long ago because he was constantly cheating on her.  Necrophyll is using the cosmonite to revive Karmira (and other unnamed people he keeps in a vault beneath).  By now Karmira has been revived and has died several times.  She wishes she were dead forever, and berates Necrophyll for not allowing this to happen.  With her help, Shima takes the cosmonite and rescues Yuki.  All of the people in the mansion begin to die, and Karmira manages to shoot her husband through the heart before she does.

Back at the G Bureau, the boss and Shima wonder whether cosmonite will prove a blessing for mankind after all…Yuki reflects on her status os Sexaroid, and the fact that she can go on forever whether she wants to or not.  The connection between the Yayoi Plan and the Kamiyo Plan seems to be this: Japanese leaders wanted to escape Earth because it was going to hell in a handbasket, but the people were not into the idea, so now Japan is mining cosmonite to improve conditions on Earth.

My favorite story in the volume is next-to-last.  Shima and an unknown woman are making out, high on super LSD, in the back of his hovercraft, in the middle of traffic.  When Shima’s boss shows up on the computer screen, Shima shoots the computer and goes straight back to business.  When they’re done the raven-haired woman refuses to give her name and just leaves.

the traffic's bad...very, very bad....

Shima now learns that his boss was trying to contact him because Yuki has gone missing, along with some of the cosmonite.  When he goes to the spot where Yuki disappeared, he is struck and captured by antlike humanoids who live underground.  It turns out these creatures are the result of a bizarre experiment by some scientist to make gigantic ants.  They are all male, so they must seek human women to produce eggs.

...and I love all of them!!

There is a human Ant Queen in place, but evidently a couple of the antmen wanted some variety and kidnapped Yuki for that reason.  Once the Ant Queen has chastised them, she shows Shima a room full of bones and tells him they are the remains of former queens.  As soon as a queen stops producing eggs, she is killed [and eaten?] by the antmen who then go out in search of a replacement.  Therefore the current Ant Queen hopes to use the power of cosmonite to keep her fertility up forever, so she won’t suffer the same fate.

!!!

Oh, and when Shima finally gets a good look at her he realizes it’s the woman he was making out with earlier!  She tells Shima she will 1) allow both Yuki and him to go, and she will 2) promise not to send the antmen up to the surface again.  In return she wants to a) keep the cosmonite and she wants b) the Antman Empire to be spared, because according to her calculations the antmen will soon begin getting smaller again and revert to being regular ants.  And of course, she wants c) one last bit of funky time with Shima.  He accepts these conditions.  Finally, (poignantly in a very comical sort of way) she asks Shima to think of her every time he is a bout to crush a tiny ant on the surface.

There are some very neat visuals in this chapter, like this one:

And this here:

Finally this one:

The very last chapter stars the Neo-Human League, an organization determined to rid the world of ugly people and have only the most beautiful people rule (this is called kalocracy BTW).  Their plan fails and Mira Duffin, the commander of the Japan Section of the Neo-Human League, is shot and killed by Yuki.  That said, Mira’s kalocratic credentials are in full display during the chapter:

What will happen to the Yayoi Plan?  Will it end with a whimper like Kamiyo did?  Or will cosmonite change the world??  Volume 3 has the answers!!

APPENDIX: PROF. MASS’ WOMEN

Looking at his little black book, we find that other women professor Mass has slept with include:

Jacqueline Onassis

Tomoko Ogawa (singer and actress)

Raquel Welch

Miss Universe (which one is unclear)

Catherine Deneuve

Teruko Hino (Hawaiian singer of Japanese descent)

Sachiko Nishida (Japanese singer)

Elizabeth Taylor

Madame Butterfly

Calamity Jane

George Sand

Tokiwa Gozen (wife of the head of the Minatomo Clan in the 12th century)

Eve

The consequences of this last encounter, or encounters (20 of them according to his own count), are nothing less than earth-shattering, as they would imply that we are all descended from Professor Mass himself!!  Also, to what extent do pretty Japanese singers from the 1960s qualify as important historical figures?

Mass Book

I did not know that raccoons were associated with obsessive compulsive disorders, but as soon as I typed “compulsive raccoon” on the search engine I got lots of hits…  I guess they do keep cleaning their little paws!

Things I liked about this episode:

1) Yoshi Iwamura’s RL facial gestures were just hilarious.  The actor really did a good job, and the couple of brief scenes with him and nurse Mayumi were priceless.

2) Mayumi’s intervention was very subtle and very thought-provoking.  Her reaction when Irabu counselled Iwamura to get a wife, for example.  Very nice.

Now, what does seem very strange is how this episode, along with 07, didn’t really show the patient being cured at all.  The treatment was a cop-out, work around the problem rather than solving it.  Heck, for all I know, this might be the way to go [in the sense that one should learn to live with oneself instead of denying onself], but I’m sure it’ll raise some eyebrows.

In fact, Iwamura’s disaster fantasies got worse as the show went on.  His last one in particular, where the rays of the sun hit a lighter on the grass and set the whole thing to flames, burning the hospital nearby.  Whoa.

Reflecting further, I think the key to the whole episode was at the very beginning, when Iwamura first consults Dr. Irabu.  Irabu asks his patient whether he is expecting him (as a doctor) to ask him all sorts of questions about his background and personality.  When Iwamura replies in the affirmative, Irabu counters with “what’s the point of me asking you about these things if you can’t change them!!”

This fatalistic streak runs through Irabu’s methodology and philosophy.  We are who we are, and the doctor’s job is to help us deal with these facts rather than aid us in pretending to become somebody else.  Maybe it’s precisely this pretending and make-believe that should be termed “working around the problem” instead of “solving it”.  That is, the problem is the personality, and the solution is…accepting one’s personality.  Or as the oracle of Delphi had it: “Know yourself.”