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Young Readers’ Guide for Five Star Stories
Five Star Stories claims a very special place in the world of Japanese comics. The serial has continued for almost 20 years now, and books sales continue to grwo. Despite being undoubtedly one of the greatest commercial successes in Japanese comic culture, FSS has at the same time never conformed to the mainstream of that culture. Despite its continuing popularity among comic readers, FSS has neer been trendy, it has never been tauted as “culture” by revieweres peering into the extremely delicate “manga” culture of Japan. Maybe that’s because FSS author, Mamory Nagano, has never really cared about what the critics think. Now that FSS has gone international with the publication of an English language version, I’d like to retrace how it got this far in the first place and then briefly describe what the fuss is all about.
Some Background
“A super fantasy from the anime generation.” That’s the catch phrase that appeared on the cover jacket of the first volume of the Japanese version of FSS. “The anime generation”… A definite key word symbolizing the kind of difficulty posed by FSS as a comic book. Merely outlining the conventional history of the Japanese manga, including its golden age from Osamu Tezuka to the Tokiwa-so Era and the appearance of the three major boys comics, illustrated sagas (“gekiga”) and girls manga wouldn’ help anyone understand the place that FSS deserves in that genre. So I won’t go into it. FSS, and of course the existence of its creator, Mamory Nagano, was formed out of feedback stemming from such Japanes sub-cultures as rock music, science fiction films and video games, and so looking as FSS in terms of only the “manga” sub-culture results is having to understand it as a freak-mutant within that genre. In particular, its “anime” factor is without a doubt an extremely importan element, since its creator, Nagano, is by trade an animation designer.
The phenomenon known as the “anime boom” triggered by the two huge successes, Uchusenkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato) and Kidosenshi Gundam (Mobile Suit Gundam, brought about a number of important changes in the Japanese entertainment industry and also greatly altered the direction of the medium known as “manga.” In particular, from the 1980s into the early 90s, a period of time that can be called the “post-anime era,” the two genres of anime and manga quickly approached one another, and after the term “media mix” came into popularity, a lot of new comics were published characterized by a lack of distinction about the audiences they were targeting (boys, girls or young adults). The pioneeers in this new trend transcending both age and gender were a group of science fiction comics, like Ryu, which was first published by tokuma Books in 1979. Then by means of appealing to both creators and readers from the “anime era,” the trend turned towards all kinds of comics, called “young adult-oriented,” ranging from Shonen Captain (Tokuma Books, out of print) and Shonen Ace (Kadokawa Books) to Ultra Jump (Shueisha). The characteristic features of this latter phase were positive efforts at linking up with other media like anime and games and emphasizing character merchandising, resulting in much of their content trying to be extremely visual and emphasizing story lines and character development. Not only did these comics make clear that there were definitely new reader horizons being formed, like anime and SF fans, but also gave rise to “fan-created” publications in the form of coterie magazines and the like. What I’m trying to say here is within the context of this dynamic ebb and flow that FSS should really be placed.
At this point I think that I should remind or inform for the first time readers that all of the ideas that give birth to Five Star Stories stem from Nagano’s participation as both a character and mechanical designer (“mecha designer” to be discussed presently) for the robot animated film entitled Jusenki L-Gaim (Heavy Metal L-Gaim) released in 1984. This was Nagano’s first production in which he was made main designer, and he took that opportunity to design sets and illustrations far different from mass produced stuff, which he later compiled into an illustrated print media “mook” (a book edited in magazine style) called Jusenki L-Gaim 2. This illustrated story, “Nagano’s L-Gaim,” is no way similar to the film, with its avant garde visual effects and unfolding story (actually, there was still no consistent direction but there was still the hint (scent) that something was goiong to unfold), jolted L-Gaim fans into converting from Jusenki anime fever to Nagano L-Gaim “illust” mania.
When in 1985, Kadokawa Books embarked on its anime magazine, Newtype, guess who was featured? A serial comic strip by Mamory Nagano. It wasn’t Five Star Stories, but a story with a rock n’ roll theme entitled “Fool for the City” that first apeared, however. There is no doubt that the piece caught a lot of comic fans off guard. It is said that Kadokawa decided that since Nagano had never done a manga before, they would give him a year to learn the ropes with a short series then begin FSS in 1986. As to the process by which basically a designer like Nagano came to be the author of FSS, including the dramatic story behind the first issue of the epoch-making Newtype magazine, please refer to Inoue Shinichiro’s account entitled Mamoru Mania, available from Toyspress.
Well, as planned, 1986 saw the Newtype debut of FSS, which immediately cause quite a stir and gradually developed into Newtype’s featured serial. In other words, if you want to get picky about it, FSS can be said to have been a spin-off of Jusenki L-Gaim, which is the impression most readers got immediately after its debut, forcing Nagano to wage a one-man war of resistance against such a view for quite a long time. In one interview, he grew vehement, snapping “Five Star had never been L-Gaim’s rear end,” and took extreme pains to dismantle and erase every possible vestige of L-Gaim from FSS that even the wildest imagination could come up with, as if taunting his audience. While admitting that FSS may have originated out of circumstances surrounding the TV animation, L-Gaim, Nagano swears up and down that FSS itself has never had anything whatsoever to do with that production—content-, design- or an other-wise. What Nagano was trying to do was avoid tying up FSS up with the anime genre, but rather to create a work that actually competed with L-Gaim in every respect, until death do us part. It appears that Nagano has finally gotten his point across, for I doubt if there is anyone still around who thinks of L-Gaim as anything other than one of tehm nostalgic TV shows, while FSS continues its popularity as an active player on the manga scene.
There is also an aspect of FSS that sets it apart from many comics that are referred to as “adult-oriented;” and that is the tremendous gap that exists between the rather simple-minded image linking together into some superficial formula containing the factors 1) appearing in an anime magazine, 2) conversion from animation staff member to manga author and 3) the existence of bttle ready robots and pretty young female androids… and actually reading FSS. Despite the fact that its popularity led to an animated movie version of FSS, apart from that, the work has nothing to do with the flashy “media-mix” genre. Rather than being productions of authors who became independent as the result of getting into comics, stuff that is based on media-mixing are “commodities” standardized in accordance with teh existing market. Of course there are collaborations among creators that have succeeded in producing an efective sense of presence; but at the same time, they are products made in teh sole pursuit of monetary remuneration. Of course, every comic that has ever been published has a certain commercial aspect to it, however, what’s peculiar about FSS is that within the comic scene of the 1980s, characterized by a huge market, the systemization of the supply process, and “operating manualization,” it stood out as an exception by raising “the vision of its creator” as its quality standard and shit-canning anything that diverted from such a standard.
World View
Five Star Stories is set within a fictitious universe called the Joker Galaxy. It is a collection of stories about that Galaxy’s four stationary solar systems—-Easter, Wester, Souther and Northern—within which various planets that are inhabitable for human live [sic] turn and revolve. It is only natural that space and interplanetary travel make their appearance, at first glance giving the appearance that some science fiction drama or space odyssey is about to unfold, but it turns out to be more of a fantasy, with gods, demons and dragons casually dropping in both expectedly and more often not.
Nagano himself has never liked having his FSS world catalogued into some existing genre, and has often insisted in interviews and the like that [it] is more like an archetypal “fairy tale.” But don’t get the idea that it’s some Marchentique theme park, or something. Despite being an alien world, of the future or the past we can’t tell, fundamentally it has a political system of nation-states, like we do, the struggles and alliances among which form the background to the stories, which often depict complicated, perplexing love-hate relations among the characters, as well as the absurd, but still starkly real, demands that mammoth societies make on individuals. This is not to say, however, that FSS is oriented towards human drama or realism, not by any stretch of the imagination. First of all, the two main characters of the stories, Amaterasu and LAchesis, have been lent existences completely transcending homo sapiens, and the author himself describes them as “divine.” The staging is not limited to just an alien world, since the story often flies off into time and space dimensions above and beyond mere Galactic boundaries. It’s certainly billed as the “Amaterasu-Lachesis Show,” but overall they seldom perform, and when they do, it’s like comic relief, even digression. Rather, the focus of each episode is seldom ficed on any one character for any length of time. At times we find ourselves floating high above in Green Pastrues looking down on the whole scene like God the Father or somebody stroking our gray beards, then we dive-bomb down into the uniform of a new recruit buck private gazing up a[t] the mess raining down upon him because two super powers happen to be pissed off at one another. Furthermore, time-wise, the stories refuses [sic] to proceed in the neat chronological order wa all know and love. Premonitions and hallucinations by characters, or flashbacks and visions of the future keep cutting in to the flow, shuffling the scenes like a deck of cards, fragmenting the reader’s basic textbook-oriented instincts, while at the same time throwing hints about the huge monolith that actually exists behind all the chaos.
In other words, it’s a tale being narrated on many different levels, in literary terms its [sic] can be called a “postmodern” work and “meta-fiction.” Despite all that, in the end it turns out to be pretty easy to understand. When you get right down to it, each episode itself presents a simple drama making it easy to introduce the emotions being played out its vivid, lively characters. FSS has a tapestry-like structure into which a lot of short tales of the weave is the landscape making up the alien world of the Joker Galaxy.
At the nucleaus of all the episodes or mini-tales woven into the tapestry is almost invariably a class of knigts, called “headdliners,” who possess on the genetic level abilities far superior to ordinary human resident of [the] Galaxy. They, the headdliners, come equipped with huge war machines called “mortar headds” and manufactured humanoid assistants functioning as biological computers, called “fatimas.” The differences that exist in the styles and attitudes of headdliners and fatimas, the nation-states that populate that Galaxy are all intricatesly and inseperably wound together (not necessarily as warp and weft), and one axis driving the whole tale is the variance and friction that existes between these three super elements and “ordinary people.” While maybe skipping a generation or two, the headdliner bloodline continues to be passed on, and beside these knights stand immutable fatimas to lend a helping hand, as the roar of mortar headds echoes and sometimes screeches throughout the Galaxy. The world of the Joker Galaxy itself seems to have been especially for the headdliners, their machines and fatimas, in fact, whenever the tale turns to something that is not enclosed in the shodows of these three figures, the author nonchalantly jettisons the story “somewhere that’s not in Joker.”
On the surface, FSS’s headdliners, mortar headds and fatimas could be viewed as the three symbols that those on the entertainment scene since the anime boom like to mention as indicative of Japanese comics: super-people, mammoth robots, and cute girls (virgins by and large). It would (might) be interesting to discuss the significance of these symbols on the present anime/comic scene, but now isn’t the time. Let me just say that the very same three symbols fucntion in the exact same way in “young adult-oriented power fantasies” published in the United States. the problem here is that FSS could be understood in the light of such a simple-minded connection; and in fact I wouldn’t doubt that many people have read the work with the same image in mind (To each his own). The real problem is, however, that Nagano has betrayed such simple symbolism in both his writing and illustrations. The mortar headds are violent, destructive machines to the extremes of cruelty, imaginable and not, (a possible the result of the infatuation that boys have with power symbols), and the fatimas are the objects of a doll fetish bordering on the pathological. Moreover, the headdliners as “the chosen people” are also depicted a[s] social pariahs. Such characterization is by no means coincidental, for one can observe a clear intent on the part of the author to poke his nose at what has become the mainstream of the Japanese entertainment business.
The Chronology and Setting
Mamoru Nagano has described the idea behind FSS as “anything goes,” the only “restraint” being the chronology of the Joker Galaxy. In contrast to the science fiction novels of authors like Isaac Asimov or Robert A. Heinlein constructing chronologies based on a common view of the world prepared by the writer, this chronology originated from readers and fans just fooling around with Joker history, and then develped into its present “official” version. Similar to the official adoption of the mobile suit variation that a fan made up after seeing gundam, the “systemization” of FSS in the form of a chronology has always fallen within the bailiwick of fan behavior and interest. It can also be said that Nagano first did the systemizing in the hope that fans would react with behavior withi a range he himself could maintain control over.
Not only that, but just after the debut of FSS in 1986, he embarked on the founding of a new company, called Toyspress, in order to manage his copyrighted material. The company also began compiling and pyblishing encyclopedias, glossaries, and design illustration collections based on FSS and proceeded to market the titles through its own exclusive distribution system. These publications enabled Nagano set forth his own vision in the form of designs and text, and in the process, drastically reduce the room available to readers adn fans for filling in the blanks left by FSS with their own versions. On the other hand, the fans took to the new reference materials like ducks to water, reading them like annotations to the Bible, hoping to be freed from obscurity, but rather discovering a whole new tale in the process. What they disovered was a whole new, original system invented by Mamory Nagano all on his own.
Of course, if it had turned out that FSS itself had become inferior in quality to the “Five Star apparition” that appeared before individual fans as a result of this large body of “source” materials, Nagano’s work would not [sic] doubt have grown tiresome by now and become exhausted. But that not being the case is probably proof that Nagano has always been able to exceed expectation quotients or at least manage to come up with things that avoid confrontation with them. Now, from the reader’s standpoint, the system that Nagano has built definitely trancends the simple comic framework in a veritable entertainment environment, which after kearbubg how to play there, can be easily turned into a thoroughly enjoyable theme park.
Vigilant attention to (verging on preoccupation with) setting is a value unique to the Japanese entertainment market. With the debut in that market of the TV animated film, Mobile Suit Gundam, in 1978, productions of SF dramas characterized by real world views came to enjoy tremendous popularity among young adult viewers.”Gundam” madness was supported in great part by its commercialization as a “fictitious military weapon” in plastic model form, and later on, such productions would always be planned beforehand with elaborate SF and/or military settings. Those who took on such tasks became specialists called “mecha-designers” within Japan’s unique anime system. “Mecha-designing,” is an occupation concentrating solely on the mechanical aspects of the design layouts for the “animator” to draw. Mecha-designers would design their robot specifications in series, like lines of tanks or fighter planes, and the variations they came up with were reproduced in concrete form by plastic model makers. And so the publication of such design plans in conjunction with commercialization brought about the phenomenon of each “mecha-designer” developing his own name brand. Even in the industry today, being able to draw a “really cool” robot has itself become a tradition with inherent value.
Mamoru Nagano, the creator, is also a former “mecha-designer,” and for that reason, there is no doubt that he is fully acquainted with the value placed on detailed settings and the publication of design plans in today’s market. It is the skillful incorporation of such values that has produced the entertainment engine known as Five Star Stories,/i>. In terms of the service being provided to his fans, it’s a system like a flywheel keeping the creator himself running like clockwork. By publishing stuff like chronologies and the Toyspress reference materials, Nagano has created a relationship of cometition [tension] to the actual comic in a form seldom seen. As long as he continues to employ his system, Nagano will never be able to transcend the vision that he made public beforehand. On the other hand, one gets the impression that the system’s state of perpetual motion is what’s maintaining FSS’s popularity and unique quality.
It is such a form that Nagano’s world of Five Star Stories has become a unique entertainment system enjoyed by the Japanese public. It is the product of the Japanese entertainment environment I have sketched here. At first glance, it seems to be fit comfortably into the trend of bring “otaku” tastes out of the closet in packages for mass consumption, while FSS itself insists that there are parts that don’t fit at all… What is amazing about the whole thing is not the longstanding popularity, but the fact that Five Star Stories has continued for such a long time to exist as a freak-mutant in relation to the business as usual on the Japanese Entertainment scene.
Hiroshi Odagiri
Februari 2001
Go back to bishounen in the mecha genre did not begin with mobile suit gundam wing [->]
