Please Save My Earth

Saki Hiwatari; pub Hakusensha (Jp), Viz (US); ser Hana to Yume (1987–94);

vols 21; age 16+

P

romantic drama that spans space and time, has humble origins: Saki Hiwatari’s real-life move to a new apartment. As she looked out on her neighbour’s yard at dusk one evening, with the sun setting and the stars beginning to twinkle in the sky, she felt at peace, as if she was wrapped in something warm. It was out of an effort to recreate that feeling that her series was born.

Hiwatari effectively blends two stories from different time periods into a single narrative, with the tragedies of one group of characters living in the past

resonating in the lives of a second group in the present. The series’ title expresses the desire of seven scientists, the last survivors of an extinct planet who lived on a lunar outpost and observed the Earth, which reminded them of their own planet in its unspoiled form. They agreed never to go to Earth and interact with its inhabitants, regardless of how much they secretly longed to be among them, out of fear that history would repeat itself and their utopia of Earth would be destroyed as well.

The scientists eventually die, doomed by a virus that infiltrates the base. But

their spirits survive in six teenagers and a seven-year-old boy living in the twentieth century. Hiwatari quickly establishes the connection between generations, introducing in the second chapter two boys, Jinpachi and Issei, who regularly dream about the scien- tists. They feel as if they’ve always known each other from the day they first met in the eighth grade and continued to bond thanks to the shared dreams. Jinpachi feels he’s the incarnation of a male arche- ologist, Gyokuran, in their dreams, while Issei believes he’s an introspective female paleontologist, Enju – a situation that Hiwatari acknowledges has the appear- ance of a boys’ love pairing and initially plays for laughs.

While the revelation of a connection happens quickly, Hiwatari is slow to reveal exactly how each of the modern- day characters is linked to the scien- tists. She frames her narrative from the perspective of Alice, a shy, introspective girl who feels like she shares a special bond with plants and animals but is at a loss to explain these feelings. Alice’s journey of discovery is also our journey – unlike Jinpachi, Issei and the others she eventually meets, her dreams are neither as frequent nor as clear. But

Hiwatari hints that Alice is connected to the central figure among the scientists, Mokuren. The first link is obvious: Alice and Mokuren both care deeply about plants. Other connections, however, are established with Alice’s interactions with others in their advanced states of awareness. Posing the biggest threat is Rin, the youngest of the twentieth- century group yet the one who is most aware of what happened in the past. Rin knows he was once Shion, Mokuren’s fiancé, and presses his advantage to the fullest, psychically manipulating the others into believing lies so he can keep Mokuren/Alice for himself.

Eventually, the group is reunited, but they find themselves engaging in the same cycles of jealousy and revenge they went through in their original bodies. It’s a slow grower of a story, but utterly compelling. The concept was so convincing to some readers in Japan that fan letters from people sure that they themselves were reincarnations of the scientists flooded Hiwatari’s office at one point. The craze reached such a fever pitch that, starting with the eighth volume, the publisher added a disclaimer stating that nothing in the series was based in reality.

K

the North Star had his

share of challenges and challengers in his days wandering the post-apocalyptic landscape. But it’s safe to say that he never had to contend with a group of martial arts cheerleaders who fight by throwing pom-poms and batons. He never had to worry about being transformed into a girl, either.

These are just two of the original twists Rumiko Takahashi, a fan of Fist of

the North Star, put into her take on the

martial arts genre, the comedic cross- gender epic Ranma ½. The success of

Ranma ½ spawned a host of copycat

sex-change, love-triangle shōnen manga. None of those series’ heroes, though, could match Takahashi’s imagi- native creation Ranma Saotome. Ranma is a high school student, a ruggedly tough martial artist and a boy promised in marriage to one of the girls of Soun Tendo’s household. The twist is that Ranma is also a girl, doomed to switch genders whenever he’s doused with water ever since he fell into a cursed hot spring. At least he remains human, though; his father, Genma, fell into the “Spring of Drowned Panda” and now transforms into a giant panda.

Takahashi’s desire to add more variety to her art, rather than a desire to add a plot twist, was her main reason for intro- ducing the transformation mechanism. You can’t blame her for wanting more variety in a long-running story: drawing the same characters for sixteen to twenty pages per month, every month, must get tedious after a while.

The story is infused with heavy doses of the double-take, slapstick comedy that Takahashi developed over her career, honed through years of drawing

Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku (see

box overleaf). Sure, there’s traditional kick-punch-chop action, but there are also martial arts battles utilizing skills like rhythmic gymnastics, ice skating, cheerleading and Japanese tea ceremo- nies. Ranma also not only must be wary of people wielding jugs of water, but also of the presence of his other weakness: cats. As a child, Ranma was traumatized when Genma, hoping to train him in the “cat-fist” discipline, tied a fish sausage to him and tossed him into a pack of hungry cats.

The surrounding cast of dozens of characters is just as quirky. Take Ryoga Hibiki, who has held a grudge against Ranma ever since he kept snatching the

Ranma 1/2

Rumiko Takahashi; pub Shogakukan (Jp), Viz (US, UK, Aus); ser Weekly Shōnen