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Future Wanderer Guldeen
Future Wanderer Guldeen volume 1, Hiura Koh, 1986
A fairly standard 1980s giant robot fare in a rather non-standard package for its time (a novel, rather than an anime). Hiura Koh is a comic writer (that is to say, he writes comedy—not comics, although he's written a few of those as well), and despite the general thrust of the plot (an action-driven revenge story), the overall tone is held in check by regular injections of irony and simple gags. If one were to construct a "gag mecha" spectrum, Guldeen would probably fall somewhere between ZZ Gundam and Xabungle, rather than exhibiting the forceful irreverence of something like Ramune & 40 or the cartoonish levity of Time Bokan.
Corona Flare, proud warrior prince(ss) and scion of of the Flare dynasty, infiltrates the fortress of the Valmar Empire's leader, seeking revenge for the destruction of her family's ancestral castle and usurpation of their power. She manages to escape with the help of Shara, a dancing girl and commensurate thief, and together with Shara's erstwhile companion, an opportunistic con-man named Slim Brown, they flee the chaos into the desert, where they eventually stumble across an ancient weapon buried in the sand, a giant robot named Guldeen (or just Gully, for short). Gully accepts Corona as its pilot, and helps the trio fend off attacks from the pursuing forces of Valmar, a motley cast of not-entirely-serious villains in their own right.
Although relatively unknown outside of Japan, Hiura was something of a powerhouse in the early days of proto-light novels, and he's joined here by Izubuchi Yutaka (mecha designer for Aura Battle Dunbine, Panzer World Galient, et al.) as illustrator and Yuuki Masami (author of Patlabor) as character designer. In lieu of the more common author's afterword, the book offers a rather lengthy interview with the three of them, going over the history of the book's creation. The germ of the idea reaches back to 1980, when Yuuki drew an illustration for Animech magazine featuring Urusei Yatsura's Ryuunosuke and Stop! Hibari-kun's eponymous Hibari together, a dynamic that would go on to inspire Guldeen's Corona and Shara. Originally intended as a pitch for an anime series, the idea was rejected, but they continued to develop it into the novel that it eventually became.
The interview is long and full of stale oji-san banter (references to TV shows that were already old by the time it was printed and products that no longer exist), but it's nonetheless an interesting look into Japan's 2D SF culture of the time, and it also introduced me to Parallel Creations ("Parakuri," frequently), a sort of salon or creator's collective started by Japanese SF powerhouse Toyota Aritsune that existed throughout most of the 1980s, run out of an apartment that, from the descriptions in the interview, sounds more like a flophouse than a serious place of business (not that there's anything wrong with that). Hiura, Izubuchi, and Yuuki were all members, as were other big names like SF author Oohara Mariko, anime director Kawamori Shoji, and fantasy illustrator Suemi Jun, among others.
In the grand scheme of things, it's hard to say that Guldeen matters much; in some ways it might almost feel like a consolation prize, a failed anime project that had to settle for a mere novel series, but in other ways that's precisely what makes it worth reading forty years later. While Hiura might not write serious stories, he is still a serious writer, and Guldeen offers us an alternative, period-correct take on a genre that we mostly only know from the anime projects that succeeded, and shows us a more relaxed and stripped down understanding of the fictive elements that go into making those stories function the way that they do. Moreover, it's an absolutely fascinating artifact from the history of Japanese SF, and offers a rare glimpse behind the curtain of an era that was a major hotbed of creative energy.
A fairly standard 1980s giant robot fare in a rather non-standard package for its time (a novel, rather than an anime). Hiura Koh is a comic writer (that is to say, he writes comedy—not comics, although he's written a few of those as well), and despite the general thrust of the plot (an action-driven revenge story), the overall tone is held in check by regular injections of irony and simple gags. If one were to construct a "gag mecha" spectrum, Guldeen would probably fall somewhere between ZZ Gundam and Xabungle, rather than exhibiting the forceful irreverence of something like Ramune & 40 or the cartoonish levity of Time Bokan.
Corona Flare, proud warrior prince(ss) and scion of of the Flare dynasty, infiltrates the fortress of the Valmar Empire's leader, seeking revenge for the destruction of her family's ancestral castle and usurpation of their power. She manages to escape with the help of Shara, a dancing girl and commensurate thief, and together with Shara's erstwhile companion, an opportunistic con-man named Slim Brown, they flee the chaos into the desert, where they eventually stumble across an ancient weapon buried in the sand, a giant robot named Guldeen (or just Gully, for short). Gully accepts Corona as its pilot, and helps the trio fend off attacks from the pursuing forces of Valmar, a motley cast of not-entirely-serious villains in their own right.
Although relatively unknown outside of Japan, Hiura was something of a powerhouse in the early days of proto-light novels, and he's joined here by Izubuchi Yutaka (mecha designer for Aura Battle Dunbine, Panzer World Galient, et al.) as illustrator and Yuuki Masami (author of Patlabor) as character designer. In lieu of the more common author's afterword, the book offers a rather lengthy interview with the three of them, going over the history of the book's creation. The germ of the idea reaches back to 1980, when Yuuki drew an illustration for Animech magazine featuring Urusei Yatsura's Ryuunosuke and Stop! Hibari-kun's eponymous Hibari together, a dynamic that would go on to inspire Guldeen's Corona and Shara. Originally intended as a pitch for an anime series, the idea was rejected, but they continued to develop it into the novel that it eventually became.
The interview is long and full of stale oji-san banter (references to TV shows that were already old by the time it was printed and products that no longer exist), but it's nonetheless an interesting look into Japan's 2D SF culture of the time, and it also introduced me to Parallel Creations ("Parakuri," frequently), a sort of salon or creator's collective started by Japanese SF powerhouse Toyota Aritsune that existed throughout most of the 1980s, run out of an apartment that, from the descriptions in the interview, sounds more like a flophouse than a serious place of business (not that there's anything wrong with that). Hiura, Izubuchi, and Yuuki were all members, as were other big names like SF author Oohara Mariko, anime director Kawamori Shoji, and fantasy illustrator Suemi Jun, among others.
In the grand scheme of things, it's hard to say that Guldeen matters much; in some ways it might almost feel like a consolation prize, a failed anime project that had to settle for a mere novel series, but in other ways that's precisely what makes it worth reading forty years later. While Hiura might not write serious stories, he is still a serious writer, and Guldeen offers us an alternative, period-correct take on a genre that we mostly only know from the anime projects that succeeded, and shows us a more relaxed and stripped down understanding of the fictive elements that go into making those stories function the way that they do. Moreover, it's an absolutely fascinating artifact from the history of Japanese SF, and offers a rare glimpse behind the curtain of an era that was a major hotbed of creative energy.