Time Out for Science Fun
I'm not sure I've ever gone this long without a journal update. The week-long audit I've spent more than a year preparing for begins tomorrow. Getting ready for it has been hampered by other craziness in the day-job world, and I haven't had the mental energy to do much else. I've gotten so out of my writing mindset that I feel like I can't even put a decent blog post together, let alone anything else. So today I'm going to do something low-pressure and fun, to get my momentum going again. I give you...
The Anime Nerd Girls of Science!
Five female anime characters I've come across who take science more seriously than their American counterparts. That is, if they even have American counterparts.
The "Science Adventure" series of visual novels and anime series had to have at least one character on the list. My first thought was Makise Kurisu from Steins;Gate, but she's too much of a male wish-fantasy. Better to go with Akiho instead, a high school girl who leads her club as they build a giant robot. Their first attempt isn't very successful (illustrating just how ridiculous giant robots are in the process), but they stick with it, and even save the world while they're at it.
A character I might have written, in a show I might have written. Mari is a teenage schoolgirl who would rather take after her pastry chef mother than her scientist father. But then she gets caught up in her father's time-travel experiments and goes to meet some of the great scientists and inventors in history, including Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz and Thomas Edison. In the epilogue, we see her as an old woman in the future, encouraging another young girl to pursue science because it's fun and interesting.
Mihoshi is the "childhood friend" of main character Oyagi Saku in Sora no Manimani, which in most anime shows means she's destined to fall in love with him. But Mihoshi is too interested in the stars. She's a year older than Saku, but looks younger, and also acts younger - but she's no dummy. It's just that she's never lost her childlike passion for astronomy. In the opening episode, she comes up with an idea for showing her classmates what sunspots look like, and in the final episode she becomes the Astronomy Club President. A much better destiny, if you ask me.
Itou Serika is an Asian medical doctor who does research. She also really likes food. Those qualities also describe my sister-in-law, so maybe I'm biased.
Unlike my sister-in-law, though, Serika wants to go to space - specifically, she hopes that a tour of duty on the International Space Station will allow her to develop new chemical compounds that don't form in Earth's gravity, and that one of those compounds might lead to a cure for ALS. That's what brings her into the same JAXA astronaut candidate class as Namba Mutta, the main character of Space Brothers. Mutta also develops a crush on her, but he's too shy and she's too preoccupied for anything to come of that.
Unfortunately, the Space Brothers anime ended before Serika's individual story arc really took off. The more recent chapters of the manga tell the story of her adventures on the ISS. The manga is still very popular in Japan, so maybe the anime will return someday and put Serika's story on the screen. We can only hope.
Before I get to my #1 pick, I'd like to add:
Nono isn't interested in science as much as she is the science. At only twelve years old, she's already more than six feet tall. When Hoshino Hachirota, the main character of Planetes, first meets her, he mistakes her for an adult. But she's not. At this point, I should mention that we meet Nono in a medical facility on the moon. She was born there, one of only four "Lunarians" in existence. Her life is a series of medical tests and experiments, as the doctors of the moon colony study how the lunar gravity affects her physiology. But she doesn't mind, because the tests help her get stronger. She hopes that someday she'll be strong enough to withstand Earth's gravity, because she wants to go there and see the ocean. Meanwhile, she enjoys grabbing a spacesuit and sneaking outside to explore her lunar home.
And that leaves...
Erin isn't anyone's "childhood friend." She isn't anyone's crush or love interest. She isn't a side character. She's the star of the show. And from the moment we first see her as a young child, she's checking out the plants and animals of the medieval fantasy world she inhabits. We follow her through adventures and misfortunes, starting in her home village with her mother Soyon, who cares for giant lizards called "touda," going on to her time with a beekeeper named Joh-on, who takes her in after her Soyon's death and shows her his world, and then to the school where she learns to care for "beast lords," the gigantic eagle-creatures with wolf heads that her kingdom sees as both objects of worship and potential ultimate weapons.
The science of touda and beast lords may be fictional, but the scientific method Erin and the others use to learn about them is not. Erin observes, theorizes and experiments. Things don't always work out, but she learns from her failures and comes back with new ideas. If we had more characters like Erin, our society might have a better understanding of what science is and how it works. And that's why she's the #1 Anime Nerd Girl of Science.
The Japanese have Nerd Girls of Science in their live-action dramas, too. Maybe I'll mention some of those in a future post. Meanwhile, give some of these characters a look, especially if you know a young girl who could use some scientific encouragement.
The Anime Nerd Girls of Science!
Five female anime characters I've come across who take science more seriously than their American counterparts. That is, if they even have American counterparts.
| #5) Senomiya Akiho, Robotics;Notes |  |
The "Science Adventure" series of visual novels and anime series had to have at least one character on the list. My first thought was Makise Kurisu from Steins;Gate, but she's too much of a male wish-fantasy. Better to go with Akiho instead, a high school girl who leads her club as they build a giant robot. Their first attempt isn't very successful (illustrating just how ridiculous giant robots are in the process), but they stick with it, and even save the world while they're at it.
| #4) Hayase Mari, Time Travel Shoujo |  |
A character I might have written, in a show I might have written. Mari is a teenage schoolgirl who would rather take after her pastry chef mother than her scientist father. But then she gets caught up in her father's time-travel experiments and goes to meet some of the great scientists and inventors in history, including Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz and Thomas Edison. In the epilogue, we see her as an old woman in the future, encouraging another young girl to pursue science because it's fun and interesting.
| #3) Akeno Mihoshi, Sora no Manimani |  |
Mihoshi is the "childhood friend" of main character Oyagi Saku in Sora no Manimani, which in most anime shows means she's destined to fall in love with him. But Mihoshi is too interested in the stars. She's a year older than Saku, but looks younger, and also acts younger - but she's no dummy. It's just that she's never lost her childlike passion for astronomy. In the opening episode, she comes up with an idea for showing her classmates what sunspots look like, and in the final episode she becomes the Astronomy Club President. A much better destiny, if you ask me.
| #2) Itou Serika, Space Brothers |  |
Itou Serika is an Asian medical doctor who does research. She also really likes food. Those qualities also describe my sister-in-law, so maybe I'm biased.
Unlike my sister-in-law, though, Serika wants to go to space - specifically, she hopes that a tour of duty on the International Space Station will allow her to develop new chemical compounds that don't form in Earth's gravity, and that one of those compounds might lead to a cure for ALS. That's what brings her into the same JAXA astronaut candidate class as Namba Mutta, the main character of Space Brothers. Mutta also develops a crush on her, but he's too shy and she's too preoccupied for anything to come of that.
Unfortunately, the Space Brothers anime ended before Serika's individual story arc really took off. The more recent chapters of the manga tell the story of her adventures on the ISS. The manga is still very popular in Japan, so maybe the anime will return someday and put Serika's story on the screen. We can only hope.
Before I get to my #1 pick, I'd like to add:
| Special mention: Nono, Planetes |  |
Nono isn't interested in science as much as she is the science. At only twelve years old, she's already more than six feet tall. When Hoshino Hachirota, the main character of Planetes, first meets her, he mistakes her for an adult. But she's not. At this point, I should mention that we meet Nono in a medical facility on the moon. She was born there, one of only four "Lunarians" in existence. Her life is a series of medical tests and experiments, as the doctors of the moon colony study how the lunar gravity affects her physiology. But she doesn't mind, because the tests help her get stronger. She hopes that someday she'll be strong enough to withstand Earth's gravity, because she wants to go there and see the ocean. Meanwhile, she enjoys grabbing a spacesuit and sneaking outside to explore her lunar home.
And that leaves...
| #1) Erin, daughter of Soyon, Kemono no Sou-ja Erin |  |
Erin isn't anyone's "childhood friend." She isn't anyone's crush or love interest. She isn't a side character. She's the star of the show. And from the moment we first see her as a young child, she's checking out the plants and animals of the medieval fantasy world she inhabits. We follow her through adventures and misfortunes, starting in her home village with her mother Soyon, who cares for giant lizards called "touda," going on to her time with a beekeeper named Joh-on, who takes her in after her Soyon's death and shows her his world, and then to the school where she learns to care for "beast lords," the gigantic eagle-creatures with wolf heads that her kingdom sees as both objects of worship and potential ultimate weapons.
The science of touda and beast lords may be fictional, but the scientific method Erin and the others use to learn about them is not. Erin observes, theorizes and experiments. Things don't always work out, but she learns from her failures and comes back with new ideas. If we had more characters like Erin, our society might have a better understanding of what science is and how it works. And that's why she's the #1 Anime Nerd Girl of Science.
The Japanese have Nerd Girls of Science in their live-action dramas, too. Maybe I'll mention some of those in a future post. Meanwhile, give some of these characters a look, especially if you know a young girl who could use some scientific encouragement.
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