Girls in the Wild
(Not to be confused with "Girls Gone Wild," which is a topic for some other blog to write about...)
Trying to forge your own writing path is hard, and it gets me down sometimes. This morning, for instance, although I'm better now. For those of you tuning in late, I've been trying to develop a way of storytelling that communicates math and science concepts, or at least inspires enough interest in them for kids to go and find out more for themselves. One thing that's hard about it is not having anything to compare myself to. Yeah, yeah, I know - "What part of 'forging your own path' did you not understand?" I knew what I was getting into, but that doesn't make it easy.
One of the big reasons I've gotten into anime and other Japanese programming so much is that it's one of the few places where I can find at least a few shows that point toward what I'm trying to do myself. On Japanese TV, you can see random references to the ISO9001 standard or the ice geysers on Enceladus. You can watch the science fiction anime Planetes, which depicts a believable future backed by some real science (not too different from my book, Lunar Pioneers). You can even see a show about an all-girls high school where the students compete against each other with math problems. Okay, that last one is really terrible, but at least it's there! Here in the US of A, all the teen heroes and heroines are too busy blowing stuff up or having romantic angst with each other to do any math or science.
Now this season, there are two different anime shows about high school girls venturing into the wilderness, a subject I've considered writing about myself. Yurucamp ("Laid-Back Camp") follows five girls who go camping around Japan, while Sora yori mo Tooi Basho ("A Place Further Than the Universe") follows four girls on a journey to Antarctica.
Neither one is exactly what I'm trying to write, but they're in the right neighborhood. New seasons of two other shows are due later this year - Yama no Susume ("Encouragement of Climb"), which is about girls climbing mountains, and Amanchu!, which is about kids (not all girls) going scuba diving.
They are in the right neighborhood, but they can also be problematic. When the Japanese write stories about girls, it's often to attract the otaku male audience. Frequently the characters are drawn looking much more like little girls than teenagers, as a part of the "moe" style. Hayao Miyazaki - one of my role models as a man who writes strong, female main characters - once remarked that fans of this style can act like they want to keep little girls as pets. Of the four shows I mentioned, Yama no Susume is the most problematic. It's clear that someone on the creative team knows about hiking, because some of the episodes are very realistic about the experience of going up a mountain. On the other hand, other episodes were about subjects like bra-shopping or finding sexy swimwear. So there's that to deal with.
On the opposite end, A Place Further Than the Universe has done almost everything right so far, with a quartet of interesting characters who work well together. The first half of the series has been about how they get to Antarctica. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do while they're there, and how much involvement they have with the scientists working at the polar research station they're going to. That could be a big help to my own efforts.
My writing schedule for the next couple of years is pretty much taken up by the Mathematical Biographies I'm working on, but that gives me time to let ideas roll around in my head. If these shows can help with that process, I'm all for it.
Trying to forge your own writing path is hard, and it gets me down sometimes. This morning, for instance, although I'm better now. For those of you tuning in late, I've been trying to develop a way of storytelling that communicates math and science concepts, or at least inspires enough interest in them for kids to go and find out more for themselves. One thing that's hard about it is not having anything to compare myself to. Yeah, yeah, I know - "What part of 'forging your own path' did you not understand?" I knew what I was getting into, but that doesn't make it easy.
One of the big reasons I've gotten into anime and other Japanese programming so much is that it's one of the few places where I can find at least a few shows that point toward what I'm trying to do myself. On Japanese TV, you can see random references to the ISO9001 standard or the ice geysers on Enceladus. You can watch the science fiction anime Planetes, which depicts a believable future backed by some real science (not too different from my book, Lunar Pioneers). You can even see a show about an all-girls high school where the students compete against each other with math problems. Okay, that last one is really terrible, but at least it's there! Here in the US of A, all the teen heroes and heroines are too busy blowing stuff up or having romantic angst with each other to do any math or science.
Now this season, there are two different anime shows about high school girls venturing into the wilderness, a subject I've considered writing about myself. Yurucamp ("Laid-Back Camp") follows five girls who go camping around Japan, while Sora yori mo Tooi Basho ("A Place Further Than the Universe") follows four girls on a journey to Antarctica.
Neither one is exactly what I'm trying to write, but they're in the right neighborhood. New seasons of two other shows are due later this year - Yama no Susume ("Encouragement of Climb"), which is about girls climbing mountains, and Amanchu!, which is about kids (not all girls) going scuba diving.
They are in the right neighborhood, but they can also be problematic. When the Japanese write stories about girls, it's often to attract the otaku male audience. Frequently the characters are drawn looking much more like little girls than teenagers, as a part of the "moe" style. Hayao Miyazaki - one of my role models as a man who writes strong, female main characters - once remarked that fans of this style can act like they want to keep little girls as pets. Of the four shows I mentioned, Yama no Susume is the most problematic. It's clear that someone on the creative team knows about hiking, because some of the episodes are very realistic about the experience of going up a mountain. On the other hand, other episodes were about subjects like bra-shopping or finding sexy swimwear. So there's that to deal with.
On the opposite end, A Place Further Than the Universe has done almost everything right so far, with a quartet of interesting characters who work well together. The first half of the series has been about how they get to Antarctica. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do while they're there, and how much involvement they have with the scientists working at the polar research station they're going to. That could be a big help to my own efforts.
My writing schedule for the next couple of years is pretty much taken up by the Mathematical Biographies I'm working on, but that gives me time to let ideas roll around in my head. If these shows can help with that process, I'm all for it.
Comments