Ken Murphy / 4:42 am November 11th, 2008

“Rocket Girls” by Housuke Nojiri and Muttiri Moon, from 2007 and just released on DVD here in the U.S.

I am sitting here being gob-smacked by this incredible show. I heard about the series a while back, and even looked for the Japanese DVD while I was in Beijing on a business trip last year. The basic premise of Rocket Girls is that a private company, Solomon Space Authority (SSA), is trying to provide satellite repair services via crewed spaceflight. Trouble is, their upgraded booster isn’t working out and they’ll have to downgrade to a proven design with less performance. This means their astronaut is too heavy.

Young Yukari has grown up with her mother, a driven businesswoman, since her father walked out and disappeared the first night of their honeymoon in the Solomons. Her mother never looked back, but Yukari always has, and during the summer break from her exclusive high school she goes to the Solomons to track down her missing father and confront him. Via a strange set of circumstances, her petite frame and mass earns her a chance to be an astronaut for SSA. She gets a high-tech skintight spacesuit and the training begins. Soon, it’s time for the proving flight. One that shows how dangerous it can be to operate at the bleeding edge of technology in the relatively new (to humans) environment of space.

That is but the introduction for this fine twelve episode series. Based on the premise (and my past viewing of Stratos4, which I discussed at the Rocket Gyrls Reading Club), I expected far more cheese than was evident here. I was actually surprised by the strong portrayals of strong women with strong interests in things like chemistry, biology, and medicine. The note on the back that the producers had the cooperation of the Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) is evident in a big way. There is a high degree of technical fidelity (comparatively speaking), once the story gets going, and it’s easy to envision being there. There’s real danger and challenges to overcome, and the girls learn valuable life lessons along the way. The climax is an edge of your seat dramatic thrill ride.

I haven’t enjoyed an anime this much since Planetes. The story is one of bravery and hope and scientific endeavor. The characters are sympathetic even if the little girl voices can be a bit grating at times. I particularly like the private enterprise aspect of the story, where businessmen and financiers step up to the plate and start doing the kinds of things in space that government space enterprises are just institutionally incapable of doing. While the concept of a triplet of 15-17 year-old girl astronauts might seem implausible at first, young ladies do benefit from certain physical advantages that, for example, make them such fine acrobats. I’ve also heard more than once from folks who are likely to know that women also have certain aptitudes that make them excellent space navigators. So I don’t find the idea entirely implausible (just mostly).

My question is why aren’t we doing this kind of quality storytelling here in the U.S.? Grounded in values like courage and determination, telling stories with philosphical profundity and characters that are firm in their convictions. I don’t really watch TV, so I’m not in tune with what’s on the kids’ channels except by occasional exposure. What I do see doesn’t have this kind of animation and story quality. When I place it in the context of other anime titles in the Lunar Library, the exceeding of my expectations raises it close to the top of the list.

I would really like to see more of this kind of near-Earth, near-future space story. Unfortunately they’re few and far between. This one is rated 13+ agewise, probably for some mild cussin’. There’s really not any nudity to speak of, other than, you know, high-tech skin-tight bodysuits. I may get in trouble for saying so, but I can see this as being of value for young ladies under 13. The level of maturity of the potential viewer is of course the judgement of the parents.

Girl Hug in space after fixing the Pluto probe

I use a different set of ratings for High Frontier fiction versus the New-to-Full Moon technique I use for Moon fiction. This is in honor of Joseph Louis Lagrange, who mathematically mapped out the Lagrange points, those special locations in space with unusual characteristics. The Sun-Earth L-1 (about 1.5 million kilometers Sunward) is where we have the SOHO instrument watching the Sun for us, and SEL-2 (on the starward side of Earth) is where we want to put our next big deep space probe.

The Earth Moon L-1 (EML-1, or as I affectionately call it, Emily) is the gravitational hilltop between the gravity wells of the Earth and Moon. EML-4 is 60º ahead of the Moon in its 360º orbit around the Earth, while EML-5 is 60º behind the Moon in its orbit. A kind of gravitational mesa, objects placed at L-5 will wander around near the point, but won’t leave the mesa top unless impelled to do so (meaning very cheap station-keeping). In theory, but in actuality the perturbations that the Earth-Moon system experiences preclude any kind of natural accumulation of stuff there, but Jupiter is second only to the Sun in its gravitational influence in the Solar system, and the king of planets has some big stable gravitational mesas pushed up at its L-4 and L-5 points, and there are found the Trojan asteroids.

On this scale, L-1 is the lowest rating, while L-5 is the highest rating in honor of O’Neill’s desire to put space colonies at the Earth-Moon L-5 point. I hesitate to give “Rocket Girls” the highest rating, but it is certainly a very strong L-4.