To Terra

AUTHOR: Takemiya, Keiko

ARTIST: Keiko Takemiya (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Asahi Sonorama (Japanese); Vertical (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Terra e. . ., 1977-1980

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1980 (English translation, 2007)

Publication History

Science fiction was a new genre for mangaka Keiko Takemiya when she began publishing Terra e. . . (To Terra. . .) in the pages of the Gekkan Manga Shonen magazine starting in January, 1977. By that time, Takemiya had established her reputation as a member of manga’s Year 24 Group, which consisted of innovative female artists born around 1949, the twenty-fourth year of Japan’s Showa era (Takemiya was born in 1950). Before ToTerra. . . Takemiya invented, and subsequently specialized in, the shonen-ai manga subgenre, which featured young boys in love with each other and was targeted to young-adult female readers.

In the magazine installments, To Terra. . . ran until May, 1980. Because of its popularity it was published in three paperback volumes in August, 1980, when the anime movie based on the graphic novel was released in Japan. Over the years, To Terra. . . built a considerable fandom. This persuaded a producer’s consortium led by Mainichi Broadcasting System to launch an anime television series based on Takemiya’s manga. Upon the series launch in 2007, Japanese publisher Square Enix reprinted the three volumes of To Terra. . . on April 6, 2007. In the same year, in the United States, Vertical published the three volumes in English, originally issued from February 20 to June 26, 2007.

Plot

After her success with tender shonen-ai manga, drawn for young girl audiences in Japan, Takemiya turned to the science-fiction genre targeted to young male readers. To Terra. . . introduces a dystopian future. In the fourth millennium, humanity worries that human nature has led to the destruction of Earth. Human planners believe that this problem can be mitigated only by humanity’s voluntary submission to computer control. Thus begins the era of Superior Domination, a political order in which humans are ruled by computers.

To set up and maintain this rule, a group of giant computers comes to control humanity, which has spread across the galaxy. The biggest threat to this system stems from the Mu—short for mutant children with paranormal abilities. The Mu gather around their leaders, Soldier Blue and the blind woman Physis, and commandeer a giant spaceship. Among humans, children are born in vitro and raised by foster parents on special planets such as Ataraxia. There, Jomy Marcus Shin readies himself for his maturity check, to be performed at age fourteen. The check is designed to identify and kill teenagers with extrasensory powers, which would make them Mu children. But Jomy, a latent Mu, is saved by the Mu and teleported to their spaceship, where he is groomed to succeed Soldier Blue upon the death of this Mu leader.

Next, the manga shows the grooming of the new human leader, Keith Anyan. He is an exceptional student from the moment he sets foot on the educational space station E-1077, after passing his maturity check on Ataraxia. Keith bonds with down-to-earth Sam Houston. Keith engages in a fierce rivalry with Seki Ray Shiroe. He proves his ultimate loyalty to the computers, personified by the avatar Mother Eliza, when he shoots the dissident Shiroe out of space.

Forty-three years later, with none of the characters having aged visibly at all, the Mu are led by Jomy and settle on Naska. For the first time in recent human history, Mu mothers give birth to children naturally. One of them is Tony, born of the nurse Carina. Just as the Mu get comfortable on Naska, the humans decide to attack them there.

The leader of the strike force is Keith Anyan. He wears an earring bearing the blood of Sam, who was captured by the Mu and rendered an imbecile as a result of their interrogation and then released to Terra as an idiot. As Keith arrives on another planet in the Naska system, he is suddenly attacked by his valet, Jonah Makka, who is a Mu in hiding. Makka keeps secret his unrequited homoerotic love for Keith. Keith forgives Makka for his attack, which he covers up to shelter Makka from the military police.

Keith descends in a space shuttle on Naska but is brought down by Mu paranormal powers. After his interrogation, Keith kidnaps Physis and Tony. With the help of Makka’s psychic powers, however, Keith is returned to the human forces. After most of the Mu flee Naska, the humans destroy the planet. Jomy seeks a showdown on Terra.

Under Captain Harley, the fleet of combined surviving Mu manages to defeat the human spaceships around Pluto. This happens despite Keith Anyan’s training of anti-Mu forces, which cause the death of Mu special mutant forces. Among the dead Mu warriors is the woman Artella, who dreamed of a happy future with Tony. Jomy demands a personal meeting with Terra’s central computer, called Grandmother, despite worries of his staff that this would lead him into a trap. Finally arriving on Terra, Jomy destroys Grandmother at the price of his own life (at the hand of Keith).

The Mu girl Twellen assumes command of the Mu fleet dominating the solar system. Surprisingly, Keith Anyan rebels against Grandmother’s backup, a computer called Terra. Destroying the computer, Terra nevertheless kills Keith, too, and wreaks havoc on Earth. But this frees humanity from computer control. The epilogue shows two humanoid families returning to Terra from outer space, with their children bonding for a happy future.

Volumes

• ToTerra. . .,Volume 1 (2007). Jomy Marcus Shin joins the Mu at age fourteen. The volume also includes a full introduction of the antagonist, Keith Anyan, and his world. Mu establish a colony on Naska.

• ToTerra. . ., Volume 2 (2007). Mu settle on the planet Naska but are not left alone by the humans. Keith Anyan leads the strike force that destroys Naska. Mu escape to seek a final decision on Terra.

• ToTerra. . ., Volume 3 (2007). After the Mu win the battle of Pluto against the humans, the computer Grandmother agrees to a meeting with Jomy. Jomy destroys Grandmother but is killed by Keith, who in turn destroys Grandmother’s backup before his own death. This sets humans free and ends their war with the Mu.

Characters

• Jomy Marcus Shin, the protagonist, is a pretty-looking, male adolescent with blow-dried hair. His youthful physical appearance never changes even as he reaches the biological age of fifty. He leads the Mu in the groups’ quest to Terra and dies in his final duel there.

• Keith Anyan, the antagonist, is a teenage boy with black hair who is tall and has distinctive facial features. Like the other characters, he never ages as decades pass and as he becomes the leader of the humans on Terra. He tolerates the homoerotic adulation of his boy servant Makka and defeats Jomy only to turn against Terra’s computer, dying in the cataclysm he causes.

• Physis is a psychic woman of the Mu race, a blind prophetess with long hair reaching to the floor. She comforts the Mu leaders and is revealed to be the biological mother of Keith Anyan.

• Soldier Blue, the original leader of the Mu, is a frail person trapped in a boy’s infirm body. He dies on the bed from which he telepathically directs the rescue of Mu children from the clutches of Terra’s computers.

• Grandmother is the computer that controls human destiny. At times, she appears as a benign older woman; she is also called Mother Eliza or Mother. On Ataraxia, her hardware shell looks like a primitive idol with immense black breasts and a crystal head. She is destroyed by Jomy and the Mu.

• Captain Harley is the commander of the Mu mother ship. He is a young adult leader with a commanding presence characterized by his cape-clad uniform. He is loyal to Soldier Blue and Jomy.

• Sam Houston is a blond-haired childhood friend of Jomy and then an adolescent companion of Keith. He ends up a babbling idiot after his spacecraft is intercepted by the Mu and he undergoes psychic interrogation. He dies of pneumonia in Keith Anyan’s custody on Terra.

• Seki Ray Shiroe, a rebellious human boy on E-1077, has dark hair and lanky features. He is killed by Keith Anyan when he tries to flee to Terra on his own.

• Tony, the first natural born Mu and heir apparent to Jomy, has long wavy hair and wears a black uniform. His immense paranormal powers make him the leader of the Mu strike force.

• Jonah Makka, a Mu boy in love with Keith, has slender features and a subservient character. He sacrifices his life for Keith.

• Artella, a Mu girl born on Naska, wears her hair in two braids. Tony’s love interest, she dies during the Mu attack on Pluto.

• Twellen, a Mu woman, looks like a sixteen-year-old girl with fluffy hair. She becomes leader of Mu star fleet after Jomy’s death.

Artistic Style

As is typical for manga, Takemiya draws on the Artistic support of subordinate artists, nine of whom are thanked on the final page of the graphic novel. Thus, the backgrounds—whether of space scenes, computer rooms, or full-page images of futuristic cities and violent spaceship battles—are drawn in amazing detail. The manga is drawn in black and white, as is common for the genre. Key characters are drawn in loving detail, such as Physis, with her long, flowing hair, or Keith Anyan with his square features and ear stud.

There is great variety among the panels of each page. Any traditional arrangement of nine square panels per page is virtually absent. Instead, panels overlap, are adjusted to the pace of the story, and often occupy full and overlap pages. Takemiya’s panels thrive from the kinetic energy that they display at moments of crisis and battle, and the lyricism of interludes when a temporary solution has been reached.

Almost all key characters are drawn as young adults. This is typical of the shonen genre directed toward young-adult men in Japan. Only minor characters are middle or old aged. Occasionally, however, the side characters appear more as comical caricatures than as realistically drawn persons. The lead characters share the characteristics of manga: wide, expressive eyes, small noses, large mouths, and youthful features. There is an androgynous element to characters such as Tony, who has long, wavy blond hair, and Makka, who has feminine features. Physis is drawn as an idealized young woman. The embryos growing in test tubes have full bodies of hair.

Spaceships, computers, and other futuristic hardware are drawn in loving detail. For a manga created in the late 1970’s, the future depicted does not look dated at all, if occasional levers and analog dials can be overlooked. A persistent motif is the impressive graphic depiction of deep space. There is fantastic variation in the panels, ranging from small-detail scenes to large crowd assemblies drawn in amazing detail.

Themes

The key theme of To Terra. . . is that of free human will versus social engineering to ensure ecological order. The manga questions the legitimacy of subordinating individual human desires to the requirements of an apparently harmonious social order and a life of equilibrium with nature. The issue of social conformity, from childhood through adulthood, is addressed blatantly. By depicting a future in which humanity has abrogated individual decision making to submission to total social control, Takemiya highlights the boundaries of social engineering and a government’s right to prescribe the desired behavior of its citizens. Given Japanese society’s traditional preference for social harmony, Takemiya’s vision of the dangers of total control and conformity is particularly significant.

The paranormal activities of the Mu mutants can be read as symbols of the unique capabilities of humans that fall outside the grid of strict social control. It is interesting that aside from the adult character Captain Harley all leading Mu are drawn to look like adolescents. This stresses the idea of youthful desire for nonconformity and the pain adolescents feel from the imposition of absolute social norms.

The theme of boy-to-boy love, proven enticing for adolescent female readers in Japan, is subtly hinted at in To Terra. . . Soldier Blue embraces Jomy Marcus Shin in lovingly depicted panels, and the same is true for Keith Anyan and Jonah Makka, even though their embraces are not of a definite sexual nature. In addition, key characters keep their adolescent physiques, even as they age into their fifties. In the science-fiction genre, this can be explained through advances in medical science, but it gives rise to the visual depiction of young boys sharing moments of vaguely erotic tenderness. American readers may overlook these occasional panels, or be startled by them.

Impact

In Japan, To Terra. . . immediately created a huge, loyal fan base. The Mu’s rebellion against conformity rang true among adolescent readers. This was so particularly in the age of Japanese economic expansion during the 1990’s, when the so-called bubble economy finally burst. In the previous decades, when conformity seemed to lead to an assured albeit boring life as a salaryman or a homemaker, To Terra. . .’s rebellious characters, such as Jomy Marcus Shin or the mysterious Physis, appealed strongly to young readers. The super-achiever Keith Anyan looks like a definite foil, a character easy to hate. Keith’s liaison with Sam, however, whose blood he wears in an ear stud, and his ultimate self-sacrifice to free humanity from computer control make him an interesting, likable character.

For young Japanese female readers, the spectacle of boys sacrificing themselves for boys they love, as in Makka’s death for Keith, proved attractive. To Terra. . . solidified the fame of Takemiya and was turned into successful film and television anime movies. In the United States the graphic novel found many fascinated readers as well.

Films

Terra e. . . (Towards the Terra). Directed by Hideo Onchi. Toei Animation, 1980. This animated film stars the voices of Junichi Inoue as Jomy Marcus Shin, Masaya Oki as his opponent Keith Anyan, and Kumiko Akiyoshi as Physis. The film differs from the manga in that Jomy and Keith are reborn on a rebuilt Terra, and the Mu find a new leader in Tony. This gives these characters a more definite happy end than the graphic novel.

Television Series

Terra e. . . (Towards the Terra). Directed by Osamu Yamazaki. Mainichi Broadcasting System, 2007. This animated series stars the voices of Mitsuki Saiga as Jomy Marcus Shin, Takehito Koyasu as Keith Anyan, and Sanae Kobayashi as Physis. The series differs from the manga in some details and introduces some new characters, taking into account fan feedback about the manga. The most important changes are that both Jomy and Keith are reincarnated and become friends, and Tony becomes leader of the Mu.

Further Reading

Shirow, Masamune. Ghost in the Shell (1989-1991).

Takemiya, Keiko. Andromeda Stories (2007-2008).

Bibliography

Johnson-Woods, Toni, ed. Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Continuum, 2010.

Raiteri, Steve. “To Terra. . .” Library Journal 132 (May 15, 2007): 75.

Welker, James. “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love in Shojo Manga.” Signs 31 (Spring, 2006): 841.