Читать книгу Anime Impact - Chris Stuckmann - Страница 24
ОглавлениеJûichi-nin iru!
— Chris Stuckmann —
They Were Eleven appeared originally as a three-part manga in Shōjo Comic, a Japanese magazine that published manga for younger girls. In 1976, the manga won the coveted Shogakukan Manga Award, and finally, in 1986, an anime film was produced. By the early ’90s, a VHS transfer was released in the States by now-defunct Central Park Media. It was that VHS that I rented from my local Hollywood Video. If you’re not familiar with them, Hollywood Video rose to fame during the heyday of video rental stores. The company was founded in 1988 but became known nationally in the ’90s as the direct competitor to Blockbuster Video.
As a young kid, I didn’t really care about any of that. What I did know was that my neighborhood Hollywood Video had the best selection of anime VHS I’d ever seen. And they were only 99 cents a rental!
I owe much of my development as an anime fan to that old store. At the time, my anime consumption was largely at the mercy of Toonami’s broadcast schedule. So when VHS tapes became available at Hollywood Video, I’d scour the shelves in search of titles like Sailor Moon R: The Movie, Venus Wars, or Voogie’s Angel. To be realistic, most of the titles they carried were terribly dubbed products of the “Japanimation Era.” The early ’90s were integral to the growth of anime in the States, but we still had to suffer through some awful dubs to get to where we are today.
Back to Hollywood Video. When I saw that dust-covered plastic case labeled They Were Eleven sitting on the shelf, I flipped it around to read the synopsis. It sounded promising. So, 99 cents and a car ride home later, I was ready to see for myself.
They Were Eleven is about ten space cadets in the middle of a grueling examination for acceptance into a prestigious and strict academy. They’ve passed all the requisite tests, yet one more remains. As part of this test, the ten cadets are transported to a ship in the middle of space and left to fend for themselves. Initially, they assume this is some sort of team project, perhaps to test their ability to problem-solve as a group. But before long, a troubling mystery surfaces in the form of an eleventh crew member and possible infiltrator. And because the cadets aren’t familiar with one another, the spy could be any one of them. The resulting doubt and recrimination leads to a thrilling intellectual mystery that’s highly uncommon for 1980s anime.
Atmosphere is something that’s always impressed me when I watch this film. The deep, cold isolation of space—used to great effectiveness in films like Alien—becomes the perfect setting for this chilling mystery. And the creepy, long-abandoned sections of the ship add to the ominous feeling of dread that begins to permeate the cadets. Dark corners are animated with a foreboding sense of depth, creating the perception that you could actually reach into the screen and live in this environment.
But as already stated, it’s the cerebral probing of these characters that makes the film stand out. Most anime set in space are about giant robots. Nothing against Gundam—I love me some big-ass robots—but They Were Eleven dares to be a psychological thriller, which is not typically a profitable genre in anime. Rather than rely on action scenes, nudity, or gore, the film subverts expectations by exploring questions surrounding gender identity. One character in the film reflects that they aren’t comfortable in their own body. The rules that society has imposed upon them make it impossible to live the life they wish to lead. These startlingly adult themes are interwoven within the mystery beautifully, shattering the assumption that anime is just cartoons with nothing worthwhile to say.
They Were Eleven never received much attention. In fact, I’m not sure I would know it if not for Hollywood Video’s rental selection. The DVD is out of print and essentially impossible to come by unless you resort to Amazon or eBay. It’s rarely discussed when great anime titles are referenced and, as of this writing, there’s been no attempt (to my knowledge) to obtain updated release rights.
I’m often asked about anime that I find under-appreciated and, while my mind tends to jump to better titles like Now and Then, Here and There, or Monster, They Were Eleven deserves its fair share of kudos. It was a film ahead of its time. An animation more interested in the darkest corner of its character’s damaged psyche is one to be admired, lauded, and shared. While much of the world’s cinema was still running to catch up, this mature Japanese animation was asking the questions that few films dared to discuss.
