Shark Puppet

I finally got around to watching Gravity last weekend.  It was quite a good movie, but I couldn’t help comparing it to the long-running anime series Space Brothers.  While one is a 90-minute movie and the other is a television show closing in on 100 episodes, I thought it’d be interesting to compare how the two works deal with the topic of surviving in space.  For those who haven’t seen the film or aren’t caught up on the show, be warned: here there be spoilers.

In the interest of keeping things relevant, I’ll focus on the series of episodes in Space Brothers that follow Hibito and Damian while they’re stranded on the moon.  Like Gravity, this plot arc finds a pair of astronauts struggling to survive after a mission goes horribly wrong.  In both cases, the characters are unable to communicate with any kind of mission control center, and have to deal with the immediate problem of a limited air supply.

Hello? Anyone out there? Can you hear me NOW?

One of the more obvious differences between Gravity and Space Brothers is while the former is focused entirely on the astronauts in danger, while the latter also follows the people back on Earth trying to find a way to help them.  Part of this is because of differences in the amount of running time they have to work with, but it also comes down to what they’re trying to convey.

A main theme of Gravity is the isolation that one feels in the vacuum of space, and how that feeling can so quickly shift from peaceful to terrifying.  By focusing entirely on Bullock and Clooney’s characters, the film shows how very alone an astronaut can be while working in orbit.  Had the director broken away from this storyline to show people at NASA trying to send up some kind of rescue mission, it would have taken away from the movie’s effectiveness.

Zero Gravity Jump Rope: bad idea.

Space Brothers, on the other hand, has always been about showing all the aspects of a functioning space program.  It’s devoted entire story arcs to studying characters who work as engineers, flight instructors, and other support staff.  Given this running theme of teamwork and a much larger cast, it’s natural for the show to show the efforts of people on the ground to help out the stranded astronauts.

There’s also an interesting difference in how the two works present the viewer with the consequences of being stranded in space.  Gravity kills off one of its main characters in order to show the immediate danger of the situation, a decision that fits well with its narrow focus on the event itself.  Space Brothers brings everyone home alive, but later reveals that one character has developed a panic disorder that prevents him from so much as walking in a spacesuit.  This long-term effect, which the show is still dealing with, shows how a traumatic experience is not always over once the characters are out of danger.  As a weekly series, Space Brothers has the luxury of taking this much more subtle approach.

For all these differences, both works do a fine job of making smart, resourceful characters confront the imminent possibility of death and overcome the challenges set before them.  Sure, Space Brothers has some issues with slow pacing and Gravity had some moments of questionable physics, but both are worth watching if you’ve got an interest in space travel or survival stories.  They show that it doesn’t take giant robots or laser cannons to make a compelling story set beyond the confines of our little blue planet.

It’s easy to like Black Lagoon for its constant barrage of gunfights, car chases, and witty one-liners, but one of its less explosive strengths comes in the relationship between the main characters.  There’s a fascinating dynamic between Rock and Revy that develops over the course of the series, producing deadly tension and wonderfully understated friendship in equal measure.  In order to understand what makes this quasi-romantic “couple” so compelling, we need to look at these characters as individuals before analyzing how the series throws them together.

Rock may be the easiest character to cosplay in the history of anime.

Rokuro “Rock” Okajima could have very easily been an extraordinarily dull or irritating hero.  As a white-collar Japanese businessman dragged into a world of organized crime and piracy, Rock initially serves as the audience’s window into the fictional city of Roanapur.  He asks all the stupid questions necessary to fill in the story’s setting, and we learn the rules of the criminal underworld along with him.  What sets Rock apart from countless other “fish out of water” characters is how he changes as a result of his experiences.

Rock’s business experience makes him an ideal negotiator for the crew of the Black Lagoon, earning him a place on the crew of the titular torpedo boat.  This position puts him in close contact with the heavy hitters of the criminal underworld, like Balalaika and Mr. Chang.  Between these strong influences and the constant “might makes right” resolutions to the series’ plotlines, Rock slowly learns that the only way to get what he wants out of Roanapur is to become one of the people pulling the strings.  This ambition is fully realized in the most recent story arc involving the Lovelace family, which shows Rock playing organized criminals, special forces troops, and a very unstable assassin against one another to achieve his goals.  Over the space of nine volumes of manga (or two seasons and an OVA if you prefer the anime timeline), our mild-mannered viewer stand-in becomes an underworld mastermind who wouldn’t be out of place in a series like Homeland.

On the other hand, we have Revy, the heavily armed combat specialist of the Black Lagoon crew.  Like Rock, Revy begins the series as a relatively archetypal figure: the partially unhinged gunslinger with a habit of letting her handguns do the talking.  As we learn more about Revy, she becomes far more intriguing.  Leading a life of crime since childhood has given Revy plenty of street smarts, but has also left her extremely damaged from an emotional standpoint.  She’s not the type to be fooled by anyone, but that goes hand in hand with an inability to open up to other people.  For all her violent bravado, Revy harbors a great deal of doubt over her worth as a person.

Where does the cigarette smoke end and the gun smoke begin? Well played, dear illustrator.

Of course, that self-doubt certainly doesn’t stop Revy from pursuing her own priorities.  Even if she’s unhappy about the person she’s become, she’s determined to make the most of her situation, even if that means hurting others (or putting a bullet in the head of anyone who gets in her way).  Revy’s worldview has a kind of Darwinian quality to it, although she’d probably amend “survival of the fittest” to “survival of the best-armed.”  She doesn’t see herself as being above the occasional bit of grave robbery or human trafficking if it means getting a leg up on the competition.

Putting these two broken yet resourceful characters together is an obvious recipe for fireworks.  Revy takes violent exception to Rock’s idealism early in the series, while Rock is constantly infuriated by Revy’s willingness to resort to despicable acts of crime whenever she feels it’s necessary.  Eventually, this tension morphs into a tentative understanding, and they begin to rely on one another.  Revy uses Rock as a way of steadying her moral compass, and Rock comes to depend on Revy to bail him out when his desire to do good lands him in trouble.  They effectively become one another’s best way of staying sane in a crazy world.

Just as fascinating as this shift from opposition to alliance is the reversal of roles that Black Lagoon offers us in this relationship.  The action genre is filled to bursting with veteran soldiers and hitmen who rediscover their sense of right and wrong in the fight to save a damsel in distress.  In Black Lagoon, the genders of the main characters are swapped.  To borrow fairy tale imagery, the princess is the one slaying the dragon to protect the knight.  Of course, in this case, the magic sword is a pair of customized handguns and the dragon is an endless supply of bad guys with assault rifles.  Revy and Rock remind me a bit of the equally understated relationship between Ripley and Hicks in the classic science fiction film Aliens.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the “romance” between Rock and Revy is that it’s never actually treated like a romance.  There’s no sweeping confession of feelings, no kiss in the rain, and no happily ever after.  In fact, you could make a strong argument that Rock and Revy don’t have romantic feelings for one another at all.  The series is deliberately ambiguous about its heroes, leaving the audience to wonder if there’s something going on between the two of them when the camera isn’t rolling.  It’s a classy, subtle choice in a series full of gun-toting maids, arms-dealing nuns, and torpedo boats.

You can buy the manga and anime versions of Black Lagoon from Amazon.com here.