Born on June 18, 1934, Mitsuteru Yokoyama would be inspired to become a mangaka after reading Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis & would make his debut sometime in the mid-50s with Otonashi no Ken/The Soundless Sword, while also working in publicity for a movie studio in his home town of Kobe. He'd hit it big in 1956 with Tetsujin 28, the series generally attributed as the originator of the entire mecha genre; obviously, Yokoyama quit the movie company not long later. From that point on, Yokoyama would go on to become probably the most important mangaka in history that unfortunately gets little to no real attention in English-speaking fandom. In 1966, his manga Sally the Witch would be adapted into animation, becoming the first magical girl anime; Himitsu no Akko-chan predates Sally in terms of manga. In 1967 he debuted Giant Robo, which was made alongside a tokusatsu series he conceived, becoming an influential part of that medium. In 1969 & 1970 he debuted Iga no Kagemaru & Kamen no Ninja Akakage, which would help influence the general pop culture identity of ninja, alongside the earlier Kamui-den by Sanpei Shirato. In 1971 he debuted Babel II, an action series based around ESPers that not only helped innovate in terms of action spectacle, but also helped standardize having young teens take the starring role (as well as make the gakuran a commonly-seen outfit in such series). Finally, 1971 also saw the debut of Yokoyama's adaptation of iconic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which wound up running for 60 volumes & even went further into the timeline than "Luo Guanzhong" did with the novel! Unfortunately, Yokoyama's life would be cut short on April 15, 2004 after a fire broke out in his home, passing away at age 69. Ironically enough, Yasuhiro Imagawa's anime based on Tetsujin 28 had debuted just a week prior to his death, so his life ended with the same title that his career skyrocketed with.
However, 2021 marks the 45th Anniversary of one of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's lesser-known works, though one that has had its own surprisingly lengthy legacy to it. So this March we take a look at Yokoyama's Mars, and the two direct anime adaptations it received.
Debuting in early 1976 in the pages of Weekly Shonen Champion magazine, which had previously serialized Babel II, Mars (not to be confused with the 1996-2000 shojo manga of the same name by Fuyumi Soryo, which even used ever-so-slightly different katakana) is a sci-fi series that would only run for a single year, totaling five volumes; Yokoyama even joked about how often he went back to the genre over & over in the author's notes. However, it wound up having a remarkable post-manga life to it, arguably more so than some of Yokoyama's more iconic works. First, anime studio TMS would ask Yokoyama for permission to make an anime based on Mars, with Yokoyama not only allowing it, but even going so far as to say "Do whatever you like with it". The end result was late 1981's Rokushin Gattai/Six Gods Combining God Mars, a TV mech anime simply based on Mars' general concept, but wound up becoming so massively successful (partially due to female fans falling in love with main character Takeru Myojin & his enemy/brother Marg, all despite the mech designs generally being absolutely terrible) that it was extended beyond its original planned length, ending in late 1982 after 64 episodes (making it one of the longer single-run mech anime in history), plus a recap movie & a Marg-focused OVA. To this day, God Mars is easily the most well known version of Mars, but since it's so wildly different in execution (not to mention its sheer length) I'll only make the occasional reference to it during this month. Then, in 1994, KSS Films would take a more direct approach & produce an OVA adaptation more directly based on Yokoyama's original manga, but poor sales resulted in only two episodes ever being made; we'll get into more detail regarding this OVA next time. Finally, in 2002, Mars was given a third anime adaptation, the 13-episode TV series Shin Seiki Den Mars, as part of AT-X's "Famous Author Series" of anime productions, which we'll get to last via Retrospect in Retrograde; this is generally considered the most accurate of the adaptations. From the 70s to the 00s, Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Mars saw life once every single decade it existed, only for the streak to end this past decade with the 2010s.
So to celebrate the manga's 45th Anniversary, let's first take a look at Yokoyama's original manga, which was fully fan translated some years ago, & see what made it so appealing that it kept coming back over & over & over almost every decade.
A new island off the coast of Japan has suddenly emerged due to a submarine volcano eruption, with the country calling it Autumn Island, and a reporter named Iwakura does a live news report of it via helicopter. Against all logic, Iwakura & the pilot notice that a young man is somehow on the newly-emerged island, who is promptly rescued & taken to a hospital in Tokyo, where he's deemed physically fine but is unable to speak. Meanwhile, in New York City, six men gather together because of the news of this mysterious man, who they call "Mars" & was not supposed to "awaken" for a hundred years, though "Titan" looks to remain inactive. The Director of the hospital decides to take the man home with him, with hopes that maybe interaction with his daughter Harumi will help restore his memories & voice... only for "Mars" to start speaking upon arriving at the Director's home, while at the same time a giant figure rises out of the water near Autumn Island. In reality, Mars is a part of an alien race that came to Earth millennia ago to see if humanity might become too dangerous for space travel, and after the giant robot Titan is destroyed after awakening, another robot named Gaia awakens. Mars is left with an ultimatum: Either command Gaia to blow up the Earth... or the six men who are his fellow aliens & their "Six Gods" will hunt after Mars & kill him, making Gaia self-destruct & blow up the Earth.
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| I mean, the man has a point... |
The concept of humanity being put on trial by aliens, both rhetorical & literal, is a well worn storytelling concept, and even by the time Yokoyama debuted Mars it wasn't anything brand new, as Osamu Tezuka tackled the concept a decade prior with 1965's Wonder 3/The Amazing 3. What Yokoyama brings to the table with this manga, though, is much more of a directly combative style, as Mars first asks the "Observers" (as they seem to be referred to today, though they aren't called that directly in the manga) for 10 days so that he can research the history of humanity & decide for himself, only to decide that humanity is worth protecting and that he'll fight back against the Six Gods using Gaia. This results in Mars' (now ex-)comrades taking command of the Six Gods as each one takes on Mars in its own way. Uranus can cover Japan in a never-ending blizzard of snow & create vacuum vortexes to suffocate Mars. The Sphinx (yes, the Sphinx of Giza is actually a secret alien weapon) can create sandstorms, cause its victims to see multiple illusions of itself, & emit heat like that of the surface of the Sun, even melting all of Egypt to show its might! The third God (the only one to not actually get a name, oddly enough) is an airborne robot that attacks Mars while he's on a plane on his way back after fighting the Sphinx, & attacks by way of "electric bombs". Due to its lack of name here, the third God has a variety of names depending on where it's adapted, like Helios (Mars OVA), Sensor Hunter (Shin Seiki Den Mars), Michael (Babel II: The Returner)... or Sally (Giant Robo OVA). Sin looks somewhat like a clay figure & has the tightest opportunity to kill Mars, as his own body is breaking down on a cellular level after the fight with the third God, & it fights using energy blasts & has shields powerful enough to survive against Gaia longer than the other Gods. Meanwhile, the submarine-like Uraeus attacks Autumn Island, since it's the only place that can fully heal Mars, before eventually flying in the sky & attacking Tokyo itself. Finally, Ra acts a final harbinger in a continued attack on Tokyo, showing Mars the true horror that is humanity as the people he has fought to protect now turn against him.
What's interesting, though, is that all these giant robots would make one think that Mars is done in the style of a traditional mech anime, as the original super robot standards of which were being more than established around this time, and this is the direction that God Mars would go in. However, you'd be wrong about this, at least in regards to how Mars & Gaia work. While the Six Gods are indeed piloted, Gaia is instead more along the lines of Yokoyama's prior Tetsujin 28 or Giant Robo (only without any "Gao!" roars), though Mars has no need for any sort of remote control or communication device to command Gaia; he needs only shout Gaia's name, and the giant responds. However, Mars still tries his best to take on the Six Gods on his own, since his kind already have powers like super speed, super strength, the ability to breathe underwater, & (in Mars' case) being able to shoot out his hairs like mini projectiles. That being said, he's still just a humanoid standing against a variety of giant robots, so Gaia usually winds up coming to Mars' rescue, though at least once Mars covertly leads his opponent for Gaia to finish off. As for Gaia itself, it's portrayed as more or less a godlike being, capable of shooting out "photon bombs" that destroy anything they touch, and doesn't really do much actual movement since it floats most of the time. The most bodily movement it does is open its arms wide, either to shoot out bombs or to magnetically pull in its foe, so that it can essentially hug it until it explodes. Also, interestingly enough, Yokoyama doesn't actually reveal what Gaia truly looks like until early into Volume 3, with its initial appearances seeing it covered with sea shells, due to it being dormant in the ocean of thousands of years.
In the midst of these battles between Mars & the Observers, there's also a subplot in which Iwakura heads back to Autumn Island to see if he can find out the secrets regarding Mars & his kind that can possibly help save the Earth. Iwakura winds up getting himself locked in the underground lab that Mars was hibernating in, leaving him all alone as he tries to cipher together the language of Mars' people, even resorting to cooking his own leather shoes for sustenance. That being said, this does result in a bit of an odd time scale, as Iwakura doesn't head out to Autumn Island until after the fight with Uranus, just shortly before Mars heads to (what remains of) Egypt to take on the Sphinx, yet while Mars' remaining battles feel like they take place over the course of just a few days, at most, Iwakura starts growing a full-on beard rather quickly while locked in the lab, making it seem like he's been stuck there for at least a few weeks; it's stated in Volume 4 that he's been in there for 10 days by that point, but I don't buy it. Really, though, those are your main two plot threads throughout the story, resulting in the manga having only really two primary characters, Mars & Iwakura, with everyone else merely playing supporting roles when necessary. Even Harumi & her father wind up becoming less prominent as the story advances, even though they played notable roles early on.
A notable thing about Mars as a story, though, is how Yokoyama handles the pacing, because I think it actually works for the best. The entire first volume is nothing but set up, showing Iwakura's discovery of Mars, bringing him to Japan & then the Director's home, the Observers finding out about Mars' early awakening, one of them going to Mars personally to explain who he is & what his intended mission is, & it ends mere moments before the 10 days Mars asked for come to an end. It's not that there isn't any action to be found, but it's just Titan's awakening & recon mission resulting in it being destroyed by a underwater nuclear missile fired by the Americans (because who else would go to the nuclear option, am I right?), though the Six Gods' awakening is hinted at by way of their resting places being opened up suddenly; however, Titan's the only robot ever seen in this first volume. After that, though, the remaining volumes are all about Mars having to deal with the Six Gods one at a time, though Iwakura's own discovery behind the real purpose of Titan, Gaia, & the Six Gods helps add some neat wrinkles to the story that prevent it from feeling repetitive. Also, while it's never really explained why the Observers don't just attack Mars all at once (aside from the Sphinx being stated as being unable to reach Japan, since it can't fly), one can easily come to their own conclusions based on how Yokoyama handles characterization, which is that old-school reliance on archetypes.
As the lead, Mars is a very trusting young man with a strong sense of doing what is right, and his decision to protect humanity, in spite of all of the horrible things it's done throughout history, mainly comes down to the simple fact that said acts are recorded & known for the future to learn from, so that they can never be done again. In comparison, the Observers feel that humanity will never learn from its mistakes & while they were willing to give Earth another another century until Mars was originally meant to awaken, the fact that they're so bad already (&, to be fair, we haven't changed that much 45 years later) makes them unwilling to go against their mission. However, there's obviously still a rigid dedication to the alien culture of Mars & the Observers, as regardless of all of the horrible things they've seen humanity do over the literal centuries+ of time, they still stuck to the plan & left things up to Mars & Gaia. Likewise, even when they decide to kill Mars & force Earth's destruction, they challenge him individually, and it's likely because they don't want to come off as hypocritical & behave just as brutish & horrible as humanity. In short, while they want to blow up an entire planet & kill off an entire race of existence, they do so out of a sense of honor & duty, and to just have the Observers sextuple-team Mars & force Gaia's explosion like that wouldn't make them any better than the beings they want to eradicate from the universe. Combine that with the information that Iwakura eventually finds out, and all of a sudden the one-on-one combat actually makes perfect sense. Obviously, there's a bit of suspension of disbelief to be had, but at least here you can see the logic behind it, even if Yokoyama doesn't outright state it.
As for the rest of the cast... well, there really isn't much of one. Iwakura's the closest thing to a major supporting role, due to his proactive attempts at finding out the secrets behind Mars, Gaia, & the Six Gods, but he winds up being locked in a single (if pretty large) room all by himself for a good majority of the manga, so it's not like his actions have an active effect on Mars' battles against the Observers. Beyond that, it's just Harumi & her father, who only really appear in the first two volumes & then literally just stop appearing, & a handful of officials or doctors who aren't given actual names. In fact, Yokoyama only gives a single, solitary Observer an actual name with Miro, who pilots the Sphinx, as all the other Observers simply wind up just communicating via their respective Gods' names; much like the third God, this would be rectified with later works. And, really, that pretty much matches with Mitsuteru Yokoyama's style of storytelling, which in turn reflects the simpler days of manga storytelling, in general. Mars hyper-focuses on its titular lead & his plight & battles, while everyone else plays their roles in expected ways so that the plot can quickly revert back to the lead, while Iwakura's subplot allows for some good surprise reveals later on that still don't take Mars himself away from what he should be doing, which is taking on the Six Gods. Compared to the stories of today this is a relatively simple story that doesn't really mess with what works, but at the same time there still is a feeling of timelessness to it, making it still fun to read today, and the ending is a sudden one that shows just how important a mere moment can be, because literally anything can change in an instant.
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| I feel ya, Iwakura... |
Also, it's not like Yokoyama didn't make Mars without making the reader reflect on something bigger, thematically. The Cold War was still in full swing come 1976, and with it a lingering feeling of if the world might just come to an end at any point, partially because of hatred towards "the other" & an unwillingness (or inability) to just talk it out before coming to blows. While Mars starts off as relatively benign in that respect, come the last two volumes the feeling of trust between Mars & the Japanese military/government (which Mars works almost exclusively with) weakens more & more, and it's solely because of the latter. The more the military learns of the truth behind Mars & his original mission, the less they trust him, despite Mars never knowing any of it himself, simply because they fear of what he might do SHOULD he suddenly remember, i.e. "Once a _______, always a _______". Meanwhile, once the general populace of Tokyo find out about Mars (& what he truly is) they turn on him, since they can now assign blame & hatred over the destruction of their own lives to a singular being, especially when it's one that they can treat as "the other", only made all the worse when the military decide that the only way to stop people who don't listen to them is to simply shoot to kill. Combine all of that with the signs of humanity always wanting to simply fight what it doesn't understand, like how the Americans destroyed Titan & set all of this into motion or how Iwakura almost gets killed instead of rescued because he can't disengage the lab's defense systems, and it becomes obvious that Yokoyama was telling his readers that we should be more trusting of one another. I mean, if humanity can't possibly showcase themselves as being worth protecting, even when at their lowest points, then what's even the purpose of Mars fighting for them?
Finally, there's Yokoyama's artwork, which is similar to that of Osamu Tezuka or Shotaro Ishinomori in that it has a relatively simple & straight to the point look, and truly can be best described as "classic". Yokoyama's character designs are easily readable & full of unique looks, making it extremely easy to get a bead on someone's emotions instantly, and facial reactions are all extremely strong. Meanwhile, environments are drawn well, really helping it feel like Mars is going all over the place in his battles. As for the mech designs, it really comes down to how you feel about going against any sense of "the grain". I mean, Uranus is literally nothing more than a giant head scowling at everything, Uraeus looks like a pair of googly eyes wearing a hat when it flies in the sky, Ra is a giant black orb that can extend out metal electric tentacles, and I can't even properly describe what the third God even looks like, because it's so weird (just look at the third image in this review to see why)! However, the more "standard" looking robots, like Gaia, Titan, Sin, & the Sphinx, all look extremely cool, and there's a heavy Egyptian motif to most of them, which makes it all the more awkwardly amusing that Yokoyama outright destroys Egypt in Volume 2. However, Mars' strongest visual legacy is by far the fact that many of its characters & robots have made numerous appearances in other works, as I indicated earlier. Most notable would be their inclusions in Yasuhiro Imagawa's Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still, which features half of the Six Gods & Gaia in slightly altered forms with different names, while the Observer who pilots the third God would be "recast" as fan favorite villain Alberto the Impact; amusingly enough, Mars himself doesn't appear at all in Imagawa's Giant Robo.
In the end, it's really easy to see why Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Mars wound up being a manga that would see interpretations over the course of three different decades. It's a high-concept idea at its heart, but as the story advances it doles out both frenetic action sequences that mix things up with each encounter as well as new tidbits of plot that introduce new details, revealing just enough of a multi-faceted story that the reader can chew on. Said high-concept is enough for it to be wildly reinvented with God Mars, but the manga's actual thematic concepts, especially that of how how incapable humanity can possibly be at preventing its own destruction, are honestly still relevant in today's society, resulting in a story that can be adapted over & over,. You really don't even need to update things too much to reflect modern times, because some of the stuff Yokoyama shows still rings horribly true today. Not just that, but I honestly hope that Mars wound up being an influence on some iconic anime directors, most notably Yoshiyuki Tomino & Hideaki Anno, as the final pages of Mars really feel like a direct inspiration for the endings of Muteki Chojin Zambot 3 & End of Evangelion in some ways. Sure, you can bring up how Go Nagai's Devilman may have also been an influence on Yokoyama for Mars in some ways, but the main difference is that Nagai showed humanity fall to its worst over time, whereas Yokoyama showed that humanity was already there, and only needed a single instant to show itself.
It's a shame that, when compared to other legendary mangaka like Osamu Tezuka, Leiji Matsumoto, Go Nagai, & even Shotaro Ishinomori, Mitsuteru Yokoyama is effectively an unknown in North American fandom, despite Tetsujin 28 being an early hit anime here as Gigantor & Yasuhiro Imagawa's Giant Robo OVA (which itself is a gigantic love letter to Yokoyama & his catalog) being a beloved cult classic. Just consider this: To my knowledge, not a single Yokoyama manga has ever been licensed for English release in North America; any & all English translations are ones done by fans. Honestly, if an English manga publisher was willing to give Mitsuteru Yokoyama a try, Mars really wouldn't be a bad choice to start with, both due to its short length as well as its themes that still remain poignant today. Regardless, with the manga out of the way, next time we'll move over to the year 1994 & see how KSS Films handled the first direct adaptation of Yokoyama's minor classic.
Manga © Mitsuteru Yokoyama 1976-1977
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