Post by Timotheus on Aug 25, 2005 23:53:02 GMT -5
For some reason known but to him, Mr. Fujishima seems to have a thing for Sea Slugs. They keep showing up at random intervals. The first time was in I'm the Campus Queen, Dark Horse Manga Mania #13, TPB-3, Kodansha chapter #15, Vol. 2, November, 1989. This story is set during the fall (or school) festival in October on the Nekomi campus and I'm going to spend a few (ha!!) words on what that means before getting into the sea slug angle. Trust me, it'll make the rest of this easier to follow.
Academic festivals in Japan have been covered in a lot of manga and anime (you can't have a Jr. High School Girl story without one). And they are a important part of the academic experience over there. The universities have their own versions of them, one in each term. The spring, or welcoming ceremony in April and the fall, or school festival in September/ October. Both events are student run, student organized, campus sanctioned holidays with similar objectives; to provide campus clubs and organizations with an opportunity to get their message (if any) out, let other students know they exist (aka - recruiting), score PR points for their organization, and (if possible) make some money.
The spring welcoming festival is oriented more toward recruiting and jockeying for position, there are new freshmen to be enticed into the ranks and gaps in the old social order left by the graduated seniors to be filled. The fall school festival is more organizational and informational. Recruiting is still a big part, but by now everyone's established what each organization is, so this is the time to improve your social standing. Scoring some big event to run, like the Campus Queen Contest, is worth big status points but usually will put a big hole in your treasury. So a club needs deep pockets to do that sort of thing often. Otherwise a club or group is assigned a location and its up to them to create a booth of some sort there.
These booths may or may not have anything to do with what the club or organization is about. The first order of business is to get people to come to the booth so you can talk to them about your club, the second is to try and get the booth to pay for itself if possible and maybe make a little bit more. (Especially important if your group or club is usually strapped for funds.) Therefore, these student booths take on a bewildering range of guises as innovation and creativity go head to head with money and resources. From complex structures to folding tables and chairs to blankets on the sidewalk, from sound stage pavilions to shopping bazaars to food stands to carnival games to sandwich boards and handout sheets, from full costumed productions to cos-play specials to "we were supposed to dress up?" from multi-screen light shows to girls in bunny suits to traditional shadow puppets to "Hello, I would like to tell you about..." In short, like the war between the gods and the demons, only the taking of life is prohibited in an all out assault on the attention and wallets of their fellow students. Anything else goes.
Any of this causing any Oh/Ah! My Goddess! plots or scenes to click into place? I've heard from people who've been to them that Mr. Fujishime isn't exagerating all that much in his illustrations of what goes on at these events.
Anyway, back to sea slugs. About two thirds through the story "I'm The Campus Queen" there's a scene where Urd is getting her last contest clues from one of these student booths. The stand has an unhappy looking student holding up a sign that says "Sea Slug Bob" followed by a series of decreasing prices and consists of a number of fish tanks containing sea slugs (but no grill to cook on) and Urd also has a live sea slug in a transport bag tied to her wrist.
It's obvious the sign was changed by Dark Horse when the story was translated, and for reasons I'll get into shortly I was wondering what the sign was originally. Was it for some sort of student sea slug club? (or Educational society as they're often refered to in Japan, sounds more intellectual.) So I finally took Mr. Carl Horn of Dark Horse fame up on his offer and E-Mailed him about this. His reply,
"The sign you refer to originally read, "namako-sukui," or "slug scooping," a parody of the popular Japanese festival game where you try to scoop a goldfish to take home as a pet. You were onto something when you noticed there was no grill. I appreciate your pointing this out, and I will change it back to the game in the new version; I think I'll call it "Scoop-A-Slug."
Anyway, that's sea slug appearance number one. Number two was discovered by Hojoin on the Dark Horse Manga Mania forum. He was systematically going through the stories running signs and labels through a translation program and came up with this. In the story The Lunch Box Of Love, Dark Horse issue V-2,
TPB-8, Kodansha chapter #49, Vol. 8, September, 1992, where Sora Hasegowa has asked Belldandy to help her learn how to prepare an edible meal, one of the boxes in Belldandy's kitchen seen behind Banpei in his "new three-star chief attachment set" is labeled as a case of preserved sea slugs. So either they're reusing the box or someone in the Morisato household REALLY has a thing for sea slugs.
Number three, at the start of Meet Me By The Seashore, Dark Horse issue V-3, TPB-9, Kodansha chapter #50, Vol. 8, October, 1992, while Keiichi is philosophizing about September at the seashore and goddess immunity to jellyfish, Urd comes over and drops a couple of sea slugs on him. This doesn't seem to unduely upset Keiichi, and while we never learn how Urd obtained the sea slugs (Its doubtful she'd held onto them since the "I'm the Campus Queen" story.) nor what happens to them after their brief stay atop Keiichi, we can assume they continued to live long and uneventful lives and probably bored their fellow slugs no end with their wild stories about what happened to them "that day."
The fourth manga appearance was in The Race Gets Hot, A Goddess Gets Hotter!, Dark Horse issue 111, TPB-19/20, Kodansha chapter #125, Vol. 20. January, 1999. In the scene where Keiichi has to stop in front of the women's locker room and wonders if they'd let him through if he paid a toll, there's a weird looking creature on a poster to the right of the door. Dark Horse has translated the text around it to read, "Our models are sick! Technicolor Dreamcoat Sea Slug! The Sea Slug Society." How accurate this is is debateble, but it's another sea slug. And an important one, because this very same poster is on the bulletin board in the Ah! My Goddess! movie!
Just to the left of the recruiting poster Keiichi is putting up and right above a sign that reads "Blood Horse" is a poster with the same critter drawn on it and the text has been translated as being in part, "The Sea Slug Educational Society." This was a somewhat new development, as previously the manga references in the movie were from previous chapters. This was from a 1999 manga episode, so it's highly likely the film was already drawn at that point and in this case it's a movie reference in the manga.
Now, if the booth in "I'm the Campus Queen" was for a Nekomi campus sea slug club, and the posters are for a Nekomi campus sea slug club, that makes these a connected internal reference within the story, which I live to track down. (And Mr. Fujishima LOVES hiding this kind of stuff in his stories, as I'm sure you know.)
So that's four sea slug references in the manga, and one in the movie. If anyone knows of another please let me know.
Academic festivals in Japan have been covered in a lot of manga and anime (you can't have a Jr. High School Girl story without one). And they are a important part of the academic experience over there. The universities have their own versions of them, one in each term. The spring, or welcoming ceremony in April and the fall, or school festival in September/ October. Both events are student run, student organized, campus sanctioned holidays with similar objectives; to provide campus clubs and organizations with an opportunity to get their message (if any) out, let other students know they exist (aka - recruiting), score PR points for their organization, and (if possible) make some money.
The spring welcoming festival is oriented more toward recruiting and jockeying for position, there are new freshmen to be enticed into the ranks and gaps in the old social order left by the graduated seniors to be filled. The fall school festival is more organizational and informational. Recruiting is still a big part, but by now everyone's established what each organization is, so this is the time to improve your social standing. Scoring some big event to run, like the Campus Queen Contest, is worth big status points but usually will put a big hole in your treasury. So a club needs deep pockets to do that sort of thing often. Otherwise a club or group is assigned a location and its up to them to create a booth of some sort there.
These booths may or may not have anything to do with what the club or organization is about. The first order of business is to get people to come to the booth so you can talk to them about your club, the second is to try and get the booth to pay for itself if possible and maybe make a little bit more. (Especially important if your group or club is usually strapped for funds.) Therefore, these student booths take on a bewildering range of guises as innovation and creativity go head to head with money and resources. From complex structures to folding tables and chairs to blankets on the sidewalk, from sound stage pavilions to shopping bazaars to food stands to carnival games to sandwich boards and handout sheets, from full costumed productions to cos-play specials to "we were supposed to dress up?" from multi-screen light shows to girls in bunny suits to traditional shadow puppets to "Hello, I would like to tell you about..." In short, like the war between the gods and the demons, only the taking of life is prohibited in an all out assault on the attention and wallets of their fellow students. Anything else goes.
Any of this causing any Oh/Ah! My Goddess! plots or scenes to click into place? I've heard from people who've been to them that Mr. Fujishime isn't exagerating all that much in his illustrations of what goes on at these events.
Anyway, back to sea slugs. About two thirds through the story "I'm The Campus Queen" there's a scene where Urd is getting her last contest clues from one of these student booths. The stand has an unhappy looking student holding up a sign that says "Sea Slug Bob" followed by a series of decreasing prices and consists of a number of fish tanks containing sea slugs (but no grill to cook on) and Urd also has a live sea slug in a transport bag tied to her wrist.
It's obvious the sign was changed by Dark Horse when the story was translated, and for reasons I'll get into shortly I was wondering what the sign was originally. Was it for some sort of student sea slug club? (or Educational society as they're often refered to in Japan, sounds more intellectual.) So I finally took Mr. Carl Horn of Dark Horse fame up on his offer and E-Mailed him about this. His reply,
"The sign you refer to originally read, "namako-sukui," or "slug scooping," a parody of the popular Japanese festival game where you try to scoop a goldfish to take home as a pet. You were onto something when you noticed there was no grill. I appreciate your pointing this out, and I will change it back to the game in the new version; I think I'll call it "Scoop-A-Slug."
Anyway, that's sea slug appearance number one. Number two was discovered by Hojoin on the Dark Horse Manga Mania forum. He was systematically going through the stories running signs and labels through a translation program and came up with this. In the story The Lunch Box Of Love, Dark Horse issue V-2,
TPB-8, Kodansha chapter #49, Vol. 8, September, 1992, where Sora Hasegowa has asked Belldandy to help her learn how to prepare an edible meal, one of the boxes in Belldandy's kitchen seen behind Banpei in his "new three-star chief attachment set" is labeled as a case of preserved sea slugs. So either they're reusing the box or someone in the Morisato household REALLY has a thing for sea slugs.
Number three, at the start of Meet Me By The Seashore, Dark Horse issue V-3, TPB-9, Kodansha chapter #50, Vol. 8, October, 1992, while Keiichi is philosophizing about September at the seashore and goddess immunity to jellyfish, Urd comes over and drops a couple of sea slugs on him. This doesn't seem to unduely upset Keiichi, and while we never learn how Urd obtained the sea slugs (Its doubtful she'd held onto them since the "I'm the Campus Queen" story.) nor what happens to them after their brief stay atop Keiichi, we can assume they continued to live long and uneventful lives and probably bored their fellow slugs no end with their wild stories about what happened to them "that day."
The fourth manga appearance was in The Race Gets Hot, A Goddess Gets Hotter!, Dark Horse issue 111, TPB-19/20, Kodansha chapter #125, Vol. 20. January, 1999. In the scene where Keiichi has to stop in front of the women's locker room and wonders if they'd let him through if he paid a toll, there's a weird looking creature on a poster to the right of the door. Dark Horse has translated the text around it to read, "Our models are sick! Technicolor Dreamcoat Sea Slug! The Sea Slug Society." How accurate this is is debateble, but it's another sea slug. And an important one, because this very same poster is on the bulletin board in the Ah! My Goddess! movie!
Just to the left of the recruiting poster Keiichi is putting up and right above a sign that reads "Blood Horse" is a poster with the same critter drawn on it and the text has been translated as being in part, "The Sea Slug Educational Society." This was a somewhat new development, as previously the manga references in the movie were from previous chapters. This was from a 1999 manga episode, so it's highly likely the film was already drawn at that point and in this case it's a movie reference in the manga.
Now, if the booth in "I'm the Campus Queen" was for a Nekomi campus sea slug club, and the posters are for a Nekomi campus sea slug club, that makes these a connected internal reference within the story, which I live to track down. (And Mr. Fujishima LOVES hiding this kind of stuff in his stories, as I'm sure you know.)
So that's four sea slug references in the manga, and one in the movie. If anyone knows of another please let me know.