🚀 K’s COLUMN 074 : あの時代のSF作家たちの武器
SF作家はあまりにも多くいるので、ここでは日本を代表する漫画家のことを書こうと思う。
手塚治虫や石森章太郎のすごいところは、単に「こんなロボットがいたら面白い」で終わらせず、
「もし本当にこういうものが存在したら、人間社会はどうなるんだ？」
というところまで想像していた点だと思う。
「ロボットと人間の関係」や、「機械に心があったら？」「正義とは何か？」「人間と機械の境界は？」と、かなり哲学的なことを語っていた。
もしかしたら、2人は戦争体験者だったせいもあるかもしれない。
そして、終戦した年に生まれた永井豪が登場する。
一番笑えるのが、『キューティーハニー』の「空中元素固定装置」だ。
「えっ、そこから作るの！？」
しかも『キューティーハニー』は、身体そのものを変化させる、という発想まで入ってくるから、これはもう科学SFというより永井豪SFだ。
しかも変身途中に、オール・ヌードになる。
当時の子供にとっては、かなり刺激的な内容だ。
そして『マジンガーZ』の、「孫に巨大ロボットをプレゼントする祖父」という設定。
冷静に考えると、とんでもない。
普通の祖父なら、
「これ、おじいちゃんからのプレゼントだよ。自転車買ってあげたぞ」
くらいなのに、
「甲児、お前にこれをやろう。」
と言うと、格納庫の扉が開いて、自分の発明したマジンガーZが登場。
「神にも悪魔にもなれる」
と言って、しかも孫に操縦させる。
プレゼントのスケールが規格外過ぎて、どう考えてみてもおかしい。
そして最後にアフロダイAだ。
ここで永井豪ワールドが完全に別の軌道へ飛び出す。
あの「胸部からロケット」という発想は、
「なぜそこに搭載した！？」
という疑問を、読者に考えさせる余裕さえ与えない。
「そう来たか！！」
と笑わせる装置だ。
しかも『マジンガーZ』の世界は、基本的には
「巨大ロボット同士の戦い」と
「悪の科学者が企む『世界征服』から『世界の平和』を守る」
この真面目な世界観の中に、ものすごく馬鹿馬鹿しい発想を平然と置くところが、永井豪の強烈な個性なんだろう。
ヘンタイ型の極みだ。
ただし、永井豪の発想は単純に「ヘンタイ」と片付けるより、
「科学・SF・ヒーロー・ギャグ・人間の欲望・ナンセンスを全部一緒の鍋に放り込んで煮込んだもの」
という感じがする点だ。
そして、それが平然と成立してしまうのが1970年代の日本の漫画文化の凄いところなのだろう。
しかも最近話題のフィジカルAIまで来ると、
「昔の漫画家が想像した未来」と
「現実の技術」が、
少しずつ同じ地面の上に降りてきている感じがする。
これがまた面白い。
ただし、家庭用フィジカルAIにアフロダイA方式の装備だけは採用しないでほしい。
掃除ロボットが突然、
「発射します」
と言ったりなんかしたら、みんな、逃げろ！
🇬🇧 English version below
🚀 K’s COLUMN 074 : The Weapons of SF Writers in Those Days
There are far too many SF writers to talk about, so here I would like to focus on some of Japan’s representative manga artists.
What was so remarkable about Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori was that they didn’t stop at simply thinking, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if there were robots like this?”
They went as far as asking,
“What would happen to human society if something like this really existed?”
They explored rather philosophical questions such as “the relationship between robots and humans,” “What if machines had hearts?”, “What is justice?”, and “Where is the boundary between humans and machines?”
Perhaps it was partly because both of them had experienced the war.
And then along came Go Nagai, who was born in the very year the war ended.
The funniest example has to be the “Airborne Element Fixing Device” in Cutie Honey.
“Wait, you can make it from THAT!?”
And Cutie Honey even takes the idea as far as transforming the body itself, so this is no longer ordinary scientific SF.
This is pure Go Nagai SF.
And during the transformation, she becomes completely nude.
For children at the time, that was pretty shocking stuff.
Then there is the premise of Mazinger Z: a grandfather who gives his grandson a giant robot as a present.
When you stop and think about it, that is absolutely outrageous.
A normal grandfather might say,
“Here’s a present from Grandpa. I bought you a bicycle.”
But this grandfather says,
“Koji, I have something for you.”
Then the doors of a hangar open, revealing Mazinger Z, a giant robot of his own invention.
He tells him it
“can become either a god or a devil,”
and then actually lets his grandson pilot it.
The scale of this present is so completely off the charts that, however you look at it, it makes absolutely no sense.
And finally, there is Aphrodite A.
This is where the Go Nagai universe flies completely off onto another orbit.
The very idea of launching rockets from its chest doesn’t even give the reader enough time to wonder,
“Why on earth did you put them THERE!?”
Instead, it simply makes you laugh and say,
“Oh, so THAT’S where you went with it!!”
That is what the device is there to do.
And yet the world of Mazinger Z is basically built around serious SF concepts:
“giant robots fighting each other” and
“protecting world peace from the ‘world conquest’ planned by an evil scientist.”
And then, right in the middle of all that, something that flies out of the chest suddenly appears.
The fact that Nagai could calmly drop such a ridiculously silly idea into such a serious world is one of his most distinctive qualities.
It is the ultimate in his particular brand of perversity.
However, rather than dismissing Nagai’s ideas simply as “perverse,” I feel they are more like this:
“Science, SF, heroes, comedy, human desire, and nonsense—all thrown into the same pot and cooked together.”
And the fact that this could all work so effortlessly is one of the amazing things about Japanese manga culture in the 1970s.
And now that we have the physical AI everyone has been talking about lately,
“the future imagined by manga artists of the past” and
“real-world technology”
seem to be gradually coming down onto the same ground.
That is fascinating in itself.
However, I really hope they never put Aphrodite A-style equipment into household physical AI.
If a cleaning robot suddenly said,
“Preparing to launch,”
then everybody—RUN!