Gengen ♥ Sci-Fi

By Satoshi Maejima, Light Novel/Sci-Fi Journalist

Gengen Kusano is a new sci-fi author. In the post-Project Itoh age, new sci-fi authors are not that uncommon (maybe). With the revival of the Hayakawa Sci-fi Contest, the number of sci-fi writers is increasing without limit (one can hope). But Gengen Kusano’s debut stands out from that crowd of other authors...

Gengen Kusano received the 4th Hayakawa Sci-fi Contents Special Award for the titular story of this collection, Last and First Idol, in 2016. Even for an award for new authors, your ordinary writer wouldn’t have people say things like the time Yukikaze’s Chohei Kambayashi said, “Honestly, when I saw it was a candidate for the final round, I thought there must be some mistake,” or when SF Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Yoshihiro Shiozawa, said, “The first third is simply abysmal quality for a work of literature.” And no matter how talented a newbie, news of the award being given alone wouldn’t cause a Twitter storm. Yet despite that, when this work received that special award, that very fact became huge news, spreading throughout the subculture.

After all, this story...

Previously on Love Live!!

Just as my second year of high school started, I was told my school was shutting down.

“What will happen to my glittering school life!?”

The only way to stop it shutting down was to increase the number of students coming in. So I decided to join the current wave of school idols, and help sell my school to the world! But...

“You can’t be an idol!” “You have to think carefully about what’s best for you.”

But I still want to do something for my school! I won’t give up! I’m gonna make this happen!

From Love Live: Episode 2: Let’s Start Being Idols!

This story was a fanfiction rewrite of a famous and popular idol anime, Love Live! (from which the above summary is taken). Which made it the most problematic submission in the history of the contest. The original title was Last and First Yazawa. It first appeared at a Love Live only event (Bokura no Love Live! 7) held on March 15th, 2015, in a doujinshi (School Idol Fictionally) published by a group calling themselves the Otonokizaka High School Sci-Fi Club.

“A story that started as idol anime fanfiction received a special award at the prestigious and storied Hawakawa Sci-fi Awards!” That news tore through the internet. When the winning entry was published as an ebook on November 22nd, 2016, the reaction was even bigger. After all, the content was nothing like what you’d expect from the words ‘idol anime fanfiction.’

An aspiring idol who meets an untimely death and is brought back by her med-student friend as a bizarre monster, and to adapt to the destructive changes in the Earth’s environment she must alter herself, evolving, and eventually setting off for outer space... Gengen Kusano himself described it as, “A work about the universe, consciousness, and the solution to the mystery of idols, inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men and Star Maker” and “An existential widescreen yuri baroque proletariat hard sci-fi idol story.” What, at a glance, appears to be strings of meaningless sentences turned out to be entirely purposeful. (Incidentally, the original version’s opening is available on the art sharing site pixiv: https://www.pixiv.net/novel/show.php?id=4992326. The story plays out much the same as the revised edition, only with the Love Live! Characters Nico Yazawa and Maki Nishikino — or Nicomaki — only when Nico-nii is hit by a truck, Maki-chan removes her brain and spinal column from the body.)

Despite this shocking content, or perhaps because of it, the work hit number one on Amazon’s ebook rankings. Not only that, it walked away with the 48th Seiun Award (Japanese short story division), as voted on by sci-fi fans who participate in the Japanese SF Convention. This placed it at the pinnacle of all sci-fi short stories written in Japanese and published in 2016. For a new author’s debut work to score a Seiun Award hasn’t happened in 42 years, since Masaki Yamada’s Kamigari.

While this work provoked some harsh responses from the Sci-fi Contest jury, how did it end up with such widespread support?

...let me go on a tangent, here.

Since the start of the 21st century, otaku culture has suddenly been mainstreamed. It’s totally normal for high school students, college students, and grown-ups alike to watch anime. Despite the permeation and spread of otaku culture, among its supporters are some ‘bad’ otaku. These men (and women) obviously love cute girls, and adore 2D characters and voice actors and idols, but they have equal love for other genres like sci-fi, mysteries, or horror, and it is not unusual for them to have specialized education in history, military, information technology, biology, etc. This, in and of itself, is perfectly normal. People are multifaceted and have varied interests. What makes the ‘bad’ otaku ‘bad’ is that rather than love each genre on its own, they plot to combine them at the slightest opportunity. If an anime full of cute girls gives them the smallest excuse, they’ll instantly latch onto it. The second they sense that potential, they pounce, dragging things into their own specialties, coming up with all sorts of logic to back it, and twisting it into something tasteless and grotesque. For example, “There are no men in that anime because all mankind was wiped out in a nuclear war, and the school is an AI utopia replicated within a nuclear shelter...” or “The reason the male commander leading the fighting bishojo never shows himself is because he’s actually already dead and the girls carry on their pointless war because they just can’t admit it...” or “XXX doesn’t actually exist! Reality and fiction are blurred! Soba eaten standing! Dogs!” etc. Even now, the bad otaku are among us, posting their dread missives to social media.

An adorable story about cute girls singing, dancing, following their dreams, working hard... An idol anime like that was fused with a hard sci-fi story about unnatural human evolution. This is what Gengen Kusano has done, and the readers gleefully yelling, “Why would you combine THOSE!?” are really birds of a feather. Most likely, his creation lies at the end of the road lined by the bad otaku’s dread missives. But Gengen Kusano’s ‘bad’ is beyond the pale. Where your ordinary bad otaku would limit their dreck to 140 characters, allowing it to amount to little more than a joke, a harmless prank, this dastardly villain actually followed through.

Depicting a world in which a solar flare of unknown cause brings the Earth to the brink of destruction, leading to the birth of a new ecosystem of man-made creatures, and the unnatural idol who evolves to adapt to it, the story is based on serious scientific research. As bizarre as it is, it isn’t ‘anything goes.’ What appears to be unfettered evolution is connected by the question of where consciousness comes from, and that in turn goes from the macro level of the Earth’s consciousness, of the universe’s consciousness, down to the micro level with the reader’s own (my own) consciousness, explaining clearly the Monopole Super Flare that started everything, and bringing things to a striking close. The gap between ‘just a joke’ and reality, bridged with careful logic and research, makes it a true work of science fiction. The intersection of that logic and research takes this ‘joke’ to the furthest reaches of the galaxy and makes this story a masterpiece. A joke carried to violent extremes. A realm reached at the limits of one’s passions. Last and First Idol is a work that pulls all of that off.

Any bad otaku immersed in idol culture and otaku culture, but also an avid sci-fi fan, will likely have thought about merging idols and hard sci-fi at least once, and dreamed of pulling off that perfect crime. But it was Gengen Kusano who actually did it. Born in 1990, he is still in his twenties, and many from his generation must be gnashing their teeth, wailing, “I should have written that!” If I had been in his generation, I’m absolutely certain I would be one of them.

The opinions voiced by the Sci-fi Contest jury were certainly not all negative ones. The critic Hiroshi Azuma said, “Personally, I gave it full marks,” and “It’s certainly stupid sci-fi, but the pacing of the writing makes it fun. The space theory and neural network design were appealing.” The writer Issui Ogawa said, “This is more sci-fi than any other work here,” and “A flower grown from the breeding ground of idol culture matured on the internet, nourished by the vines of sci-fi until it bloomed — only in sci-fi could you attempt something so insane.” I’m sure the fans who cast their Seiun Award votes for this title would nod their heads in agreement.

Finally, the book version of Last and First Idol is the first short story collection Gengen Kusano has released as an author. In addition to the title story, it collects two additional short stories, both of which follow up on the concept of fusing otaku culture with hard sci-fi.

The second piece, Evolution Girls, is about an adult woman named Youko Sasajima, a whale in a mobile game named Evolution Girls (Evo Gals for short) based on anthropomorphized prehistoric creatures. She gets hit by a truck and reborn in the world of the game. Following on the heels of Last and First Idol, this was originally published as an ebook in 2017. (Evo Gals itself resembles the 2017 smash hit anime Kemono Friends. Kusano has also written an essay titled, “Why Kemono Friends is Amaaazing Sci-fi!” https://cakes.mu/posts/15376.)

But the world Youko is reborn in is like Evo Gals, yet not Evo Gals. When these Girls pull on the gacha they obtain organs like microtubules and mitochondria; evolving their own bodies, they feed off each other, with only the fittest surviving. Youko pulls on the gacha in exchange for her “health, lifespan, volition, and existence,” transforming herself into a bizarre monster. The content could be described as a variation on the themes of Last and First Idol, but with a mobile game as its subject he brings in battles against and alongside other Girls. Gengen Kusano gave an interview to SF Magazine in which he advocated for calling the genre ‘widescreen yuri baroque,’ claiming that the work closest to it was Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Compared with his previous work, the yuri elements are more thickly applied, a sign the author is putting into practice what he preaches. But the work is not just yuri; it is also widescreen and baroque; much like his debut work, the scale is enormous and it concludes by explaining the relationship between mobile games, free will, and the universe itself. To riff on a line from the anime in question, “I want to eliminate all mobile games before they’re born. All mobile games in the universe, in the past and in the future, with my own hand.” There are many (myself included) who have blown themselves up on gacha so many times yet remain addicted to mobile games, and this story worms its way into our hearts like a religious text preaching gospel. Gengen Kusano really has his thumb on his own people.

The third story, which appears here for the first time, is Dark Seiyuu. Following idols, mobile games (and Friends) this story, as the title says, is seiyuu themed — as if to go, what else could complete the trio? In a world where the universe is filled with aether, and gravity only exists in limited locations, seiyuu have become beings able to pull limitless energy from the aether. Genetic manipulation has resulted in them having a bizarre external organ, the laryngeal sac, and they’re treated like livestock or spaceship parts. As always, a grim setting, but the story itself revolves around a seiyuu named Akane, who is killing other seiyuu and stealing their sacs so she can become the ultimate seiyuu, and the mysterious figure who stands before her, the Dark Seiyuu. One of the most spectacular sequences involves the scene just after their fight, where the Earth’s gravity fails; quite a shocking twist. It carefully simulates what would happen if gravity suddenly ceased to exist, describing the awful spectacle of a 500 meter per second wind wiping all trace of civilization away. My brain let out a happy shriek.

After narrowly escaping Earth with her kouhai seiyuu Sachii, Akane chases the Dark Seiyuu (while pursued by bounty hunters) out into space, and one strange gadget after another shows up, from seiyuu nuclear fusion bombs to space fish living in the aether space; a space opera-like world view filled with all manner of strange things that’s a delight to read.

And here, too, it ends by explaining that the Dark Seiyuu’s origins lie in dark matter, revealing the secrets behind the (in story) physics mystery of the origins of gravity, and wraps up all the seiyuu stuff with a neat bow. His talent is impressive indeed.

Idols, mobile games, Friends, and seiyuu...

The stories in this book vividly incorporate topics that have been all the rage in otaku circles the last few years. In a decade or more, we’ll be able to read this work as a product of its time.

Gengen Kusano has speed on his side. After all, in modern otaku culture content is born and forgotten with dizzying speed, and he’s an active consumer of it all. Yet he does not stop there, but filters it through himself, producing stories entirely his own that incorporate what he’s absorbed. I’m sure there are many who bathe in the vast floods of otaku culture, and many who seek out worlds as far removed from their own as imaginable, but talents who can handle both at once are rare indeed.

Where will Gengen Kusano take us in the future? For all he’s written about the grotesque evolutions of mankind, I can’t help but see him as undergoing an evolution of his own. According to that interview with SF Magazine, he’s planning a novel that would combine Jainism and Singularity, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this young talent, through that work, evolves beyond anything I can imagine.

January, 2018

Copyright

Last and First Idol

by Gengen Kusano

Translated by Andrew Cunningham

Edited by Samuel Pinansky

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 Gengen Kusano

Cover illustration by TNSK

First published in Japan in 2018 by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

The book is published by arrangement with Hayakawa Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

J-Novel Club LLC

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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Ebook edition 1.0: September 2018