Rocket Girls, by Housuke Nojiri
Nov. 11th, 2010 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaReview copy provided by Haikasoru. Translation by Joseph Reeder.
One of my pet peeves about science fiction is when it seems to feature characters who have never heard of science fiction. Its problems and questions are completely unfamiliar to them. I know that the opposite problem can come up, too, when a work relies too heavily on everybody having read the same two hundred books the author has read, but for some unfathomable reason I notice this less than when the very basic baby units of SF are completely unfamiliar to every single character.
In Rocket Girls, the characters have been steeped in science fiction--but not written SF and not in English. Their reference points are not specific anime. You don't have to have watched exactly the same SF anime they have. But they know how this stuff goes, starting a space program, being an early astronaut. They get the outlines, because they've watched anime.
This is kind of awesome.
The work itself is a little reminiscent of a particular type of anime in the beginning, short scenes, teenage girl narrators, and I would strongly recommend it to teen readers who are anime enthusiasts. If you're looking for a book to bridge your SF interest and your teen friend/relation's anime interest, buy a copy of Rocket Girls for you and one for them, and you're set. The heroine is little and cute and spunky and very much the anime heroine, and by the time you get into the chapters with launch delays and fuel details, where it starts to read more like the rest of the SF novels we grown-up geeks are used to, young anime fans will have gotten sucked into the story of Yukari and her island-born half-sister Matsuri as they go through their bizarre and sudden astronaut training.
It's light-hearted and fast-paced. There are spots where you don't want to focus too carefully on the logic the characters are using, and a few bits where the cultural genre conventions are not the same as cultural genre conventions you might be used to. That doesn't mean the cultural genre conventions we're used to always make sense either, though--they're just different nonsense. And Rocket Girls is fluffy teenage space fun. Haven't a lot of us been wanting some of that for years?
One of my pet peeves about science fiction is when it seems to feature characters who have never heard of science fiction. Its problems and questions are completely unfamiliar to them. I know that the opposite problem can come up, too, when a work relies too heavily on everybody having read the same two hundred books the author has read, but for some unfathomable reason I notice this less than when the very basic baby units of SF are completely unfamiliar to every single character.
In Rocket Girls, the characters have been steeped in science fiction--but not written SF and not in English. Their reference points are not specific anime. You don't have to have watched exactly the same SF anime they have. But they know how this stuff goes, starting a space program, being an early astronaut. They get the outlines, because they've watched anime.
This is kind of awesome.
The work itself is a little reminiscent of a particular type of anime in the beginning, short scenes, teenage girl narrators, and I would strongly recommend it to teen readers who are anime enthusiasts. If you're looking for a book to bridge your SF interest and your teen friend/relation's anime interest, buy a copy of Rocket Girls for you and one for them, and you're set. The heroine is little and cute and spunky and very much the anime heroine, and by the time you get into the chapters with launch delays and fuel details, where it starts to read more like the rest of the SF novels we grown-up geeks are used to, young anime fans will have gotten sucked into the story of Yukari and her island-born half-sister Matsuri as they go through their bizarre and sudden astronaut training.
It's light-hearted and fast-paced. There are spots where you don't want to focus too carefully on the logic the characters are using, and a few bits where the cultural genre conventions are not the same as cultural genre conventions you might be used to. That doesn't mean the cultural genre conventions we're used to always make sense either, though--they're just different nonsense. And Rocket Girls is fluffy teenage space fun. Haven't a lot of us been wanting some of that for years?
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Date: 2010-11-11 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 08:11 pm (UTC)AWESOME.
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Date: 2010-11-11 10:23 pm (UTC)Thank you for the review!
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Date: 2010-11-22 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 03:46 am (UTC)And hi! :-) I was googling "Housuke Nojiri" and came across your review.
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:51 am (UTC)And hi, welcome.
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Date: 2011-02-15 04:01 am (UTC)And in the midst of my googling, I also found an interview with Housuke Nojiri at the JAXA website:
http://www.jaxa.jp/article/interview/vol33/index_e.html