#vizcomic

How does a science fiction and pulp author from the 1950’s get mentioned in a shonen manga 70 years later? That is the question I was asking when I saw a Fredric Brown novel referenced in We Never Learn, a romance manga written by Taishi Tsutsi that finished its second anime season on Crunchyroll. It has now finished the manga on Crunchyroll. I was surprised when an anime episode of We Never Learn contained a reference to the highly regarded, but somewhat obscure American sci-fi and pulp writer that I have been a collector of for years. The connections were not obvious, so I had to dig deeper.

We Never Learn ぼくたちは勉強ができない, is the story of a 3rd year high school student, Nariyuki Yuiga, who is tasked with tutoring three female students. A lot of romantic back and forth with the clueless male lead makes for quite a bit of fun and there is a good amount of friendship and flirtation. The manga has been running in Shonen Jump since February 6, 2017 and is included in the free weekly Shonen Jump licensed by Viz. It has also been made into an anime series that started April 7, 2019 on Crunchyroll.

In Chapter 39 of We Never Learn, “The Light in the Genius’ Eyes is All [X]” we find Nariyuki is stranded with a beautiful female student, Fumino Furuhashi, who is smart at literature but whose goal in life is to be an astronomer. They are forced to spend the night together at the only available room when they miss the last train home from a festival. While laying next to each other on a futon at the onsen, a hot springs inn, and looking at the night sky, Furuhashi talks about a book she read called “The Lights in the Sky are Stars”. In the book, an aged astronaut dreams about returning to space and she in turn identifies with his desire to connect with the stars.

Or that is what she meant to say, but in the manga Chapter 39, the book title was translated as “The Light of Heaven is All Starlight” which I did not recognize. I did not know the correct translation until I watched the anime of the corresponding chapter in Episode 13 of Season 1 on Crunchyroll. In the anime, the book is correctly translated as “The Lights in the Sky are All Stars”. The Viz translator must not have known that the author, Taishi Tsutsui, was actually referring to a real novel by Fredric Brown written in 1953 about that very subject.

So who was Fredric Brown? He was an author born in 1906 in Cincinnati, Ohio and was a writer of pulp stories and science fiction for most of the 1950’s. He was the master of the “short short story” and wrote mostly science fiction/fantasy as well as mysteries for publication in what then was the pulp magazines. His stories are clever, humorous, and scary and have been influential to other authors as well as on screen. One of his stories was even used as the basis for an episode of the original Star Trek television series, Arena. He had humorous novels such as What Mad Universe and Martians, Go Home but was best with his fantasy shorts and his collection Nightmares and Geezenstacks was listed in Stephen King’s appendix of the top horror genre. His mystery novel The Screaming Mimi is regularly listed in the top mystery novels. His novel that is referenced in the manga We Never Learn, The Lights in the Sky Are Stars, is a lesser known serious novel about an aging astronaut and is not even written in his usual, dramatic style. That the title was used as the finale episode of Gurren Lagann anime in 2007, shows it must have had some influence with Japanese writers.

So I decided to answer the question by going to the source. I found that the author, Taishi Tsutsui, has a Twitter account. The fact that I do not write Japanese was going to be a problem, but I followed him on Twitter and formatted a query of several sentances that I sent into Google translate, posted it online and - nothing happened. I thought that I had reached a dead end and was formulating other options when I happened to run across the very book in a small bookstore in the Midwest. I took a photo of the book with the question “We Never Learn Chapter 39, Is this the book?” I was surprised to get a response from the author @Taishi_Tsutsui “そうです。当時の担当編集さんに教えてもらいました！” Which Google translated as “That’s right! I was taught by the editor in charge at the time”. 

So it seems an older editor brought the author Fredric Brown in contact with a new generation across the seas. It was  a satisfying answer and a rare connection with a mangaka.

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