X-Men: The Manga and its No Good, Very Weird Government

I bought X-Men: The Manga Remastered the other day at Barnes & Noble. Narratively, it starts where the 90s animated series begins, on Jubilee as she runs from Sentinels that hunt an emergent mutant population. In order to end these discriminatory attacks, the X-Men make their way to a quasi-governmental facility that stores dossiers on mutants around the country. At first I thought, "Why would you have to go to a facility to do that? Can’t you just hack into their systems remotely?" Then it occurred to me: this story is set in the 90s. I’d almost forgotten what that world was like back then.

Paper documentation, especially at the government level, is a challenge I saw firsthand while working at a municipal court. My days were spent entering information, scanning, and filing it away for hours at a time. Need to issue a search warrant? Fax the judge. Need to collect payments? Send a certified letter. On the federal level, the government has tried to reduce paper processes: the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Paperwork Elimination Act, and several memoranda in recent decades (which points to the truism everyone knows by now: government is extremely slow to change). In the essay "The Filing Cabinet," Craig Robertson describes the archaic — and analog — filing process required for American federal workers to get paid, which can involve sifting through some 28,000 filing cabinets. Should everything be digitized nowadays? Can that be done? Who knows.

Here’s another weird example of inefficiency: SENTINELS. I didn’t think about how goofy these giant robot killing machines were growing up, but now I read X-Men and wonder, “How many are there? How much did the government pay these subcontractors to build them? What are the repair costs?”Considering there are no giant robots (we’re aware of) for commercial or military use, the only comparable product I’ve found is this $3,000,000 Tsubame Industries mech that resembles a really slow Armored Core. In a world where ICE raids are regularly conducted against illegal and migrant populations in the US, it’s obvious that a real government would spend big bucks to find perceived threats. Is this a good investment of our money? All I’ll say is the cost-benefit analysis of hunting mutants is clearly based in something other than a balanced budget. 

X-Men: The Animated Series. 1992. Marvel Entertainment Group.

Finally, the X-Jet is clearly an SR-71 Blackbird, an older stealth plane contracted by the government from Lockheed Martin. How this wound up in Charles Xavier’s hands depends on what version of the story we’re reading: he “obtained “ it from SHIELD, or Hank McCoy (aka Beast) built it, or it’s a modification of Xavier’s private jet. All scenarios imply massive security leaks pertaining to the design of a military stealth craft. As a telepath, Xavier could have easily wound up with the information needed to steal the plane or its schematics, but it also seems like a government fully aware enough to build giant robots for mutant hunting could also put more efforts into its security apparatus. 

Which brings us full circle to the X-Men raiding that facility for mutant records. The universe our heroes occupy may be full of hateful xenophobia, but luckily, the government gestapo is incredibly good at wasting time and money. 

Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story

I'm a sucker for a good boy-meets-world kind of story. These tales feature teenagers who often bump into girls with entirely different backgrounds and far more experience navigating society. FLCL, Eureka Seven, and Gurren Lagann are ones that stand out in my mind; the otaku universe has a billion more tales just like them. Call of the Night is in the same vein, but with some contemporary twists I really dig. 

Here's the short version: Ko Yamori loves playing hooky and travels around the city from dusk til dawn. Before long, he bumps into Nazuna Nanakusa, who claims to be a vampire. (I'm ninety-nine percent sure Nazuna Nanakusa is based on Haruhara Haruko from FLCL). Ko, the weird and misanthropic kid he is, wants to become a vampire, too. Turns out the only way to make more vamps in this world is for the human victim to fall in love with their vampire. Naturally, Ko and Nazuna spend their time getting into antics while figuring out what love looks like for them.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

Nazuna loves to drink and play video games. She makes a living by relieving people of their loneliness--giving massages, cuddling, and overall being a kind host. (Although it's tempting to consider this non-sexual business a uniquely Japanese idea, I feel this is more a symptom of isolation stemming within first-world, heavily capitalist and networked societies.) The glancing media critic might identify Nazuna as a manifestation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but Call of the Night front loads almost half the series with an exploration of Nazuna's past and how she fits in (and doesn't fit in) with the rest of the vampire underworld. 

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This uniqueness of character obviously brings her to Ko's attention in the first place. It also shows us the very-real phenomenon of worshipping people we just met before spending any real time together. Does learning more about Nazuna make her more or less appealing to Ko? The problem with IRL romance is that we often fail to appreciate people as relationships grow. Combined with the miserable contemporary dating scene and declining birth rates in the largest economies, any story about successful romance seems like a bold, defiant leap towards hopeful futures. Ko's desire to turn vampire comes from a naive but very human impulse to spend an exciting night with a good person.    

The thing about Ko is that he doesn't actually know what it's like to love. He's only a middle schooler, so that's totally valid, but Call of the Night lingers on this for long enough that I wonder if this is a teenage affect or a literal, chemical deficiency of oxytocin. It's clear that Ko isn't asexual and that he wants to understand the positive relationships some vampires share with humans. But this libido question is tied into the way vampires reproduce: sucking blood is inherently sexual, and converting someone into a vampire requires a love connection. To extrapolate again into real-world context, it's significant to note that teenagers report having less sexual intercourse, but this complicated by evolving definitions of what sexual intimacy and identity look like. In Call of the Night, the vampiric relationship is entirely dependent on consummation via bloodsucking and conversion, which causes trouble for Ko and Nazuna among the old guard when they fail to do so.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

This post is titled Call of the Night and the Modern Manga Love Story, but discusses a manga centered around a heterosexual relationship. The manga does explore a few LGBT+ relationships, and these turn out to be significant in Nazuna’s life. Considering the value of sexual reproduction is nearly nonexistent for vampires, this gender indifference makes perfect sense for author Kotoyama to explore. Call of the Night is not a BL or yaoi manga; nevertheless, this attitude towards fluidity is refreshing. It's notable that this manga is part of the Viz Manga app and not the Shonen Jump one, so its target demographic feels broader than just action-loving boys.

Call of the Night, Vol. 1. Kotoyama, Viz Media.

At the risk of making a longer post with more ramblings about the contemporary state of love--a matter in which I am not an expert but can only speak from the perspective of someone married for six years--you should read Call of the Night. I plan on watching the anime as soon as I finish the manga.