A Guide to Simoun for the Confused and Perplexed

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβιλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεϊν θέλω. –Trimalchio, from Petronius’ Satyricon.

Simoun can seem a world of gorgeous roses, then suddenly there is the stench of blood. –Nazuka Kaori (‘Yun’).

‘What I saw was terrible. It destroyed everything I believed in and everything I held dear to my heart. But that’s not what I’m afraid of.'
'Then what?'
'What I saw beyond the horror; that’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘What is it?’

‘Hope.’ –Dominura and Limone.

Simoun: genre: drama, planetary fantasy, romance; themes: transgender, religion, war

Welcome to 633 Squadron meets The Left Hand of Darkness.

On the advice of several people who are familiar with my tastes in media (a vague group that is responsible for a lot of the crazy things that I do), I have watched, and am going to analyse, a show called Simoun.

            Simoun first aired in Japan in 2006. It was noted very quickly in both Japan and the West for its intricate dissection of gendered society, as well as its incredibly thick plot, which grows organically from the characters and their morality, environmentalism, spirituality, religious fanaticism, personal hang-ups, political leanings, and social standings.

            Simoun is set on the planet Daikuuriku, an Earth-like planet (though it seems to be somewhat smaller and colder) in a binary star system in a never-disclosed part of the universe. The natives of this planet are a human-like species who at some point in the distant past suffered an incredible cataclysm that wiped out their earlier, space-faring civilisation. Given the show’s refusal to specify its exact setting, the Daikuurikans may have evolved from humans, or they may not have; we don’t know.

            Daikuuriku is an industrialised world that is, for the most part, a polluted, overpopulated hellhole. The only exception is a fairly large but sparsely-populated seaside country called Simulacrum, which is Daikuuriku’s equivalent of the Holy Land in terms of religious and geopolitical importance. The Simulacrans’ society is run around helical-motor technology, a clean energy source which they believe was given to them by their God, Tempus Spatium (‘Time Interval’). Simulacran religion views the helical motors as a sort of divine prerogative, and Simulacran propaganda tends to demonise other countries for their use of oil and gas. This conveniently ignores the fact that the other countries don’t, in fact, have helical-motor technology, and do, in fact, want it.

            Because of the sheer smug superiority of Simulacrum’s diplomats, the nations of Plumbum and Argentum decide to forego actually asking for helical motors and declare war on Simulacrum shortly before the series begins. It is unclear whether this development was unexpected or the result of a pre-existing cold war gone hot, but in any case Simulacrum is woefully underequipped.

            To defend themselves the Simulacran government, a sort of semi-theocratic semi-democracy apparently along the lines of Khatami-era Iran (or, again, Israel), orders the use of Simoun, a type of aircraft used in religious ceremonies, as weapons of war. By tracing out patterns in the sky, the Simoun can create lines of force called Ri Maajon that can be used to ignite large sections of airspace. Ri Maajon technology can only be employed by Sibyllae, a class of the Simulacran clergy who have not yet chosen a permanent sex.

            You see, the Daikuurikans are a neotenous species. There are apparently no naturally-occurring Y chromosomes in the population; instead, all children are born female and later, either through use of a single, hard-to-access magic spring (pace Simulacrum and Plumbum) or through specially-developed surgery and a nuclear hormone cocktail (pace Argentum), gain a permanent sex. For those who become male, the body is fooled into entering a second puberty in which male sexual characteristics are developed and female sexual characteristics are reabsorbed, allowing the reproduction of (female) children and thus the continued existence of the Daikuurikan species. Because of fear and inertia most people would under normal circumstances choose to be female; thus certain incentives exist to become male and keep the segments of the adult population roughly equal—namely, a heavily male-dominated society in which, while adult women are not oppressed, they are de facto barred from many positions of high military, political, or religious command. The Sibyllae, who as mentioned before are underage, seem to be the only real exception to this rule, aside from two religious figures (one of whom, a middle-aged female Cardinal, is quite insane).

            One thing that cannot be said about Simulacrum, though, is that it is heterosexist. While there is obviously a high degree of heteronormativity in adult society (as, indeed, there is in any society that reproduces sexually), all teenage relationships are homosexual by default and in fact teenage kissing is part of the standard operating procedure for activating a Simoun! Since nobody at the time of the series remembers how or even by whom the Simoun were developed, there is no hope of reverse-engineering them to remove these restrictions—nor, since the current Simoun operating procedure is actually part of their religion, is there any desire to.

            The series begins with the devastation of an elite Simoun unit (‘choir’) called Chor Tempest (‘storm players’ in the combination of sham Latin and sham Greek that this series uses so much of). Of the twelve Sibyllae, three are killed, including Amuria, the pair of Neviril, the Regina (First Lieutenant, roughly, since all Simoun choirs are run overall by an adult male) of Chor Tempest. Neviril, who is the daughter of Simulacrum’s highest political leader, a man named Halconf, completely crashes emotionally, and the people in charge of the Simoun units have to recruit no less than six new Sibyllae, since another three said ‘screw this’ and went to the spring to choose their permanent sex.

            There are many tensions among these people, especially once the new meat shows up. Some are clergy trained in the original sacred functions of the Simoun who have no idea how war actually works; some are flyboys (flygirls, whatever) who couldn’t care less about religion. Two are estranged sisters. One is a child prodigy; some are actually over the cut-off age to go to the spring but have been granted special permission to keep flying. One girl is from a wealthy family; another is the child of two of her servants. The series follows these twelve people and their immediate superiors as they struggle to balance religious duties, military duties, and…you know…being teenage girls.

The series consciously sets out to make the sexual aspects of the characters’ relationships seem discomforting. Most anime characters are drawn as young adults by default, unless they are very young or very old; in Simoun, the teenagers to a large degree look like teenagers, which as anybody who has ever seen My So-Called Life knows makes sexuality incredibly awkward for both the characters and the audience; and although there is nothing explicit, this awkwardness is completely intentional.

And then Rodoreamon cuts her braid off.

            Which is pretty much when I was hooked.

            This single act sets in motion a series of events that includes time travel, assassination, the downfall of a government, a tragic love story, the ends of several old friendships, a crushing and humiliating defeat, a final triumphant ‘fuck you’ to tyranny, and eventually the phoenix-like death and rebirth of a country, a religion, and a world. From Limone accosting Dominura in the hallway after having love explained to her in very simple terms, to Dominura smashing an altar in a fit of existentialist anger, to Yun getting her revenge on her country’s corrupt government in the most tragically beautiful way imaginable, to Anubituf and Guragief rallying all factions together in a last-ditch effort to save Aaeru and Neviril (simply put, Anubituf and Guragief, taken together as they are meant to be as two parts of a coherent whole, are the most awesome fictional gay guys ever), to Mamiina taking ‘love thy enemy, pray for those who persecute thee’ to its astonishingly beautiful logical conclusion, to Alty saving her hated sister, to Wapourif finally realising what’s what in the world, to Halconf’s crushing loneliness and misery exacerbated by the knowledge that he brought this all on himself…

I was talking to a queer friend of mine via email and she said that Simoun was the one show that if she could she would show to everybody who opposes LGBT rights as if to say ‘this is what we’re made of’.

The people who made Simoun were clearly well-versed in certain aspects of Western feminist sci-fi/fantasy literature. The way the gendered societies in Daikuuriku work is reminiscent of Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and some of the works of Doris Lessing (although The Cleft, the Lessing novel most comparable to Simoun in terms of plot, actually came out a year after Simoun did). The idea of a society where there is actually a reason for male dominance (namely, to get enough people to be men to keep the species alive for another generation) is applied in an astonishingly deep and even-handed way. Since the sex changes aren’t immediate, some younger male characters still look entirely female (the mechanic Wapourif comes to mind); combined with the all-female voice cast, this makes the sex of a given young-adult character a bit hard to determine at times.

Simoun frequently uses its plot to present polemical arguments against what its makers presumably viewed as negative aspects of society. The list of things—including many that some might consider ‘common knowledge’—that Simoun dissects is extremely long and includes, but is by no means limited to:

• The idea of ‘maturity’. The character Onashia, supreme religious leader of Simulacrum (think of her as the Khamenei to Halconf’s Ahmadinejad) is viewed as a sinner for trying to avoid choosing a sex (which is viewed as the final expression of growing up) and punished severely for daring to remain an ‘eternal maiden’; but it’s made clear that the societal strictures that declare that she must be punished are evil. The various nations’ obsession with ‘development’ and ‘progress’ end up next-to-destroying all three countries involved. Four main characters—Aaeru, Neviril, Dominura, and Limone—actually manage to divest themselves of time completely, becoming true eternal maidens who exist in some sort of Nishidan ‘absolute self-negation’ that ‘transcends time’ and is the reality of Tempus Spatium, the Simulacran God.
• Hegelian statism. The Simulacran rulers, such as Neviril’s father, aren’t evil people. They’re nasty because they’re ruling a nation-state; the nation-state isn’t nasty because they’re ruling it. Some nations are morally more justified than others (namely Plumbum, which is neither as hellish and aggressive as Argentum nor as smug and prissy as Simulacrum), but they all ruin their citizens’ lives, which is why part of this show’s idea of a ‘happy ending’ is the characters getting kicked out of the armed forces and all three countries getting their comeuppance. Although Simulacrum actually ignores some aspects of the peace treaty—they aren’t supposed to have any Simoun Sibyllae around afterwards, yet apparently they do, mainly because most of the peace terms are Argentum’s, most of the enforcement falls to Plumbum, and Plumbum actually does not like Argentum all that much (there are other reasons as well, but they’re extremely complicated and involve a Ri Maajon whose effect seems to be both variable and abstruse).
• State influence in religion. If Halconf and his cronies hadn’t elaborately screwed over the Sibyllae and hadn’t used Tempus Spatium as an excuse to let Plumbum and Argentum stew in their own filth, this whole stupid war could have been avoided. Of course, part of it was Dominura and Limone’s fault (these are two characters who experiment with time-travel as part of a shady Simulacran government experiment), but that was the government’s fault, which was Dominura and Limone’s fault, which was the government’s fault, which…
• The blame game. Oh, yeah.
• Religious fanaticism. The ‘good’ characters, like Aaeru and Yun, either don’t take Tempus Spatium very seriously or take Her seriously enough to remember that She disapproves of war. The ‘bad’ characters, like Halconf, are just completely out to lunch with their own ideas of what Tempus Spatium expects from them. It’s worth noting, though, that even Aaeru, who is so happy-go-lucky about religion that Simulacran society considers her an atheist, does in fact still believe that there are immaterial things that need to be paid attention to, which brings us to…
• On the flip side, some forms of atheist rationalism. Simulacrum and Plumbum are pretty crazy countries, but Argentum, which is at least implied to have the same sort of outlook on religion as Pope Pius XI’s ‘Terrible Triangle’, is Hell on Daikuuriku. You can’t move in Argentum for the pervasive smog and enforced gender-reassignment on infants. It’s not that it’s a bad thing, it just doesn’t work.
• Generally, simplistic views of religion. These characters, especially Dominura and Wapourif, struggle with their faith, sometimes quite severely.
• Gender roles. Somebody pointed out to me that Japan has just as much discomfort with gender identities other than ‘male’ and ‘female’ as does the West; it’s just that the West is in deep denial about that discomfort, whereas in Japan it’s such a severe social issue that you can’t not talk about it. Hence you see a lot more mainstream media that address or subvert gender issues in Japan than you do in most Western countries—e.g. this, Rose of Versailles, Utena, Noir, Ouran Koukou, the works of Hiratsuka and Yoshiya…
• Good and evil have nothing to do with which ‘side’ a particular faction is technically on. The main factions are the Sibyllae, the priesthood, the Military Council, Argentum, and Plumbum. The Sibyllae, the priesthood, and the Military Council are on one side of the war; Argentum and Plumbum are on the other. But (for the most part; this is a quite morally grey show) Argentum and the Military Council are presented as morally evil, the Sibyllae and Plumbum as morally good, and the priesthood as just completely inscrutable, even when we eventually figure out what’s going on with Onashia.

Simoun is not for everyone. Unlike Noir with its strongly European style or Shinkai and Miyazaki movies with their traditional Japanese aesthetics, Simoun is very much an ‘anime’-anime, complete with ridiculous hair colours. It takes itself more seriously than a lot of its fellows, but many people in the West may be uncomfortable with this aspect of the show, especially when juxtaposed with its brutal, blunt portrayals of some of the nastier aspects of being a soldier. Or a teenager. It is very much not for children, or, for that matter, for people who didn’t grow up in a generation that was already on some level familiarised with Japanese popular culture. Its depictions (non-explicit) of human (well, humanoid) sexuality are neither gratuitous nor self-consciously tasteful; they’re just there, and that may be a little perturbing to a lot of people. This holds true even in Japan—while Simoun was hailed as an unqualified artistic success, it was also a miserable commercial failure, partially because it doesn’t actually seem to have been designed to attract an audience.

For any potential audience, there’s something to repel them. For the cute-girls and prurient male audience, there’s the war story and remarkable expositions of serious dramatic and philosophical concerns. For the philosophical drama audience, there’s the often-jarring drawing and animation style used for the characters and the sometimes-gratuitous use of kissing for the aircraft test sequences. For people who like war stories, there’s the focus on the personal relationships of the Sibyllae and the conflicted feelings that their joint religious and military duties give them. For people who thrive on happy endings, there’s the horribly tragic loss of the war. For people who thrive on tragedy, there’s the fact that the war really isn’t the point, that in the end all of the sympathetic characters are content and at peace, and that Plumbum may be about to attack and defeat Argentum anyway. The only people who really are in a position to appreciate Simoun are people who both love Doris Lessing and Ursula K. Le Guin and like or at least have built up a tolerance for brightly-coloured anime (the designs being as they are something of a throwback to the lush alien worlds evoked by Edgar Rice Burroughs and in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, the bright blues and pastels are inevitable). It also helps if you enjoy old war movies.

But for the groups of people who can stomach some of the weirder aspects of the show, watching Simoun is a deeply rewarding experience. Even if it’s just ‘pop entertainment’. So, a hundred and fifty years ago, was Dickens.

P.S. despite what some ill-informed people (or Blockbuster displays) may tell you, this is not a children’s show. Simoun is a series that contains time-travel, homosexuality (both female and male) and transgender identities, attempted rape, implied incest (not just cousin marriage, actual Levitical-definition incest), one character who begins as an opportunistic psychopath and ends up the most tragic character of the whole show, another who knowingly commits mass murder because she has a death wish and hopes to be tried and executed for it, suicide bombings, complicated tensions between secular and religious authorities, partial nudity, sexual propositions for political gain, aircraft hijacking (both attempted and successful), bombing of civilian targets, and obviously tuberculotic coughing. And that’s not even getting into what the antagonists do.