Those Selfish Aliens - Manga Moveable Feast post

By Rumiko Takahashi, First Published by Shogakukan in 1978.  First Published in English by Viz in Manga Vision Vol 1 No. 7 in 1995

Those Selfish aliens is a short, 34 page work which was Rumiko Takahashi’s first solo work published in Japan. It’s an interesting read in both of how it provides the rough lay out of the silly, absurd comedy she would use to rocket into super stardom with Urusei Yatsura and to see the first work of a major manga writer in English.

The plot is a simple one, about a young man named Kei delivering newspapers. He ends up getting kidnapped by aliens and has a bomb implanted in him to threaten humanity. Only than the aliens end up getting kidnapped by Fishmen and the newspaper boy ends up having another bomb placed in him so they can threaten the surface world . After Kei and the aliens escape they crash land back on the surface and people end up mistaking him for an alien. So of course the Human government decides to take him in and put a bomb in him so he can blow up the alien spaceship. Naturally all sides find out they are using him as a weapon, laugh it off only to find out that if he dies the chain reaction will blow up the universe.

And of course the one thing the main hero is focused on is delivering newspapers. Even at the end.

It’s clear from the get go that Takahashi had a clear grasp on absurd comedy. Both in using silly events to portray the humor and using characters to reinforce the joke. The build up of sides kidnapping our hero is both wonderfully funny and a good poke at the silly plot devices of the giant monster movies Japan was making at the time. Events move quickly and we are always quick to another joke or an absurd visual panel.

And the characters again set up to serve the comedy well. Our main lead is wonderfully clueless, like all good comedy saps. He knows that something is going on but instead cares more about his job of delivering papers than the fact that aliens and fish men are around him. We even have our first Takahashi female lead getting a cold shoulder, as Takahashi sets up a potential romantic payoff only to have Kei run off saying he has to deliver his papers. It’s funny here in it’s proto form, and you can see why she used it to great effect later on in her long running series.

It’s wonderfully rough around the edges, much like the first few issues of UY is. But it’s down right funny in places and shows clearly that Rumiko was going to be a super star. It may be hard to track down due to Manga Vizion not selling well, but it is well worth a read to see the first work of a manga super star.