Ask John: What Is Five Star Stories?

Question:
I’ve heard a lot of talk about Five Star Stories and I was wondering what it’s about? I researched it and found Motor Heads and Fatimas, so what are they? Finally, is it coming to the US?

Answer:
Five Star Stories is a virtual industry unto itself. The roots of Five Star Stories lie heavily in creator Mamoru Nagano’s 1984/85 anime TV series Heavy Metal L-Gaim- the series that introduced the style of mecha that would become mortarheads, and many of the political and thematic elements that would later reappear in FSS. Nagano began the Five Star Stories manga as a serial published in Newtype Magazine in 1986. As of now, the manga series is still ongoing.

Five Star Stories is a virtually mythical story ostensibly about the unification of the planets of the Joker System under the rule of a single emperor, Amaterasu, named after the Shinto goddess of light. The story spans thousands of years, involves humans, artificial humans, gods, dragons, dimension and time travel and virtually everything else imaginable. The scale of the FSS universe is stunning in detail and history. Every one of the hundreds of characters has a complete history and relationships to every other character, the mechanics and mecha are all thoroughly researched and pedigreed, and the political turmoil and relationships between kings, countries and planets are entirely documented. In fact, the FSS manga is so complex and complicated that Nagano himself has admitted in interviews that even he can’t keep track of it all and often makes up new relationships, histories and essentially makes up the story as he’s going along because he’s lost track of the series himself- which further adds to the stunning complexity and confusion of the series.

Five Star Stories is also heavily steeped in literary references, employing text and dialogue in at least English, French and Latin in addition to Japanese. Japanese Shinto mythology plays a part in the story in the aforementioned Amaterasu. Greek myth is central to the story through the characters of Lachesis, Atropos and Clotho, the “Fate Fatimas” who take their names from the Fates of Greek myth that spin, measure and cut the fabric of man’s life.

The opening chapters of the Five Stories manga were heavily condensed and transformed into a theatrical motion picture in 1989, for the few months before the release of Akira supplanting Wings of Honneamise as the most expensive anime film ever made. Like Wings of Honneamise and Akira, even though the FSS movie is now over a dozen years old, it remains one of the most visually stunning anime films ever created. However, like the manga, appreciation of the movie depends partially on repeated viewings and how familiar one happens to be with the manga. The movie is not particularly accessible to the FSS illiterate. Even with its heavily streamlined story and character relationships, the film still relies heavily on familiarity with cultural conventions of the Five Star Stories universe and prior knowledge of the characters.

While the movie is unlikely to ever be released in America, the FSS manga is available in English. A debut prototype magazine sized translation of Five Star Stories manga, supervised by Mamoru Nagano’s company Toys Press, was released by the American branch of the Japanese Kinokuniya bookstore chain in 1998. In May of 1999 Kinokuniya debuted the first regular volume of translated FSS manga in America- an expanded re-print of the earlier debut issue. At least 10 volumes are available directly from Kinokuniya by mail order.