| come avrete letto in questo thread : https://gonagai.forumfree.it/?t=56339677e' in uscita il manga Miraizer Ban di Matsumoto , che a quanto ho potuto capire , e' uno dei manga piu' importanti del maestro Leiji.   Personalmente questo titolo mi e' totalmente sconosciuto , al che , google alla mano , ho cominciato a fare un po' di ricerche ed ho trovato un po' di cose. Prima di tutto un interessantissima paginetta (seppur breve) sulla filosofia Matsumotiana che da delle spiegazioni ad alcuni dei capisaldi del pensiero Matsumotiano e pone questo stesso manga come la vera chiave di lettura di alcuni elementi ONNIPRESENTI nei suoi manga (*) [QUOTE] "Toki No Wa" Concept"Toki no Wa" concept is probably one of the most important philosophy in order to understand how Matsumoto Universe is laid out. In Matsumoto universe, the term "Toki no Wa" appears quite often in many of his creations. In the very end of "Arcadia of My Youth" movie, Harlock says good-bye to his beloved Maya in her casket. And his dialog is as follows: "Tooku Toki No Wa No Sessuru Tokorode Mata Aou." (rough translation: "I will see you again where the loops of time touch together." ). In the final episode of "Galaxy Express 999" Andromeda Series comic, Maetel says the exact same words to Tetsuro before she takes off to her new journey leaving Tetsuro behind. In "Nibelung's Ring", that line is also mentioned over and over again. "Toki' means "Time" in direct translation, and "Wa" means "Ring", "Circle", "Loop", etc. So the really the direct translation of "Toki no Wa" is "Time Loop" or "Ring of Time". I have my own non-direct translated version of the line, which is, "I Will See You Where The Ends of Eternity Meet Again". I feel that captures the essence of the "Toki no Wa" idea rather nicely although it does not contain any direct word from the original line. I use that line in my HP, and I even used it for my Christmas Message I sent for Siegfried. :-) Matsumoto universe is based on the concept that in the far, far future, the line of time ends up merging with that of the past, therefore, time is really forming a "Loop" which contains no end or beginning. Especially for Maetel, the "Toki no Wa"concept has its' own significance, since she is a woman who travels in eternity; she keeps existing in the past, present, and in the future. In one of Matsumoto's comic "Miraizer-Ban" dives in that concept with more details. "Miraizer-Ban" is the story about several special human (?) beings called "Miraizer", who can retain their memories and recollection from their previous lives and future lives. So in essence, "Miraizer" have eternal lives, not so much as physical beings, but in their consciousness level. "Miraizer Ban" also draws out the interesting conclusion with added twist, which takes the step ahead of "Time Loop" concept, and introduces "Time Sphere" concept. "Time Sphere" concept can be interpreted as existence of multiple universes each taking it's own course of time parallel from each other. *Which may explain why Matsumoto creates so many similar (or almost identical) characters and stories yet each one is in slightly different setting and situation from others. After all, Tochiro dies in too many different deaths and there are so many different Harlocks in Matsumoto creation. But this "Time Sphere" implication resolves all conflicts in story and character establishments in Matsumoto Universe rather nicely.[/QUOTE]
www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown/3254/M...i/TokiNoWa.html
Inoltre ho trovato un Interessante articolo sull'Immortalita' e il
concept di questo manga , che , con tanto di
fonti alla mano , cerca di spiegare alcuni concetti espressi
dall autore :
http://animekritik.wordpress.com/2009/05/1...s-implications/
Da quello che ho capito ci aspetta un altro classico manga in pieno Matsumoto stile , dove quell aria un po' malinconica e introversa che imperversa in tutti i suoi prodotti fa da padrona!
Non vedo l'ora di gustarmi anche quest'altra opera!
in uscita ad agosto 2011 !
Di seguito la sinossi dei 3 volumi di cui e' composta la versione Jap(ahime' in inglese): [QUOTE]
VOLUME 1 (serialized from September 1976 to March 1977)
CHAPTER 1
Ban Idai is a young boy living with his parents, both of whom are scientists. Ban is a terrible student, he oversleeps, arrives late to class only to fall asleep again, etc. On the particular day when the story begins, the parents have just completed work on machinery for their “experiment”, which they are rushing to get done before Ban comes back home from school. Yuki Kei, the Idais’ assistant, is there to help with the project.
Ban is at school when a tremendous explosion is heard. It turns out the explosion has occurred in the direction of Ban’s home and when he rushes there everything is in ruins. Kei Yuki is wounded but still alive, and she tells Ban that she was inspecting a switch when the experiment was occurring, and this is why she was spared. The ambulance takes her to the hospital.
Orphaned, Ban goes to his dentist uncle’s house in Nerima to stay for a while. His uncle is not surprised about the accident, as he had repeatedly told the Idais to stop doing strange experiments. Although he is not sure on what they were doing exactly, he remembers them talking about “building a ring of life”, “immortality, agelessness of a sort”, “lifeforms that can go on eternally without dying”. Ban Idai is clueless, he never knew anything about the content of his parents’ work.
Knowing that Yuki is in critical condition at the hospital, he goes to visit her, only to find she has already left. Ban catches her limping toward her car. Together they go to her apartment building. In her room, the ailing Yuki tells Ban to open a certain door. When Ban does, mechanical hands immediately reach out and take him into a laboratory identical to the Idais’. Yuki apologizes to Ban but says he must carry on his parents’ experiments, then she pulls a switch and all sorts of electrical currents run through Ban’s body.
Ban regains consciousness on the street opposite Yuki’s building, just in time to see it explode as his parents’ lab did.
Next we see Ban back at school. Usually a terrible student, he somehow scores 100% on two tests. His teacher is as baffled as he is. Back in his uncle’s house, Ban starts looking through his parent’s library and finds that he can read and understand all of the books even though they are difficult texts written in English and German.
All of a sudden, Ban is kidnapped by two men in a car. Yuki Kei, looking quite healthy, is with them. Their plan is to take him to an airplane, then fly to the bay and go into a submarine. They call him a “monster”, “man who can change time” and “Miraizer Ban”.
Once on the airplane, the men decide Yuki Kei is no longer necessary and try to throw her out. Yuki and Ban manage to throw the men out instead, and Ban finds himself piloting the airplane without a problem. When he expresses surprise at this, Yuki reminds him that his own grandfather used to fly planes during World War II. Ban does not accept this “explanation”.
Another airplane appears and Yuki says that “their” plan having failed, they have come to finish them off. Ban skilfully evades the attacker, which ends up exploding. On the ground, Ban asks Yuki why they called him “Miraizer Ban” and what exactly did she do to him. She only replies that he will find out in due time and that when does, he will probably hate her and maybe even kill her.
CHAPTER 2
The chapter begins by revealing huge vessel that functions like a combat submarine but is disguised as a large passenger cruise ship. The ship called “Zei Zei” is owned by an organization named the “Cosmonauta”, which has been tracking the Idais’ research through an agent called Z-7。
Onboard the Zei Zei, Captain Zoom and Doctor Nybans discuss the case of Miraizer Ban and whether Z-7 has betrayed the organization. Zoom decides that even if that is the case, to take action against Z-7 would blow the Cosmonauta’s cover so he opts for letting the agent operate for now. They dispatch another agent to capture Ban Idai.
Meanwhile Ban is trying to get answers from Yuki. She tells him that as it stands, human beings use only a third of their brain, and the Idais’ research was meant to unblock the remaining two thirds. Ban’s brain is evolving as they speak into full capacity.
Ban wanders out to ponder these things and is captured and taken aboard the Zei Zei. He is attached to a mind-reading machine. Dr. Nybans reports that so far Ban is able to access up to his great-grandfather’s generation’s memories. But as they speak this access is spreading back in time. The Cosmonauta wish to mine Ban’s brain in order to become more powerful.
Initially, Nybans and Zoom determine that the Idais were wrong in supposing that their experiments could allow the subject to access future memories, but eventually they seen on screen Ban Idai’s brain doing just that. And Ban’s brain yields an image of the Zei Zei going down in flames.
Soon after that, Yuki Kei sweeps in on a car-plane transforming vehicle and rescues Ban. She has sabotaged the power generators as well so the ship begins to explode. Captain Zoom refuses to allow evacuation of the Zei Zei because he fears it will undermine the organization’s secrecy. He dies with the ship.
Back at school, Ban fails the next test so as not arouse suspicion, just as Yuki advised him to do.
CHAPTER 3
A man and a boy are standing inside a sophisticated operations room, looking at a electronic map on the floor. The man is reporting to the boy, Scientific Armaments Bureau Chief Mirai, that a UFO is rapidly approaching. Mirai orders the dispatch of an interception force but the UFO suddenly disappears, then reappears on landing. The pilot of the UFO requests a meeting with the person in charge. Mirai accepts with a confident grin.
When Mirai approaches the spaceship, he is scorned by the UFO pilot, who is evidently expecting an older person. Mirai then introduces himself with his full name: Scientific Armaments Bureau Chief Miraizer Ban. He shoots and kills the alien pilot. Everything becomes a swirl.
We see Ban lying on an experiment table. He tells Yuki he just had a dream but she explains he was actually experiencing the memories of his “reincarnation” 12,000 years in the future.
As Yuki tells it, Ban will never die until the end of the world. His body might die, but his soul (or heart) will travel from descendant to descendant by way of his memories. Miraizer Ban, Yuki continues, is a beast bearing the memories of billions of years. This experiment room is essentially a gigantic history library and through it Ban can access all eras. But even if the room were destroyed, that would not affect Ban’s abilities in the least.
There is one way that Miraizer Ban can die for all eternity, but Yuki says he will discover that in due time. Then she goes out (they are in a house by the sea) to buy some food.
All alone, Ban decides to try out the machine one more time. He wants to calibrate it to 100,000 years in the future but ends up switching to one million years.
A little old man is sitting in an operations room. Apparently enemies are constantly penetrating the perimeter outside and the machinery is designed to destroy the trespassers automatically.
A woman looking just like Yuki Kei comes into the room and the little old man is momentarily startled. Then he replies that he had had a flashback to some old memories long ago.
“Yuki” comments on how special this man is, and how because of this all of Earth has come to see him as an enemy. They wish to destroy Miraizer Ban and his wife from this generation, Yuki. At this, the little old man is startled again,as if he had forgotten that Yuki was his wife. Another foe is announced and there is a big explosion. Fade to black.
Ban himself is falling through space, puzzled at his situation. If he has two children, and then each of these has two more, then eventually he himself should be split into several people. But somehow, he alone seems to be able to access all of these memories from the future. And if Miraizer Ban has a child, is he the child or himself or..? Ban returns to the experiment room.
Outside, a group of Cosmonauta agents have seized Yuki Kei. They tell her that the Cosmonauta will control the secret of Miraizer Ban, build a new polity and invade Japan, America and the Soviet Union. They tie her upside down from a cliff so that she will drown when the tide rises, and then they head to the house.
The Cosmonauta find the secret room in a basement under the house, only to discover an activated self-destruct mechanism. The house explodes.
Luckily Ban is outside. He tries to rescue Yuki but a Cosmonauta submarine begins to aim at him, then at Yuki. Ban finds a large cosmic gun and, not much knowing what do, aims the crosshairs at the sub and fires. The submarine explodes.
Yuki Kei asks Ban why he activated the self-destruct mechanism. He replies sheepishly that he thought it would not be interesting if he knew everything that would happen in the future, so he wanted to see the room destroyed. Yuki tells Ban that he is changing already. Ban agrees and adds that he is scared.
CHAPTER 4
The experimental aircraft, Mysterious No. 1, is in the middle of its first test flight when two unidentified airplanes appear. One of them launches what looks like a missile that attaches itself to the Mysterious, overrides all of its controls, and guides it out of sight along with the two other planes.
The operators at the control tower worry about how Dr. Setsuba, the Mysterious’ developer, will take the news. Dr. Setsuba shows up and takes things stoically, saying that the plane might be gone but his brain is not so the situation is not that bad. The Mysterious is supposedly far superior to any American or Soviet aircraft then in existence.
Dr. Setsuba steps into a limo and proceeds to take his mask off: he is none other than Ban. All of a sudden, the limo explodes.
Ban wakes up in a hospital with Yuki by his side. She explains that a bomb had been placed under his seat, but that he was able to escape with nothing but burns thanks to the car’s defensive plating. Ban asks about the perpetrator.
Yuki points to a black-haired woman sobbing in the corner. She is responsible for the bomb and the capture of the Mysterious. After having discovered that Dr. Setsuba was Ban, she intended to knock him unconscious and take him to the Cosmonauta. The explosive was far too powerful and her mistake would cost her her life if the Cosmonauta found her.
The woman, named Rei Yamano, begs for her life. Yuki shows her a switch to activate the Mysterious’ self-destruct mechanism. As the Mysterious is being dissected by the Cosmonauta atop one of their submarine/cruisers, Yuki asks Rei to prove her will to cooperate by pulling the switch. She does and the Cosmonauta vessel explodes.
In the meantime, Yuki shows Ban what looks to be another Ban being wheeled on a hospital bed, seemingly dead. She tells him that what he saw is a doll, but the plan is to tell the world Ban Idai, Miraizer Ban, is dead so as to make life easier for him.
When Yuki leaves with Rei to give Ban some rest, Rei knocks Yuki down and rushes back into the room. He grabs Ban and says she is not going to let the Cosmonauta take her apart because of her failure. Yuki comes in and shoots Rei. Rei’s words become clear: she is an android. Yuki marvels at the progress in Cosmonauta technology and comments that if they add Miraizer Ban’s knowhow they will be able to rule the world and the universe beyond.
[The first page of the next episode shows Ban time, so I am assuming that the entire 4th chapter occurred in the (near) future.]
CHAPTER 5
Ban is sleeping on a tatami mat. He wakes up and decides to sleep some more when a big bookshelf falls on him. The radio announces that an earthquake with the epicenter at Nerima Ward (where Ban is from) has just rocked Tokyo. In addition, all the major cities around the world are reporting earthquakes.
Yuki Kei explains to Ban that this is an experiment by the Cosmonauta, who have developed a machine that can shift tectonic plates. The Cosmonauta’s initial goal is to dominate Earthlings, but their ultimate goal is on a much larger scale. The earthquake experiment must be stopped. The release of a safety pin on the earth moving machine should do the trick
Yuki has Ban travel in his memories to the future, because assuming he will have been successful, he will possess the knowledge then of where the safety pin was now(!). Yuki sets the machine for 1,000 years into the future and Ban is off. She then sits and watches his memories on a computer monitor.
In the next scene we find a woman who looks a lot like Yuki, waking up from a mechanical bed contraption. After a few moments, she realizes where she is and what has happened. She tells herself that she is on the planet Ledome of the Hercules Globular Cluster [Messier 13]. She looks at her chest and welcomes her glorious ancestor Miraizer Ban.
Throughout, the woman talks to herself and evidently to Miraizer Ban who seems to be “inside” her. A subordinate comes in and addresses her as Doctor Ban. He reports of an enemy attacking. She pinpoints the attacking planet and proceeds to blast and completely destroy it. Responding to an apparent question by Miraizer, she says that yes, the planet was inhabited, by two billion Negas who hated Earth.
The female Dr. Ban explains that the Negas are the real enemies of mankind, and that the Cosmonauta were but a front for the Negas’ activities. The war 1,000 years later is ongoing.
Dr. Ban goes to a mirror and asks Miraizer whether she does not look just like Yuki Kei. She goes on to say that Yuki is her distant ancestor as well, and that she shares both of her memories. She talks directly to Yuki who is looking at the memories, and says she knows what Yuki feels for Ban Idai. She also reveals the location of the safety pin, which is right in Nerima Ward.
Finally, she shows both of them the home planet of the Negas, a sphere enclosed in an ugly, holey surface. The name of the planet is Doclus, population 12.7 billion; several colonies add up to a population of 1.2 billion. She is about to tell them the whereabouts of Doclus when the machine sends Miraizer Ban back.
Another tremor triggered the machine, and Yuki hurries Ban to go take care of the problem. The sphere-shaped machine is beneath Tokyo, in a gigantic subterranean tunnel with a large amount of water. The area near the machine is filled with dead soldiers, the Cosmonauta builders who were silenced once their work was completed.
Ban walks toward the safety pin, which he has in his memory, and pulls it. The whole tunnel begins to get filled with water and tentacles lash out from the machine and grab Yuki’s leg. Ban knows that his future is doomed without Kei so he snatches a rifle from a dead soldier and shoots at the machine. The machine lets Yuki go and sinks beneath the waters.
Back at their own place, Yuki suggests that Ban should travel even further into the future, as one of his descendants will probably have met Negas and been to their planet. The intelligence would be invaluable. Ban reluctantly accepts and Yuki sends him 10,000 years into the future. Right after this, two Cosmonauta agents show up at the machine room.
In the meantime, Ban awakes in a new room and is surprised to find that he looks and feels just as his usual self. A voice is heard calling Ban to attend the conference. Ban immediately remembers that he is indeed due to appear at the General Conference of the Doclus Star Cluster.
So Ban is in Doclus, and as he steps through a door he enters a large, vertical hall filled with rows and rows of “people”, complaining to him, a human, for being late.
As his memory kicks in, and through conversation with the Negas, Ban realizes that he is in this period the overseer of humanity, which has been reduced to slavery by Doclus. Ban is flabbergasted that he has betrayed his race.
The Negas inform him that a human has rebelled and is trying to escape, and they order Ban to confirm his loyalty to them by killing the rebel. Ban picks up a gun and goes out to meet this rebel. It is a woman in a black suit, who berates his betrayal. Back in the present time, Yuki is watching what is going on, guarded by the two Cosmonauta. She yells at Ban not to kill the woman when one of the guards forces her to sit down again. In this movement, the time level on the machine is accidentally shifted and the monitor goes blurry.
The guards panic as they know if they lose Miraizer Ban they will be executed by their organization. Yuki desperately tries to find Ban again. In the meantime, Ban hurtles into a new time: he finds he has become a coelecanth, obviously after travelling back in time. All of sudden he jumps in time again and his shape is now similar to a protozoan creature. After a brief moment, he jumps again, this time into an amorphous world.
A shadowy figure appears before Ban, now in his usual form, and tells him that he is in the space between the third and the fourth dimensions. The shadow announces itself as Zenpest, the man who will kill the eternal Miraizer Ban. Zenpest begins to strangle Ban but suddenly Ban jumps in time yet again.
Ban ends up at the experiment room. The Cosmonauta point their guns at him and tell him they will take Yuki and him to their headquarters. By mistake, the step on the transporter that Ban was lying on and disappear into thin air. Yuki tells Ban that as they are regular human beings, they will never be able to return. We briefly see a gigantic eight-legged ant-like creature holding the two Cosmonauta as they scream for help.
Ban confesses to Yuki that 10,000 years hence he will betray humanity. He also tells of his interdimensional pursuer. He begins to think it would be better for everyone if he were dead. Yuki weeps upon hearing this.
CHAPTER 6
A bearded man is in a control room of some sort, asking his subordinates if the calculations are solid. He is told that they are: Miraizer Ban has been reborn within the past week. The bearded man works for the Ministry for the Pursuit of Miraizer Ban. As part of his job, he has gathered all of the babies born within the last seven days.
His assistants (a young man and a young woman) ask him what is going to happen to the babies. The bearded man tells them they will be incinerated, which causes the assistants to call him a devil. The bearded man replies that the devil here is rather Miraizer Ban. As the babies are being incinerated, he says that someone like Miraizer Ban cannot be allowed to exist, that he is a threat to humanity. Miraizer Ban was first discovered in 1976, and it is now the year 7777.
He explains that not every child born to Miraizer Ban will be Miraizer, but only one. Often, the appearance of Miraizer Ban will even skip a generation or two. But every time Miraizer Ban appears, he contains within him the memory of all of his ancestors and descendants, including the ones that were not actually Miraizer Ban. The male assistant announces incineration has been completed, and the bearded man, named Doctor Iruma, sighs heavily.
Suddenly the female assistant receives a report of a newborn baby that has until that point escaped detection. Two soldiers are dispatched to the Deep Sea Residential District, but the parents of the baby refuse to hand it over and end up blowing themselves up. Dr. Iruma is shaken by the report, but satisfied that the baby has been destroyed one way or another. He ask a second time for confirmation of the data, and his assistants assure him no mistakes have been made.
Iruma goes home to his wife and child, who luckily was born sometime before last week. He tries to sleep but the memory of all the dead babies haunts him. Meanwhile, the baby crawls toward a counter and tries to reach for a White Horse brand whisky bottle. His mother catches him and chides him. She recalls how clever he is, as he was already saying a few words after just one month. As soon as the baby is alone again, it reaches out for the whisky and manages to drink from it.
The mother tells Iruma, who is amused that the baby already shares his love of whisky. The next day Iruma goes to work and tells everyone he could not sleep at all. At work, he receives a phone call. The person on the other line tells Iruma that the data was wrong because the android (his female assistant) made a tiny mistake in the math. Unbeknownst to Iruma, the caller is his own son, whose mother sees talking on the phone. When the doctor asks the caller how come he knows all of this, the caller replies that he is Miraizer Ban and that is why he knows.
Using Miraizer’s information, the male assistant confirms that in fact a mistake had been made and all of the babies had died for nothing. Dr. Iruma shoots the female android in a rage and heads for home. His wife is waiting for him with a gun. Before he can say anything she shoots him in the stomach. She tells him their son is Miraizer Ban, which means he had access to all of Iruma’s memories, which allowed him to figure out the mistake.
Iruma limpers toward the baby but dies before he can reach him.
The scene changes to Ban and Yuki talking. Ban asks Yuki when will his existence end. Yuki replies that she will try to set the machine to figure that out. Yuki sees Ban holding a White Horse whisky bottle and asks him about it. He says it is a keepsake from his father, and that in the future he imagines he will grow to like it too, and afterwards his descendants.
END OF VOLUME ONE
VOLUME 2 (serialized from April 1977 to November 1977)
CHAPTER 7
We hear two (unseen) people inside a control center discussing Miraizer Ban. They have determined Ban’s location: a deserted island somewhere off the coast of Japan.
Ban and Yuki land on an island and approach a bunker. Yuki explains that the bunker was built during the War [WWII?] and is ideal for experimentation. She trusts no one will find them here. Yuki also comments that she would love to live here with Ban, but the boy says he would prefer a livelier place. Yuki realizes this might be her older age talking.
Ban is here to see just how far his descendants will go in the future. The plan is to set the machine for “Infinity” and hopefully catch a glimpse of the last Miraizer Ban’s memories. If the last Miraizer happens to witness the end of the universe then perhaps Ban and Yuki will be able to experience this as well.
Once the lever has been pulled, Ban seems to fall through space like usual, but only to end up right at the same spot, next to Yuki inside the bunker. Yuki suspects something must have malfunctioned, so she sets the machine for “Infinity” again and pulls the lever. The same thing happens. Ban tells her to stop as he feels queasy.
Yuki looks over the machine. It seems to be working perfectly. All of a sudden, they realize someone else is in the laboratory. It is Zenpest, the man living between dimensions who has sworn to kill Miraizer. Ban and Yuki run out of the bunker with Zenpest following them. Zenpest’s laser gun is so far advanced that Yuki and Ban know they cannot really escape. Ban manages to hit Zenpest on the head with a stick, then grab him by the hand and toss him. He suddenly has the intuition that humans of the future are extremely weak physically.
Eventually, Zenpest corners them and is ready to shoot. After staring at both of them, he falls to the ground and says he cannot go thorugh it. He confesses he himself is another Miraizer Ban, so that Yuki and Ban are his distant ancestors, his parents. If he erases their existence, he will be erasing his own. Ban asks several personal questions about his own life, and Zenpest is able to answer them all, proving that he is indeed a Miraizer.
At that moment, another plane lands nearby. Two mafiosos step out of the plane and question Yuki as to what information has she been able to acquire. It is revealed that the installation of the laboratory on the island and Yuki’s airplane were all supplied by this mafia group. In exchange, Yuki has pledged to give the group information about future events so they can benefit financially from them.
Yuki refuses to tell them anything, and Zenpest steps in, calling himself the Miraizer Ban of the 100th century. He shoots and blows up the two goons, but the explosion sets off an underground ammo depo left over from the War. Zenpest says goodbye to his “parents” and disappears. Yuki and Ban hop on the airplane and escape in the nick of time.
Ban comments that maybe Zenpest would know when the last Miraizer Ban disappears. Yuki adds that Zenpest seems to have the ability to actually jump through time at will, as opposed to Ban Idai who can simply access memories and live them. Then Yuki begins to ponder more deeply on the “Infinity” problem back at the laboratory.
It finally hits her. Maybe Time is a Ring, so that the farthest point in the future is none other than Right Now. For the moment, she does not talk to Ban about this.
CHAPTER 8
A woman atop a mountain, calling herself Miraizer Ban, relates all that she has seen through eons of time. She has seen flocks of pterodactyls, brontosauri swimming in the waters, lepidondedron [ancient plants] swaying in the wind, the Moon becoming the Earth’s satellite.
She has been on Earth since its conception. When human beings appear, they begin to sacrifice to the entity on the mountain. They sacrifice beautiful virgins to Miraizer Ban, who complains she never once asked for this. She misses the time of the dinosaurs, as even that “survival of the fittest” was more peaceful than the time of the humans. She misses the era when the plants ruled the world…
We see Ban Idai falling through space and saying he cannot take it anymore. Back in the laboratory with Yuki, he complains to her that his head is full of things: as Miraizer he has witnessed the past and the future. His existence is limitless.
Yuki tells Ban of her theory that Time is a Ring, and Ban realizes that he is trapped eternally. He asks whether the “memory ring” cannot be cut at some point, or if that is impossible, whether there is no way to shift Time and allow himself to escape to a different Ring. Yuki says she does not know the answer to this, that nobody knows. The question on the closing blurb reads: Is there only one Ring of Time?
CHAPTER 9
Yuki and Ban are musing. Ban remarks that no one would believe him if he told them of what he is and how can “travel” back and forward in time through his memories. Yuki replies that in fact the whole Earth is actually a time machine.
She asks him to look at the stars. What we see is the light emitted from them so many years ago. The farther away the star, the farther into its past we are looking when we gaze at the skies. We might even be seeing stars that exist no more.
Conversely, there are stars from which we can look at the Earth’s distant past, even its inception. From some vantage point out there, Yuki concludes, even the creation of the universe itself may be visible. This teaches us that man’s life is but a brief dream. Only Miraizer Ban is different.
In the meantime, a crew of humanoid aliens is directing its course toward 1977 Earth [time travel?]. Their aim is to track the first aware Miraizer Ban and destroy him. When their spaceship enters the planet’s atmosphere, it turns out the gravity brakes do not work. This is because the planet is not Earth but Venus, which has 10 times Earth’s gravity. The spaceship crashes on Venus.
The ship was operated by an automatic pilot system programmed to track Miraizer Ban’s bloodline. The aliens were interested in going to 1977 Earth but they seem to have landed in Venus in the distant past. The ship is broken and the atmosphere is oppresive so the situation is dire for the crew members.
A large, black metallic ball with lense-like protuberances all over its surface flies past them. The aliens wonder if the living thing that created could possibly thrive under these conditions. Then, suddenly, a huge thin rocket-like ship blasts off from the surface in the distance. The aliens agree that the ship seems built for interplanetary travel.
At this point, they notice someone’s approach. A short, bearded old man tells them that he is Miraizer Ban, and that he knows they have come here looking for him. The aliens do not understand what Miraizer is doing in Venus, but they take his word for it and shoot him several times. When the aliens show relief at the fact that they have at least completed their mission, the dying Miraizer contradicts them: his son and daughter have just left on the rocket ship, and his son is carrying Miraizer’s memories with him, so they have failed.
The closing blurb for the chapter states: just as when we look at the starry sky there is no single time, but a series of times piled up one on top of another [by function of the distance of the stars from Earth], so it is in the universe as such, and this is a truth that Miraizer will discover in due time.
CHAPTER 10
A general evacuation for the planet Earth is announced. Miraizer Ban hears the warning but as he has been sent on a fact-finding mission to a desolate place, he cannot reach the ships in time. He calls HQ but gets no response. It is too late: Ban sees several chess pawn-shaped ships blasting off from Earth with the evacuees.
The reason for the evacuation is that the Moon is approaching the Earth and will collide with it. Ban bemoans the fact that only he along with the animals and plants will suffer destruction. But suddenly he sees another man, who identifies himself as Miraizer Ban. Then more people start to show up. They are all Miraizer Ban, and they have all been left behind by the rest of humanity.
One of the Miraizer Ban figures it out: there must be one Miraizer Ban on the evacuation time. This Miraizer must have planned the evacuation so that only he will survive along with normal humans, and all of the other Miraizers will die. If there are many Miraizers, then being a Miraizer is not that special. Therefore the traitor Miraizer has arranged things so that be come supreme ruler.
One of the Miraizers uses a computer to determine the number of Miraizers presently on Earth. They started at the end of the 20th century in Japan, but have since spread far and wide. Japan 18,803 people. America [U.S.A.] 5,800. China 7,280. The Soviet Union 580. Europe 12,000. Africa 8,862 people.
In space, the traitor Miraizer Ban is delightedly looking at the impending collision of Earth with its satellite. This Miraizer is a very short male, with a long nose and long hair. His name is Dr. Ban. He rants about how from now on he will be a god to humanity.
Just when he has decided to take a nap, he is informed of an emergency meeting to take place. In the middle of a corridor, suddenly the doors at each end lock and a voice informs him that he will die. The evacuation committee thanks him for helping humanity to get rid of all of the Miraizers, except for the very last one. Two lasers shoot him and he dies.
At this point Ban Idai wakes up in the laboratory. He excitedly tells Yuki about how in the future the whole race of Miraizers is destroyed. She disbelieves him, and assures him that somehow at least some Miraizers must have survived. Her proof is this: 1) Time is a Ring; 2) memories of the past come from the future; and because 3) Ban has memories of the past; then therefore 4) Miraizers cannot have become extinct in the future, because otherwise Ban could not access the past.
Without waiting for Ban to agree, Yuki thinks it best to have him check out what happens next in the Moon collision saga, so she triggers the machine.
The Miraizers on Earth are panicking. They try to shoot the Moon and smash it, but the other humans have destroyed all of the necessary equipment before evacuating. One Miraizer comments that they will share the fate of the dinosaurs. The Earth begins to quake as the Moon impacts it.
CHAPTER 11
The chapter begins with Ban Idai coming out of his “trance” on the memory machine. He confirms to Yuki that the Moon and the Earth did collide and explode, so that all of the Miraizer Bans in the future have been exterminated. Yuki asks him his location when all of this was happening. Ban replies he saw it through the eyes of the traitor Miraizer on the evacuation ship, just before he died of the laser shots. Thus, according to Ban, the line of Miraizers should be totally extinct.
Yuki refuses to believe this. She cites her Ring of Time theory. Ban wonders if maybe the theory is wrong. Then he remembers the Cosmonauta. He comments on the lack of attacks recently and guesses they have given up on eliminating or capturing Miraizer as an impossible task. He conjectures that the aliens [Negas] that control the Cosmonauta may know about the end of Miraizer. Yuki suggests going to the beach to get their minds off of these issues.
Ban brings a net full of watermelons to the beach. He is suddenly scared of dying and wants to use the watermelons as a float to prevent drowning. Yuki tells Ban that he is good at surviving, and asks him if he truly thinks that the Miraizers, a race of survivors, will be annihilated at some point. Ban does not reply.
Ban falls asleep on the sand and dreams a T-Rex is about to attack him. He tells Yuki, who advises him to go to sleep again. He does and dreams he is in a forest. There is a woman tied to a stake looking at the sky and telling Miraizer Ban not to perish, but to live until the end of time. She is engulfed in flames.
Ban wakes up again. Yuki realizes that he has reached the point where can access his ancestors’ and descendants’ memories without any machinery, by simply sleeping and dreaming. Ban wonders if he will ever be able to rest again.
Back at the house, Ban dreams he is an astronaut drifting in space. He wakes up, then tries to sleep again. Yuki hears him talking in his sleep. He is crying for help、ordering someone not to touch the dimensional equipment, but to turn the reactive force key the other way in order to reverse the gravitational field [!]. Without waking up, the dream switches to a modern city in ruins.
Ban is a soldier, and a beggar boy is asking for some money in English. After a few seconds, it all comes to Ban’s mind: he is in New York, as part of the Japanese Army Occupation Force. On that very day the main force is about to enter Washington D.C. Ban remembers how in his own world America won the Second World War, but here the reverse has occurred.
A large sign reads: No dogs or Americans allowed. Japanese Army New York District. Occupation Army Command Center. OFF LIMIT. A second sign reads: New Yurakucho (Old Manhattan District). A third reads: New Nerima. A fourth: New Ikebukuro.
A large swarm of bombers flies overhead. They are Japanese bombers similar to the B-29 but much bigger. Ban realizes these did not exist in his own world. While admiring them, Ban is shot in the head. As he dies, another Japanese soldier tells him not to despair: Japan is about to drop atomic bombs over Washington and the war will be over soon. The bomb explodes and Ban is seen hurling through space.
Ban wakes up and discusses what he dreamt with Yuki. According to the Ring of Time theory, exactly the same series of events should be repeated over and over. But Ban tells Yuki that he has just experienced an alternate history. What is going on? Ban also expresses his fear that on one of his “journeys” he might not be able to return back to his own self. Ban begs Yuki to figure out once and for all the nature of Time. Yuki replies that likely he is the only one that can figure it out.
CHAPTER 12
The silent waters of the Third Planet. No living things exist there. A spaceship descends from the sky. Two people, unseen, are talking aboard the ship. One of them is called Ban. Ban’s partner tells him [or her!] that just as expected the atmosphere in this planet is too harsh for them to live there. They discuss their situation , which is as follows:
Their home planet is about to melt from the heat of the Sun and the life-giving waves are about to cease. Everyone else has evacuated the planet and gone far, but this ship’s crew believes that they should stay until their mother planet has totally evaporated. They owe it that much. Using the life-giving waves, which are generated by a machine deep within the home planet, they have been able to travel all the way to the Third Planet.
Humanity should have really settled on this Third Planet. The Third Planet is much larger and much more stable but it is too far, and so the majority of humans have decided to colonize the Second Planet instead.
The two speakers appear out on the deck of the spaceship, overlooking the ocean. They are wearing astronaut suits and their faces cannot be seen. One of them wonders if it would not be better for the race to perish right now. The other one, Ban, disagrees. It is imperative that some sort of life survives, so that it may carry the memories of humanity. Even if these lifeforms degenerate, eventually they will remember again, just as long as they can survive. This Third Planet will meet its end at some point, and life will have to move on to a Fourth Planet. Our memories, Ban says, will persist in this great universe.
Ban lets a single drop of liquid fall into the ocean. This drop contains microscopic living beings. He bids these creatures to remember the past and to cooperate with each other because in the end they are all brothers.
A planet is seeing crashing into the Sun and melting. The speakers view everything from the spaceship and say goodbye to their home planet (the First Planet). The life-giving waves stop. The two spacemen jump into the ocean and both they and the ship begin to melt away and disappear. In the meantime, the microscopic life-forms thrive in the ideal conditions underwater.
Ban Idai wakes up from his nap, and tells Yuki his dream. The First Planet melted and evaporated when it hit the Sun. The Second Planet is actually the Mercury of our own time. The Third Planet is Venus [this might explain Miraizer's presence in Venus in Chapter 9].
Ban surmises that more knowledge of the First Planet might open up the mysteries of Miraizer. As Ban and Yuki are talking inside an observatory, a scientist overhears them and praises youth for its creativity and imagination. Back at their home, Ban sees that Yuki has been working on what looks like a giant sphere. Yuki explains it is a model of Time that she has been working on.
An explosion interrupts them, then there is darkness. We see Yuki hooked up to a machine and a voice telling her that as she is an ancestress of the Miraizer line they will examine her brain and learn more about it. Ban wakes up, injured and alone in the room.
CHAPTER 13 (PART ONE)
Yuki is hooked to a machine. Two voices, one commanding, the other assisting, can be heard. The commander has just ordered that power output be raised by 200%. The desired result does not come about. The assistant warns that output is at critical levels and that Yuki might die.
The commander does not care: he orders the output be raised by 200% again. He says that who ever can discover the mystery of Miraizer Ban will control the universe from beginning to end. Even if Yuki cannot yield all of the information necessary for this, anything that they can get their hands on will be a first step toward this goal.
However, the power output is too high and the machine explodes.
Next, we see Yuki and Ban in their room. Yuki is reading the newspaper out loud. There is a story about a big sister who was so worried about the misconduct of her younger brother that she attempted to kill herself with gas. The effort was unsucessful, and the police was happy to discover the naked woman. The report goes on to say that the policemen drooled and that the younger brother is an idiot for not caring about his sister.
Ban is outraged. Yuki tells him that she had to come up with a story for the police when they found her. This might be the work of the Cosmonauta, or it might be that Miraizer’s existence is more widely known and that now there are more forces at work.
Yuki reveals that she herself might have a Miraizer-like quality to her, though not to Ban’s extent. This is because once she thought she saw herself, or rather, her own faded skeleton. Ban asks where. On Tsubogami Mountain, near Ohzu City in Shikoku, she says. She was buried underneath the ground-pines, after stabbing her neck with a sword containing a hand guard with a gingko motif.
She was a pirate’s daughter, and her people belonged to the Suigun [marine lords of the region in the middle ages] but other pirates pursued her. She walked to Taihemura, then through there to Tsubogami Mountain. She died beneath the sharp peak. She also remembers the names Matsushita, Matsugami, Matsumoto, Utsunomita and Katsube…
Ban and Yuki decide to go to Shikoku and have a look. They talk to a local who points them in the direction of Taiheimura. They ask him about Matsumoto. The local confirms he lives in the district, and that he moved there as a child from some city or other. He loved insects and shooting guns. When Yuki asks him his name, the man introduces himself as Matsushita.
They walk along with Matsushita and Yuki seems to know her way very well. They reach a tree with a large hole in the trunk and Matsushita laughs: one time little Matsumoto was coming home from school when he got attacked by many carpenter bees from a beehive underneath this very tree!
The beehive was famous in the district, as it has been there for hundreds of years and it is regarded as a protective deity. The attack on Matsumoto was not unprovoked: the boy tried to exterminate the hive by urinating on it, smashing it with sticks and throwing stones at it. However, after this incident the authorities destroyed the beehive: even bees must yield to the progress of science. Yuki claims to remember the buzzing of the bees.
Walking along, Ban comments that no large trees can be seen. Yuki points to a huge tree stump in front of them. They dig near it until they find a human skeleton. And next to the skeleton is a sword, but the gingko-patterned hand guard is missing.
Suddenly a bald man with a laser gun appears with the guard in his hand. He explains that when Yuki died he chanced to come upon the spot, take the guard and keep it elsewhere. He did this because he believed the prophecies that the princess of the Seigun, Senkei [=Thousand Fireflies, Yuki's first name Kei means firefly] would live forever, and so he expected her to return. Behind the man is a large spaceship. He commands Yuki and Ban to board it and they obey him.
On board, Ban asks for the man’s identity. He claims to be a Miraizer Ban from the future, and the spaceship is a time machine. He is intending to take them to his home. Ban begs him to figure out the secret of how to stop the existence of Miraizer, but the man refuses to help.
When they reach the future Miraizer’s home it is in flames. The future Miraizer tries to contact several planets but none respond: 28 planets he created and developed human civilizations on, but all of them seem to have him deserted him right now.
Ban Idai is confused about how they went from Shikoku just a little while ago to a space that does not seem to even have an Earth anymore. According to the future Miraizer, “distance travel” takes time and energy and is very uneconomical. Time travel and dimensional travel are far superior. The key point is this: in the deepest sense all of the times in the universe coexists at the same time. Ban still does not get it. The future Miraizer turns to Yuki, who asks him the following question: where is the real self? And which one is the real self? Could it be that all of the selves are equal? She adds that from her standpoint at this precise moment she feels as if this self in the 1970s is her true self. Has the future Miraizer Ban a different type of self-awareness from this?
An explosion rocks the ship and the future Miriazer Ban is mortally wounded. He manages to mutter about someone else, more properly something else, out there who does know everything that can be known, then he dies.
Somehow Yuki and Ban are thrust back into Shikoku, by the old tree stump. They find the hand guard near the tree. Ban decides to pray for the rest of Yuki’s soul [!] and Yuki thanks him for it. Then they sit and rest.
Back home, Ban stares at the moonlit night. Not so long ago he was happy in the knowledge that there was one Earth, one Moon and one Ban. Now things are much more complicated. Ban is tired but scared that if he sleeps he will travel in his memories agains. He goes to the liquor shop with the intention of buying some sake and getting very drunk. This way, he thinks, he will sleep soundly.
Although he finds the taste of alcohol terrible, he drinks until drunk. He starts tottering around the house, complaining merrily that it is tilted to one side. Yuki calls him in horror. He apologizes, but she makes it clear that she is not concerned about the alcohol: in fact, the house is tilted as it is flying up from the Earth. Looking out the window, Ban and Yuki see a spaceship pulling their house up. Then the ship fires a laser at the house and pulverizes it, but catching Ban in its mechanical arms all the while.
Ban flies off into the distance as Yuki is held by another set of mechanical arms from a second ship. When she screams to Ban, a voice from the ship near her addresses her. It declares that they will sever once and for all the link between Ban and Yuki. Yuki realizes this is the work othe race of Doclus, and the ship’s voice confirms this. The ship then fires a (seemingly lethal) laser shot straight at Yuki and she screams in pain.
Meanwhile, Ban is taken aboard the first ship. A woman’s figure can be seen in the shadows: she is very thin and has long hair. She reminds Ban that he has already met his descendant Dr. Miraizer Ban from the future, and that he should remember how this Doctor Ban talked of something, another existence [aside from the Miraizers?] capable of altering time, dimension, space and the universe…
END OF VOLUME TWO
VOLUME 3 (serialized from December 1977 to October 1978)
CHAPTER 13 (PART TWO)
Ban is tied up by a mystery woman, the “existence” that the future Miraizer had warned him about. The woman says that she is but one part, an existence within that existence. Ban begs her to let him go home but she says he will do as she says. There is a flash and we see Ban hurtling through space like he does everytime on the “memory reader”.
He finds himself in a futon, with his mother in the room next door washing the dishes. But he can tell it is not his original mother. He reckons maybe he is in the past (as his father or grandfather) or in the future (as one of his descendants). The calendar, however, reads December 10th 1977, so he is squarely in the present.
His mother goes to see how he is doing. Apparently he has just woken up from an accident he had three days earlier. His father passed away sometime ago and his mother is shattered by the accident, although now her son seems to be OK. Ban stands up (he looks like his usual self, somewhat younger) and tell his “mother” that he will get a part-time job to help her.
She is shocked, as her son is a very quiet and shy boy. This is not like him. She calls him “Ban” too, which confuses Ban. Is he or is he not the same person?
The next day Mom goes off to work and tells Ban to stay in the house and play with his stuffed animals. There is a mountain of them, and Ban is surprised by how girlish and wimpy he is supposed to be. Disobeying Mom, Ban goes out to find work. On the way he passes a huge hole in the ground, which he remembers as the location of the accident his scientist parents had the year before. He stops a man working in the area and asks about Yuki and Ban Idai. The man says both have disappeared since the incident.
At this point we see the mysterious shadow woman observing Ban’s experience in a control center. She remarks that he seems to be straying off of his scheduled path.
Meanwhile, Ban is hired as a ramen delivery boy, and he manages to earn 3,000 baht for his mother, who is surprised to see this. She reminds Ban that she should start going to school again the next day. Ban wakes up early and sneaks out to do his part-time, but then he is thrown back into the woman’s control center. At the same time, two men with guns enter the house and threaten “Mom”. Ban sees this on the same screen as the mysterious woman.
The woman tells Ban that he will kill the mother if he does not cooperate. She wants him to hand over all of his memories. She explains that he must be willing to hand them over, otherwise they are unable to take them by force. Ban says he will never consent to this. The woman now threatens to kill Kei Yuki, who according to her has already forgotten everything about Ban. In his mental struggle, Ban suddenly falls asleep.
The woman grows impatient and she has him shocked electrically to wake him up. She wants an answer: he shouts that he will never cooperate with her. When she threatens once more to kill the mother and Yuki, he invites her to go ahead and kill him as well. He tells her that if he is the first ancestor of all Miraizers, then his death will mean theit total extinction, and he is OK with that. If, on the other hand, he is just one of the many, then the surviving Miraizers will have the memory of what has been done to him and they will all conspire to take revenge on her.
The mystery woman is impressed. She admits she has underestimated him, and she lets him go, predicting that in the end she will triumph over him. Ban wakes up back home with Yuki at his side.
She cheerfully informs him that the “existence” has given up for the time being. Ban is still curious about the boy “Ban” and they go out to find him. Sure enough they see him riding his bike doing ramen deliveries. Ban is troubled, but Yuki says the change of personality is natural, the boy is simply more mature and his mother should not suspect anything. Possibly, she adds, this “Ban” just happened to share the name and resemble him physically without really being related to Ban Idai. By making it possible for the boy to gain the courage to help his mother, the “existence” has indirectly done a good deed.
Yuki and Ban continue walking down the street at night. They begin to hear footsteps, but no one is around in front or behind them. Yuki checks her mini-radar (that looks like a wristwatch) and realizes something is over them. They see a human figure running away in the middle of the sky.
They return home and Yuki goes to work on her research. Ban bemoans his fate again, and decides that dying and putting a stop to the Miraizers might be the best option. He hangs himself, but someone cuts the rope and he comes crashing to the floor. Yuki rushes in. They realize that the skywalker from before is the one who cut the rope.
This skywalker looks like a robotic child, and he calls himself Ban. He says he is happy to meet his ancestors. Yuki says that what her radar picked up earlier was not a lifeform. The skywalker replies that he is not alive, but that he is god. That said, his boots make sounds when he walks so he is not perfect. The skywalker wants Ban to visit his spaceship, which is hovering in the distance.
He assures them that he will not hurt Ban, as this would mean his own annihilation. Yuki acquiesces and the skywalker flies off holding Ban by the hand. Yuki looks at the noose and realizes that Ban must be hurting deeply inside, and that something must be done to help him.
Robot Ban’s spaceship is very messy, and he tells his ancestor that he inherited this from him. In the meantime, Yuki tries to analyze the nature of Time again. She manages to reproduce a 3-D model of Time: it is in the shape of a fuzzy sphere. She tweaks the controls and the fuzziness disappears, but now the surface of the sphere seems to have dark spots on it. Looking out the window she realizes that the spaceship has vanished.
Robot Ban puts the ship on warp speed and they reach the edge of the universe. Beyond is pure light, or as Robot Ban explains, pure energy. Eventually they pass out of the energy zone into a normal looking space. A dark planet with many regularly placed lights comes into view: this is the robot’s actual home. immediately upon arrival, Robot Ban shocks Ban Idai with his machine rays and we see Ban hurtling through space just as he usually does on the memory reader. He feels different this time, as if he were falling toward the center of the universe.
Yuki’s equipment tracks Ban down when this is happening, but the reading is odd. Acording to the machines, Ban is travelling neither spatially nor temporally: he has actually stepped out of the Ring of Time! Ban wakes up on a bed inside a spherical room. He hears Robot Ban explaining how this is the center of his planet. Then the robot strikes Ban with still more rays.
Ban disappears from Yuki’s screen. She rules out the theory that he has died as improbable. She has an uncanny feeling that he is very near, but also very far. She goes to his bedroom just to make sure; he is not there.
Ban drifts through a space that feels very odd, almost as if the rules of physics did not apply. Suddenly, he falls upon solid land, with a large moon in the distance. He stands up and finds a castle [Disney's Magic Kingdom, basically] before him. A beautiful, long haired woman bids him to follow her into the castle. A futuristic car appears and she tells him to hop on. He refuses, citing his lightheadedness after the crash. She insists and they both ride toward the castle.
Several boulders from a mountain they are passing fall down on them. Ban luckily escapes unharmed but he finds the vehicle has been crushed. Just as he has concluded that the woman must be dead, he sees her from atop the ramparts of the castle. She lowers the drawbridge and Ban steps in.
The inside of the castle is luxurious. Ban thinks it is funny how the building looks like a castle from the outside but a sumptuous palace from the inside. The woman has prepared a huge feast. Ban eats to the point of bursting. Then the woman pulls a lever and a trapdoor opens underneath Ban’s chair. He falls into an aquatic area where a big amorphous creature bgins to swallow him whole. The woman is looking through a window. She smiles and declares her intention to see Ban die as a nightcap, as entertainment. Ban is outraged but then he wakes up back with Robot Ban.
The robot asks Ban if he enjoyed himself. He reveals that Ban was just inside his own, robotic heart. This makes Ban laugh uncontrollably. The robot is very irked, but Ban cannot help himself: so the robot’s ideal world is for him (it) to be a lovely princess living in a palace and feeding visitors to her monster! The robot is so angry he zaps Ban with more rays.
Ban is hurtling through space once more, deeply worried about where the robot could have sent him. We see him approaching a concentration of rings [of Time?] and then we see Yuki as she picks him up again in her radar. The signal is very weak, however, and Yuki fears Ban might be in a different dimension nearby.
Ban lands on a marsh with a great mass of skulls and bones lying about. Rather than sinking, he climbs a great pile of bones. The fear of sinking proves stronger than the fear of the bones. He muses that in this situation even a Mountain of Bones is Heaven. He spots a helicopter coming, only to realize that it is a strange six-winged bird with its skull sticking out (no eyes). The huge bird picks him up and drops him over what seem to be its young ones.
Before he is eaten, Ban is thrown in space again. He feels he is moving sideways this time. Finally he arrives at Yuki’s lab room. Yuki was the one who saved him, managing to find him just in time. She tells him that she is ready to crack open the secrets of Miraizer Ban: it is all recorded in Ban’s orbiting around the (model) time sphere.
We see a representation of a ring in space. Then two rings, then 10 or so, then dozens, and finally, a perfect white sphere. Yuki tells him this is the answer. A multiplicity of Rings of Time produces this. A warning alarm sounds. At first, Ban and Yuki do not see what the threat is, but we can see several alien spaceships approaching Earth. It is an invasion from the Negas of Doclus, who have just realized that Yuki has cracked the secrets of Miraizer.
Aboard one of the Doclus ships, we hear voices confirming that the Firefly Light Grid [Kei = firefly, Ban = Grid] sensor was activated an hour earlier, but that it has since gone silent. The Doclus force broadcasts a message to the leaders of Earth: surrender all of your Miraizers or the planet will be destroyed!
Yuki says that she has set a mechanical protective screen over their dwelling so they will not be detected. Ban wonders why the Negas would bother with these actions. If their technology is so advanced compared to Earth’s, they should just blow up the entire planet and all of the Miraizers with it.
Yuki counters by reminding him that Miraizers live outside of Earth too. Next, Ban recalls how one of the Miraizers was traitorous overseer of Earth and a pawn of Doclus. Yuki says they truly do not have enough information to ascertain whether that Miraizer was truly a traitor. She asks Ban to try to recall his feelings when he was sent to kill the rebel woman. Ban cannot remember.
He sees Yuki packing her clothes and asks her why. She says she has built a proper shelter for this sort of situation. The shelter can be accessed by a hole underneath the toilet seat in the bathroom. Ban stares in amazement as they both descend down a platform into an underground shelter. He tells Yuki it is at times like this that he wonders what she really is. She replies that he’ll know in time, even if the answer might be unpleasant.
The shelter is fully equipped and has an enormous amount of food. Yuki decides to check all of the equipment and she tells Ban to relax. She will be back in 20 minutes.
Ban decides that there is something he must do. Without Yuki knowing, he sneaks back onto the platform, ascends to the bathroom and steps out into the street. He taunts the Negas to seize him if they want Miraizer Ban.
The mother ship from Doclus happens to be just overhead and the Negas take Ban in. Yuki realizes what is going on, but it is too late. She does not understand what Ban is planning to do.
Ban meets the Negas, who are humanoids totally draped in black cloaks. He tells them that he is the original Miraizer Ban and that they should release all others. The Negas agree, and Ban sees through a window as all of the other Miraizers are thrown off the ship to the ground. The Negas then tell Ban that from now on he will collaborate with them. He should take one last look at Earth because it will be the last time he sees it. Ban asks if the future Doclus overseer of Earth is one og his descendants. One of the Negas answers that it is likely so.
The Negas take Ban to his quarters, which are designed to look like a Japanese home. On the way, Ban sees the engines powering the ship. These look like half-spheres and the Negas boast that their technology is much simpler than the humans’. When Ban says some ramen would truly make him feel at home, they produce some for him. He is impressed.
Ban somehow knows [through the memory of his descendants, probably] that the engines run on time energy, and that if he could destroy one it would initiate a reaction that would likely destroy the mother ship and kill himself. He wanders out to the engine room and jumps on one of the engines with the intention of destroying it. A Nega cries out to him not to do this, as it will mean his death as well. Rather than dying, however, we see Ban hurtling through space as he always does in the “memory reader”. There is an explosion on the ship at the same time.
Ban feels very happy as he drifts through space. He remembers his mother and we can see in his background the planet Earth and a gigantic embryo of light just behind it. Suddenly, Ban wakes up at his original home. The sequence of events is exactly that of the day his parents died: they wake Ban up, who has overslept, and tell him to go to school. Yuki comes in to help with the Idais’ experiment.
Ban runs into a black cat on the way to school, and this triggers his memories. He realizes that on this day he will go to school, fall asleep in class, then hear an explosion and find out his parents have died. Ban runs back home only to find the door to the experiment room is locked. Inside, the two scientists and their assistant are preparing to conduct the experiment. Ban takes a pail full of water and splashes the breaker. The lights go out. Ban has done it.
Ban’s father calls him names and chases him out of the house with a broom, yelling that his son has just ruined the experiment. He meets Yuki and tries to explain to him what he has done, but she scolds him for being such a bad boy.
Ban concludes that this time ring he is on is slightly different from the one he was on earlier. In this ring his parents did not die etc. Ban begins to put everything together:
There is an infinite number of time rings. When all of them are displayed simultaneously, what we time sphere [assuming each ring has the same center]. This sphere encloses an infinite number of destinies for each individual, e.g. for Ban Idai. All of Ban’s adventures have not been on a single ring, rather he wandered across different rings vertically, horizontally, diagonally. Ban thinks that Miraizers might not really know the future, [because knowledge of the future implied that one was stuck on a single time ring, whereas one is really jumping all around] and this is good news for Ban.
Furthermore, a single time sphere is probably enclosed in a larger sphere, which is enclosed in a still larger one, and so on ad infinitum [these spheres do not need to be concentric, judging from the image in the manga]: the possibilities are endless. If a child inherits his or her parents’ memories, this might turn out to be useful to the child for a single day [as afterwards the child will shift onto a new ring or sphere]. All in all, Ban is elated that his future is up in the air.
[Last page in the series: Yuki is sitting alone by a window, nearby is a plate with two glasses of water and two oranges. She is drawing the word "Ban" in the air with her finger. There is a caption. It reads:]
It is said that the beginnings of the universe are lost in remote antiquity, and that the ends of the universe are lost in the farthest future. Still, if…if for some reason this is actually not so…what should be done?
THE END[/QUOTE] http://animekritik.wordpress.com/alberichs...-ban-summaries/ |
