1542 – Bye Bye Jupiter aka Sayonara Jupiter (1984)

spacetime coordinates: year 2125, Earth’s population has swollen to 15 billion with a further 5 billion outer space settlers spread throughout the solar system, including Mars and satellites of Jupiter.

Director: Koji Hashimoto & Sakyo Komatsu

Year: 1984

Minoru Sakyo Komatsu (小松 左京) is one of Japan’s trio of famous Japanese sci-fi greats together with Shin’ichi Hoshi and Yasutaka Tsutsui. Komatsu’s involvement with the 1970 Japan World Exhibition in Osaka makes him intimately linked to what came to be known as the ‘Japanese wonder’, the signature architecture and ideas of an era brimming with the optimism of bubble economy 80s, probably the most prosperous and carefree period in Japan’s modern history.

At the same time he is also linked to some of the most enduring traumas of Japanese sci-fi, the birth of a specific 70s disaster cinema(including Virus: The Day of Destruction), following the long tail of atomic bomb afterglow into cold war apocalypticism and what came to be seen as Akira hubris. Komatsu was a key player of the 1970s return to catastrophic imaginings of the future (in parallel with contemporary 1971 oil crisis, Watergate, the end of international golden standard, end of the wars of ‘national liberation’ and traditional communism etc). His best-seller, translated into many languages (including German) was Japan Sinks (1973) where Geotrauma is unleashed as a series of volcanic eruptions, rescue plans and earthquakes that brake up, inundate and transform the entire island nation into refugeesmmigrating to Korea, China, Soviet Union and the US. Japan Sinks brings the archipelago in touch with a tectonic plate ‘structures of feelings’ that questions all certitudes and difficulties of planing ahead of a major catastrophe. It was filmed as Tidal Wave in 1973 and in our own catastrophic-pandemic 2020 there is a new anime adaptation advertised by Netflix Japan in collaboration with Science Saru studios.

Sayonara Jupiter I could trace only in its German dubbed version, a delightful 80s artefact on its own. Based on the 1983 book by Sakyo Komatsu, Sayonara Jupiter offers a unique extra planetary outlook, probably only comparable to the recent Chinese Taikonautic blockbuster The Wandering Earth, based on Liu Cixin’s book. In its scope and enormity of its consequences it makes painfully clear that there is a mismatch with a Western imagination that largely gave up on regarding space as the ultimate destiny of humanity. Even former space race dreams pale when compared with these daring feats of Belt & Road exoplanetary geoengineering.

Prometheic terraforming gets introduces early on – humanity approaching an almost pre- Dyson Sphere initiative, right there on the Kardashev scale called ‘JS – Jupiter Solarization’ project) disclosing a galactic pupose that in turn necessitates the introduction of an alien encounter as well an absolutely credible nemesis: future extraterrestrial eco- terrorist cults. IMHO this vision is matched only by celebrated 1972 Douglas Trumbull debut Silent Running of biospheric drift & robotic gardening. Its technological sublime knows no bounds and so expect lots of wonderful TOHO studios mecha props, gigantic (physical!) spaceship models, upside down moving geisha extras in space stations, all propped up by a grandiose futuristic shamelessness and cosmic naivité. It is really hard to classify this as foolish overreach, cautionary tale, humanistic futurism or as dabbling with truly important questions regarding both planet- destroying capacities & planet – preserving/sustaining potential of future technology.

Now to get to the showdown of the movie: Chief Engineer Eiji Honda onboard Jupiter-orbiting Minerva Station as head of the JS Jupiter Solarization project team is confronted by a international group of protesters(later to be radicalized as terrorists) led from afar by a musician-guru cult leader. All live in a high surveillance Hawaii surf paradise where space hippies gave rise to the ‘Jupiter Church’. To quench the thirst for energy (resource poor Japan was always keenly aware of the energy crisis), space colonies government aims to overcome the costliness of nuclear fusion via a Big Science project that aims to transform Jupiter into a second sun that could power-up remote cosmic neighborhoods and outer planet suburbias. As if this feat was not sufficiently brash (in the eyes of the Jupiter Church), a newly discovered black hole is headed straight for the Sun, so that the solarization project gets retooled as a nova- project.

The only viable solution to Earth’s imminent destruction is a detonation powerful enough to swerve the black hole in a non lethal direction. Jupiter is slated for sacrifice, not before the chief Engineer and Space Linguist Millicent “Millie” Willem discover a 120 km long alien derelict ‘Jupiter Ghost’ spaceship hidden and emitting a (whale-like) signal they cannot decode. The imagery of this hidden spaceship is truly amazing considering the fact that it is all pre-CGI. This ancient paleo-astronautic spaceship relic has been lying in hiding since hundreds of thousands of years, camouflaged in the turbulent atmosphere of the gas giant and is probably responsible for the Nazca like drawings terraformers have discovered on Mars (as well as presumably for those on Earth).

Due to a change of directorial vision and other mishaps, Sayonara Jupiter can feel like an utterly dull movie experience in spite of such a grandiose inter planetary setting. This should not stop us from immersing into welcome ludicrousness and cosmist bathos mixed with erotica. There is this incredible terraforming imagery of Mars at the very beginning, the directed catastrophe-level geoeningeering that is cheered right from the very start – the one action that uncovers the 100.000 yr old Nazca drawings.

There is the space new age sex scene of the Eiji the Chief Engineer and Maria the Jupiter Church cultist infiltrator and terrorist that conspires to blow up the Minerva Station in order to save gassy Jupiter from destruction. Naked planetary floating bodies almost as bold as all the mixed couple book sex magic pinups u can think off. There’s also this singular cut from the Earth Federation President and Constantin Brâncusi’s famous modernist sculpture The Kiss, serving as a stand-in for a new togetherness in the face of disaster.

Luscious space yoga sci-fi cover art unleashed upon an unsuspecting audience with humans as the besotted species finally evolving into anti gravitational exo-planetary conservationist sex beings!

For those with an interest in that eras High Weirdness potential – Sayonara Jupiter offers bold glimpses of a shadow underbelly to the optimistic and prosperous Japanese miracle. There is something very specific to this Jupiter Church cult – something in tune with the bloom of doom subculture in the Japanese 80s when lots of ultra modern middle class women and men, including well adjusted media/TV celebs join esoterica leaning groups, a time when Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult expanded and gained pop creds. Blind Chizuo Matsumoto became Shoko Asahara in 1987. It is a time when such Unabomber anarko-primitive clash and get enamored with the techno-scientist elite. Back to back with Reaganite US Star Wars program, Sayonara Jupiter is itself part of a neo-catastrophist revival of Immanuel Velikovsky theories that start resonating with a new prophetic ardor in a key shockumentary of that era: the 1982 Jupiter Menace narrated by George Kennedy (which I wrote at lenght in a previous post), featuring its own specific blend of US pop paranoia, fringe culture conspirituality and incipient prepper and survivalist drift into the disaster imagination of a planetary- astral eschaton.

 

1498 – QUEST (1984)

vintage original Quest poster

Directors and Producers: Elaine Bass and Saul Bass

Based on a story by Ray Bradbury

Quest is without a doubt one of the most remarkable Sci-fi movies ever made, in a league of its own. No matter that it is just a mere 30 minutes, concept, length, aesthetics they all agree with each other. I think it is only available via a new re-release of the PHASE IV (1973) DVD (another wonderfully weird and rare movie), otherwise only a low rez copy available on YT and even this does not lower its impact and for whom I am deeply grateful. You feel like going back to see it again and again. Interestingly it also credits as co-producer Mokichi Okada Association, linked to an organic farming pioneer from Japan, founder of a Japanese new religion the Church of Messianity (1935) based on healing rituals and channeling ‘divine light’. There is no direct explicit link in the movie other than that, but I can see why Mr Okada or his followers would support such a Sci-fi or even commission it

Quest 1984

Definitely for Jodorowsky and Frank Herbert fans, here comes a Sci-fi with a spiritual dimension, without getting suffocated in mythological cycles or direct references of any sort. It is completely relevant, maybe even universally so, without the weight of tradition or cultural attribution. It invents a world, a universe with its own species, rituals, metaphysics and even temporality. Probably the only visible dated aspect and an important lack in this quest is the absence of feminine characters, apart from the early extended family, its only hero being the traditional gendered masculine Ghilgamesh/Enkidu type.

Quest 1984

The world-building is all of its own and there is no need of much add-ons, explanations, background story apart from the strictly necessary. You could even watch it without any text or voice-over and it would still make some sense beyond words. It accomplished what many space opera sagas such as SW have tried but never quite managed in so many episodes, to be symbolically original and inventive in a way that introduces you to a larger universe, relevant across generations and worlds. You can call it gnostic, you can call it spiritualist, occult or a piece that would easily take its place within the Hermeticist tradition, but I would abstain from that. Apart from its depiction of an initiatic parkour, it mixes stylistically modernist elements with ancient lost civilization type of gigantic temples and ruins. It also puts in perspective work by such visually innovative Scifi directors such as Alex Garland (see his recent quantum computing inspired series DEVS) or Denis Villeneuve. This 1984 Scifi Quest speaks to us today as humanity or even extra plantary humanity, especially in this difficult moment when questions of life, youth, old age seems to have heightened importance. The Coronavirus pandemic is also pointing in this direction somehow, or maybe it is just that a lot of things around us resonate with it. It is not just visually stunning but also emotionally moving and satisfying in a strange and almost trance- like way.

Quest 1984

Many have attributed an MC Escher dimension or have seen works by René Magritte reflected in it, to which I would add Piranesi’s Carceri. My thesis is that the scope could be much larger. Behind this atemporal feel, we can speculate more about the historical moment it got made. This mathematic-geometric phase space, unfolding in infinite directions in front of a POW coincides with a foundational moment in computer graphics or even VR (mostly speculatively via cyberpunk), a time when such means were low-rez and most gaming consoles fairly primitive. Yet then again, compared with Tron (1982), this is clearly not a moviemovie about the VR, cyberspace or the ultimate realism of a universe played and working according to gaming rules.

This film, at that point in time was not yet ‘post-cinematic’ (Steven Shaviro), and yet keeps announcing via cinematic means of expression thosevvery dreams of future Indie game creators. In a sense, Quest by Elaine and Saul Bass comes close to comics authors such as Marc-Antoine Mathieu Sense or The Princess of the Never-ending Castle by Shintaro Kago out on Hollow-Press (thx! Bogdan Otaku for introducing it), exploring infinite worlds and the meanders of a vast labyrinthine structures with fractal characteristics. It’s the unice itself who solicits exploration, who somehow like William James said keeps the journey going & mind searching for deeper truths. This absence of an all encompassing Internet feels almost liberating, showing how reality itself can stimulate the and simulate itself, offering maybe so much more than a holographic principle. If the Internet is superfluous as an outside reference, then Elaine & Saul Bass give us a different outlook, an entirely self-contained and infinitely branching world that expands almost in lockstep with the wanderer till the end into something that feels very much like our own challenges and trials.

In the Scifi realm, it is akin The Silver Globe by Jerzy Zulawski, another world of modified descendants, survivors from a shipwrecked spaceship, populating another planet, developing their own civilizations, technologies and rituals, far away form Earth. It could also well be a Dying Earth story like the William Hope Hodgeson’s mysterious 1912 Night Land arcologic pyramid. Anyway, within this inner subterranean realm, a world of darkness longing for spiritual and rejuvenating light, a lifetime is measured just by 8 days. They grow, mature, learn and die during one week, a bit more than Ephemeridae insects. The only hope is to travel, get out and survive and live life as a journey, transiting along a series of increasingly difficult tasks that would allow final salvation and final release from the speeded-up, shortened version of life the subterranean ancestors are destined to live. There also some messianic prophecies that somehow foretell the arrival of a youth that has all the proper signs and could break this spell and push further on than anybody else before him. There is an entire series of games, involving different material shapes and what seems like a hologram – cognitive geometric pieces and reflexes to train the young, all parts of a larger puzzle. One never knows why or when they will come in handy. Precious days pass, as the hero climbs across unearthly scenery, crossing gigantic, mostly empty structures, seemingly built in the deep past by inhuman builders, almost seeming to stretch across planetary systems, or across some fathomless abyss.