We all know here what “Showa” means, right? Let’s run a refresher just in case, it’ll lead us to the point in a smoother way.
While Japan still uses the Gregorian calendar, they also count their years with “eras”, each era is marked by the ascension of a new emperor into the throne. As of this writing we’re in the Year 5 of the Reiwa Era which started when Emperor Naruhito took the throne in 2019 (The first year of Reiwa counts as Reiwa 1 so 2020 was Reiwa 2).
Before that, the Heisei era ended in Heisei 31, having started in 1989 with the rise of Emperor Akihito into power. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call “Heisei” as “Modern Day Japan”, the era stretched from the tail end of its economic bubble into the Lost Generation, into the 2000s, into the Tohoku Earthquake. And now, with anything pre-2020 being squarely “The Before Times” around the world, it feels ever so easier to compartimentalize “Heisei” as something that entails the “Modern World”.
Its extent pales in comparison to the Showa era, however.
The Showa Era started when Emperor Hirohito rose to power, and if that name rings a bell it’s because he rose to power in 1926. It’s an era that extends from pre-World War 2, to the war, to post-WW2, to the Post-War economic miracle, to the oil crisis to the economic bubble. And it only ended because the emperor died instead of a successor taking before then.
So when people think Showa, they think of what defined Japan before a new economic recession resulted in what was called the “Lost Generation”. That tail end of the era where traditionalism mixed with The New Ways, where the old generation was wary of the sins of the past resurfacing and taking everything away while a new generation that only knew peace was entering society.
It’s the era where Kamen Riders were rising above the corruption that gave them power in order to make sure the fascists that want to control the world can never do so even if they have to wage a one-man war against them. The era where Mobile Suit Gundam showed the underlying fear that government, ANY government, will result in people willing to do anything to secure their peace even if it means waging war against its fellow man for it in a never ending cycle of hurting.
And of course, in this era, like any other, there were Idols.
The evolution of the idol image is one that is fascinating to trace. From ideal godddesses of perfection, to just celebrities, to the ideal that anyone can be an idol and everything in-between. If your only experience is anime, it’s actually as easy to trace as comparing the main heroines of every Macross show.
For this specific post, however, picture Lynn Minmay from the original show. The perfect, kindest girl, whose big heart and talent and kindness is able to literally end wars.
Maruzensky’s voice actress goes by the name LYNN WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????
And if you can get that image you can get the general gist of other actual idols from the era like Miho Nakayama. And Miho Nakayama (Part of the so-called Idol Four Heavenly Queens with Yoko Minamino, Yui Asaka, and Shizuka Kudo) is important here because she’d get a game for herself called Idol Hotline: Miho Nakayama Tokimeki High School. A game where the player takes the role of the new kid at school who bumps into a girl with glasses that looks like famous idol Miho Nakayama and in the end it turns out that, spoilers: She IS Miho Nakayama herself!
This formula where the player goes through a text adventure in order to woo a girl would later be expanded by Konami into another similar venture, Tokimeki Memorial. Whose cover girl, Shiori Fujisaki was made to evoke those same “Perfect Popular Reachable Girl” notes as older real life idols.
Now you might be wondering if I’m just using this as an excuse to geek out about older games in the genre and the answer is: I’m actually holding back a lot, trust me.
So how does this relate to Maruzensky?
Well, from the outset, if you read a past post you might get an idea. The way that they reinterpreted “Embodiment of perfection” in a sports setting into “Absolute monster in the racecourse that nobody wants to be against”.
But Maruzensky DOES still embody all of those ideals on paper. She’s everyone’s senpai, she’s even Rudolf’s senpai, for all we know she was also Light Hello’s senpai and it’d just be rude to tell her to leave the academy. She’s always thinking about her precious underclassmen, looking after them at any opportunity and indulging everyone from Special Week to Twin Turbo in whatever they want.
She’s always smiling, always cheerful, always up for anything where the spirit of YOUTH overflows be it running, partying, performing in live shows or… driving recklessly in her sports car (Oh yeah, she’s old enough to drive a car in Japan which means she’s at least 18). She’s a romantic in both the literary movement way of the power of emotions (ロマン as the Japanese tend to call it) and the more conventional way of loving Love itself.
And that’s all fine, but here’s the kicker: She doesn’t embody all this as a contemporary character. She’s like if you took a trendy idol character from 1990 (when the bubble was bursting and nostalgia for The Bubble was setting in) and flung her forward in time, transposing her completely and flawlessly. She isn’t so much “old” as she is “literally from another era”.
She dresses like an anime heroine from the 80s, her racing outfit is the most Sailor Suit-ass Sailor Suit of the cast, her hair is tied in the back by a huge ribbon, she has been known to send messages to other girls like she’s sending them to a beeper and I don’t doubt that she actually has a beeper somewhere, she’s prone to dance with a fan like she’s in a disco in the 80s, she uses early 90s slang (like チョベリグー, Cho/Big Very Good and other english with Japanese mixes) more indescipherable than Daitaku Helios’ paripi slang, when her profile page asks what her smartphone background is it literally says “the default one” because, again, I’m pretty sure she prefers to use a beeper.
The game has a girl (Wonder Acute) whose gimmick is that she acts like a grandma, and even she comes off as less out-of-date than Maruzensky because she’s a contemporary grandma instead of one that was flung into another age.
I’d say Maruzensky is “out of touch” with the rest, but is it really out of touch if time hasn’t progressed for you to lose said touch?
With that in mind, it IS refreshing that she isn’t treated as a crumbling lady who pulls muscles when trying to do simple stuff… you can leave that to Light Hello instead. Not just from a representation standpoint but because it’s representative of “the power of experience” at play. Almost like a cheeky way to play to that idea that in kids’ shows a 24 year old counts as a “grandpa” but instead of a girl complaining about her back at age 25 (mood tho) it’s a girl purposefully leaving herself out to make things fair for everyone else.
And all of this doesn’t necessarily undo the “ideal girl” traits she shows elsewhere, but there’s a really interesting thing going on where the way it’s integrated just turns that into another Big Character like many in the cast, she isn’t really “superior” to anyone as much as she’s just one more big personality in a cast full of them, and when she IS “superior” to others it’s usually as “she’s absolutely overpowered on the track”.
Sidenote, the real Maruzensky was said to share the same standing pose and the game’s Maruzensky where her legs arc outwards below the knee in a girly stance. This was described as an “extroversion” as in “his legs facing outwards” (外向) and it was feared that it would cause issues if the horse decided to race, but there is a pun at play with her character since, just like with the word in english, it’s not too hard to turn it into extroversion as is an outgoing person (外向的).
But anyways, all of this isn’t even touching on how much of a love letter to the best of the Showa Youth Maruzensky has in her character. Loves eurobeat, loves sports cars and drifting, loves clubs and dancing. If you’ve watched/read Initial D or Wangan Midnight, if you’ve played Ryuu ga Gotoku/Yakuza 0, then Maruzensky is as much a send off to the era as any of those.
Oh also, the moniker “Supercar” was because Maruzensky ran during the foreign sports car boom of Japan in the 70s.
More than that, just having Maruzensky be the representative of that Showa Girl archetype in general actually results in a really interesting study when you try to think about what is more appealing as an “idol” nowadays, especially when the game has other characters strongly evoking archetypes from ages past, like Aston Machan being like a Key Visual Works heroine, Curren Chan being like a “secret route” heroine, Daiwa Scarlet being straight out of an early 2000s anime, Sweep Toushou being like a late 2000s light novel heroine, Special Week being a late 2010s heroine and so forth.
Oh, we’ll talk eventually about all of those, don’t worry.
