'What was that?' Four of Sparks' songs for Mai the Psychic Girl

 

            Fans of Sparks will be aware of the years Ron and Russell spent in the late 1980s and early 1990s devising a movie musical of the Japanese manga comic Mai the Psychic Girl and attempting to find the funding and support to bring it to the screen. Unfortunately, in the highly competitive, mercurial and cut-throat world of movie making, the venture never came to fruition at that time despite attracting the interest of several eminent directors.  Little detail is known about the project itself apart from some information given in interviews and other online sources, and this is largely about the practical difficulties. Of the two hours or so of music written, four of the songs are, however, in the public domain and can be listened to on YouTube. This brief discussion is intended to offer some insight into the story for Sparks fans who may not know the manga and wonder what is going on in the songs, and to suggest ways in which the songs may be seen to relate to it, in the hope that this will enhance enjoyment of these multi-layered pieces.

 

            Without sight of a screenplay or knowledge about Ron's and Russell's overall artistic vision for the movie, it is of course difficult to determine exactly which specific events in the story the songs, or musical fragments, represent, if indeed they do.  Aspects of the plot will doubtlessly have been omitted, enhanced or given different emphasis, and the venture seemingly produced more than one screenplay.  However, it is possible to identify the ways in which these songs, which reveal many typical Sparks elements, capture the mood and essential themes of the manga story and provide an inspiring musical equivalent of the images. I should state, of course, that the interpretations here are my own suggestions based on a reading of the manga comic in conjunction with the music, and can not claim to be a definitive representation of what Ron and Russell may have intended. Other interpretations would be welcome!

 

A brief summary

 

            The translation into English of Mai the Psychic Girl, with story by Kazuya Kudo and art by Ryoichi Ikegami, appeared in the United States in 28 bi-weekly issues between May 1987 and July 1988 published by California's Eclipse Comics and Viz Communications and was the one of the first manga to be introduced to the American comics market. It was printed in the 'flipped' format for the Western market so that it could read from left to right. The story was republished by Viz Comics in a four volume edition in1989 and again in 1995 in the three volume 'Perfect Collection' and can now be read free online. The plot concerns a fourteen-year -old motherless Japanese girl, Mai Kuju, with extraordinary telekinetic powers whose existence is discovered by a sinister organization called the Wisdom Alliance which, it turns out, has been manipulating world affairs (including the Second World War). Having predicted that the world is heading for a nuclear cataclysm in 1999 in a conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Alliance has been secretly testing youngsters for psychic powers and plans to kidnap and hide those with the highest scores to start humanity anew with a more powerful and god-like race. Mai spends the majority of the manga on the run from the Alliance, eluding them in increasingly violent encounters. She is assisted by various helpers, notably a college boy Intetsu and his fellow students, and villain-turned-alternative father figure Kaieda, a martial arts expert, until she reluctantly becomes involved in monumental battles with four other psychic youngsters (American, German, Chinese and Vietnamese) sent by the Alliance to kill her.

 

The attraction

 

            It is not difficult to see why this particular manga comic with its dramatic plot and stunning, detailed artwork captured the imagination of Ron and Russell, and why it was, and still is, an attractive proposition for a movie given the continuing interest in super-heroes, monsters, megalomaniac villains and evil international conspiracies.  It has spectacular car and motor-cycle chases and martial arts battles that would make superb cinema, a wide range of intriguing relationships, humour and (spoiler alert) an ambiguously happy ending.  The plot of an individual being pursued by an unknown and deadly force, who triumphs over evil by the deployment of supernatural powers is by no means a new one. Mai was unusual, however, in both American comics and Japanese shonen or action manga, in that it features a young and innocent schoolgirl, the offspring of a long line of women with telekinetic powers, who is unaware of the full significance and scope of her inheritance and who is reluctant to engage in conflicts which she neither wants nor understands. This allows for a strong psychological dimension in the portrayal of adolescent anxiety about identity (a theme that, of course, informs many Sparks songs), with Mai's struggle to come to terms not just with all kinds of new emotions, but the realization that she can cause death and destruction in an instant and must learn to control her powers to harness them to a good end. They are said to be equal to that of a small atomic bomb with the firing button the mind of a fourteen year old girl who does not yet know how to control her emotions. She is contrasted with the other psychic youngsters, especially the German girl Turm Garten, the self-centred teenager from hell, who uses her psychic powers viciously to wreak revenge on anyone who upsets her and whom Mai is eventually forced, against her will, to liquidate to save herself.

 

            In his book When Manga Came To America. Super-Hero Revisionism in Mai the Psychic Girl (2014), Julian Darius argues that Mai fitted into the revisionist movement in the 1980s in America that sought to make comic books and their heroes more realistic. Mai has no superhero alter ego in fancy dress, her powers are mental rather than physical, and her appearance is believably that of an adolescent  unlike the stylised figures with huge eyes and extravagant hair associated with much manga material. The supernatural events take place in a very realistically depicted world. Ryoichi Ikegami's superb artwork excels in action scenes set against the backdrop of highly detailed Tokyo cityscapes, especially the flying scenes in which the battle between Mai and the three telekinetic boys in the air amongst the skyscrapers is portrayed moment by moment from constantly changing perspectives. Such 'photorealism', and the fact that the most dramatic or emotional scenes take place over several panels and pages, creates the effect of slow motion captured in still images or movie frames. The pace of the narrative is varied with stretches of calm, sad or humorous scenes as respite from the dramatic and often extremely violent action. It is true that twenty-first century sensibilities would require some changes to the narrative.  Although Mai, and indeed most of the Japanese characters, are Westernized in appearance, as is common in manga comics, there is unfortunate ethnic stereotyping in the portrayal of the Chinese and Vietnamese psychic teenagers.  Moreover, although the blatant sexual aspect that pervades many manga comic books is largely absent, the tearing of Mai's clothes to reveal her breasts in the final battle seems to smack of gratuitous 'fan service'. An early scene in which Mai is seen naked in the bath, scrutinizing her breasts, was in fact omitted from the early American comic book edition.

 

The music

           

            Now for the music. Like many Sparks' songs, the four pieces written for Mai are complex compositions, merging sung and spoken words, sound effects and repetitive verbal and musical refrains. There is a narrative underpinning to each piece (again, as in Sparks' songs) and together they can be seen to evoke four different aspects of the story. The voices heard are those of Christi Haydon as Mai, and, of course, Russell together with other male and female voices. In an interview in which she discusses her involvement with the Mai project, Christi Haydon mentions that Jane Wiedlin and Lance Loud were also involved in making the demos.

 

'She used to be one of us'

 

            'She used to be one of us' clearly introduces the central theme of difference, and the growing awareness of both Mai and her schoolfriends that, although in many ways she is just like them, in one significant way, she is not. The early pages of the manga show Mai daydreaming at school and  walking home with her friends who are chattering about  class tests and boys. Although forbidden by her father to use her telekinetic powers, she does so in a benign fashion to amuse herself: causing a pine cone to fall from a tree and stop in its tracks,  creating artistic swirls of cherry blossoms, and stopping a baseball in mid air to bewilder the school team. Later, when in hiding from her enemies, she secretly watches her friends pass by  then wanders into a park and sits on a swing, feeling unhappy, lonely and isolated because she dare not involve her friends in the nightmare engulfing her. This touching moment is charmingly resolved as she is rescued from depression by the appearance of a small dog presciently named Ron in the English translation (yes, really),who becomes her devoted companion. Ron (the puppy, that is) is the source of much heart-warming humour in the story but also the catalyst for the first destructive unleashing of Mai's powers as she unintentionally causes carnage on the freeway to stop him from being run over. It is a crucial moment, when the unexpected consequences of her actions change her view of herself and cause her to fear her capabilities.  This song, with its girlish voices, sets the scene by capturing the contrast between normality and exceptionality: it begins with a repetitive background beat and eager melody that seems to mimic the scurrying footsteps of the schoolgirls as one of them lists the ways in which Mai used to be like them ('we'd hang around, bang around, play around all the time'). They see that she is now different, 'stranger than just strange', but do not know why: 'is this her evil twin, or just some mood she's in?', a nice juxtaposition that suggests more than they, or the listener/reader can know at this stage. The focus shifts to Mai's point of view signalled by a slowing of the music and a change in the beat. It is preceded by muted bursts of cheering, applause and male laughter which are perplexing. They may suggest the episodes in which she joins the college boys in Intetsu's student house in comic scenes of cooking and clothes washing before amazing them by causing piles of books to fly around the room, or secretly controls a fruit machine in an arcade in front of an astonished crowd so that Intetsu wins enough money to get them both back to Tokyo after rescuing her from a man-monster who almost kills her father.  But this middle section of the song, against a background of cheering, seems almost as though Mai is addressing an audience while demonstrating her skills in a public performance, although there is no such scene in the manga: 'Thank you very much' she says to wild applause. This section presumably accompanies a scene developed for the screenplay and is intriguing. She even speaks briefly in French! Mai then reiterates her friends' song in terms that reveal her awareness of how her 'problem' has changed her life: 'I'd mess around, try to impress around all day … now I blow up cars, and feel like I'm from Mars'.  The points of view merge at the end as the beat slows and the girls' voices return: 'Oh my (Mai), oh dear.... stand back, stand clear... She's gone, I've gone WEIRD'. The schoolgirl vocabulary is touching in its inadequate attempt to fathom and articulate her plight. The light-hearted scenes in in the comic in which Mai uses her powers are an entertaining contrast to both the dramatic scenes in her story and the usual exploits of comic book superheroes, and in the song, the applause and cheering form a poignant contrast with her gradual and painful self-realization.

 

'That looks great on  you'

 

            This song strikes a totally different note, building on the theme of fun, freedom and a sense of normality that, in the story, Mai briefly experiences with Intetsu and his friends. The happy evocation of a clothes shopping expedition, which does not appear as such in the manga, is typical of the humorous scenes that offer respite after dramatic events. A duet between Russell and Christi Haydon against a cheerful orchestral background featuring strings and percussion, it features the mutual admiring flattery of excited young people trying on clothes and chattering about customizing them ('take it in, or let it out'), while gently satirising the situation. His comment that a garment  'makes you look years younger, makes you several inches taller' is obviously amusing given he is addressing a fourteen year old high school girl. Perhaps this is intended as a parody of an over-eager salesman with his increasingly exaggerated compliments. There is also an undertone of developing sexual awareness on Mai's part which is gently suggested in the manga: when the male voice says that 'it makes you look romantic, makes you seem exotic', her enthusiastic reply foregrounds the physical and erotic. His 'great for work or play and, of course, its patriotic!' is comically salesman-like but, if this is Intetsu speaking, it could be seen as gently evasive, just as in the manga he abruptly changes the subject when Mai asks him why he hasn't got a girlriend. The final 'Charge? Cash? Cheque? What'll it be?' does suggest that Russell is playing a salesman at this point, but also recalls the moment in the story when Mai realises that she and Intetsu can not use her father's bank card and resort to trying their luck on the fruit machines.

 

'What was that?'

           

            'What was that?', which begins with ominous percussion and a strange, eery, howling noise alongside a female voice's wordless song, could effectively accompany a  number of the encounters that Mai has with the heavies from the Wisdom Alliance and, at one point when she and Intetsu are fleeing on his motor-cycle, with huge numbers of pursuing police. It evokes confusion, bewilderment and panic. In all the confrontations, the men are confounded by her ability to evade them, either with outside help, or by the exercise of her psychic powers and frequently meet violent ends themselves. The girl's wordless song at the beginning perhaps suggests these powers, while the question 'Do you hear humming?' and the urgent, overlapping repetitions of  'What was that?' with different emphases indicate the mens' inability to understand what they are facing even while they think they are 'getting closer' in their pursuit. The 'humming' may allude to the wordless song, or even to the flying scenes involving Mai and the other psychic youngsters, but also evokes the many strange onomatopoeic 'sound words' that are used abundantly to accompany action in manga comics. (Sparks fans will, of course, also be familiar with the dynamic role played by sound effects in their music.) At the end of the piece there is the sound of falling, a motif that features in a number of episodes in the story. In one, the huge man-monster dropped from a helicopter to kill Mai and her father as they cross a narrow mountain ledge, knocks her father to an apparently certain death in the abyss. In the final great battle, Mai is blasted from the sky by the American psychic boy David, but not before she is able to blast him in return so that he crashes to his death on the pavement below. Mai herself is saved from a similar fate in the nick of time by the little Vietnamese teenager Hong, whom she had tried to befriend. This composition ends dramatically with the sound of vehicles screeching and crashing, a frequent consequence of the pursuit scenes, which often cover several pages in graphic detail. The changes in pace and the mixture of disparate sounds here do, in fact, superbly communicate the essence of the drama and suspense of the manga. 

 

'The Patchwork Symphony: The Wake up'

           

            Finally, 'The Patchwork Symphony: the Wake-Up ', is the most difficult piece to interpret. It may, as its name suggests, be a compilation of sound images and repetitions that allude to many of the story's themes. A fundamental theme in the book is, of course, Mai's awakening to her real identity and destiny, and elements in this composition suggest this idea. The story does, in fact, begin with Mai waking from a recurring nightmare of being pursued through a forest by unknown forces and surrounded by strange 'woooohhhh' noises, which are later associated with the headquarters in the Swiss Alps of the Wisdom Aliance.  The piece begins with a ticking clock and the sound of raindrops, recalling another episode in which Mai wakes up at the home of  Intetsu's sometime girlfriend where they have taken refuge, and decides to leave secretly because she fears that the woman may deliberately try to provoke her to show her destructive power. These sounds are followed by a siren, blaring horns and an indistinct voice through a megaphone against the background of a repeated rhythmic piano refrain (reminiscent of the pursuit scenes in the later The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman). A female voice (whether this is intended to be Mai, her dead mother who appears to her in a vision, or a narrator is unclear) then repeatedly intones: 'The idea that his daughter is having something to do with a creature...', which suggests Mai's father's anxiety at his full realization of the implications of her inherited powers. The father/daughter relationship is an important theme in the story, and much of the action derives from his attempts to protect Mai. The creature may refer to the man-monster who nearly killed him (and who turns out to be the son of Kaieda,  the victim of an American nuclear experiment!). Into this mood of suspense and anxiety, the same voice repeatedly advises that 'You just have to work it out as best you can'. This echoes both Mai's mother's warning that her powers can bring sorrow or joy and that she must persevere and face her destiny alone, and Intetsu's advice about learning to control her powers, just as all human beings must learn to control that part of their nature that can cause pain and suffering. The theme of nascent sexuality, although not prominent in the book, is suggested here by the words that 'I think that a man can be interested in you physically. He can also have real true feelings about you'. It is unclear who the speaker is here, but the theme of relationships is also important throughout the story. The schoolgirls are preoccupied with the idea of boyfriends, and it is clear that Mai is attracted to Intetsu and jealous of his fashion designer girlfriend, although both he and the college boys seem only to care about protecting and helping her. The last verbal intervention seems to come from Mai: her words 'there are about nineteen subjects I'd love to discuss with you' are intriguing. They could be seen to refer to her desire to communicate with her mother or to her final confrontation in the air above Tokyo with David. In the story, she tries to persuade him that it is not too late to defy the Wisdom Alliance and that she would rather talk with him than fight, before his psychic blast sends her tumbling from the sky and forces her to retaliate against her will and kill him with a blast in return.  The tragic aspect of the youngsters' psychic abilities becomes clear in this episode. The piece ends abruptly with the sound of sirens and the repetition of the words 'work it out', which suit Mai's unresolved situation at the end.

 

             I hope that this whets the appetite of Sparks fans to learn more about Mai the psychic girl. It is a great read, and has an important place in the history of manga comics in the West, and clearly made a powerful on the Maels such that they were willing to devote so much of their time and effort to trying to get their musical version made into a movie. As always, they were ahead of the times, as manga comics and anime have since become hugely popular in the West.  The musical extracts from Mai also contain many of the techniques, in terms of both music and lyrics, that have become familiar to fans in Sparks' later work, and which were to surface again in their other musical movie venture, The Seduction of  Ingmar Bergman. It would be good if Ron and Russell were to make more of the music from Mai available for fans to enjoy. In the meantime, listen to these four pieces again and indulge your imagination!

 

 

Penny Brown