Divided We Stand: The Two Halves of Figure17

• Author: Adam Wescott

• Editor: Cy Catwell

Tsubasa is a quiet, sensitive ten year old who moved from Tokyo to Hokkaido so that her father could become a baker. Hikaru is a suit of biomechanical armor, or a Ribers, who transformed into Tsubasa’s double after an unexpected accident. They combine into the titular Figure 17, an adult-sized woman able to punch monsters so hard they explode. Only they can save Hokkaido from an invasive alien species called the Maguar.

Just like Tsubasa and Hikaru, Figure 17 is a show with two distinct parts to its story. The first is a quiet drama about a child living in Hokkaido. Director Naohito Takahashi and his crew depict Tsubasa’s day-to-day life with the comprehensiveness of an all-ages magical girl story. We get to know her family, neighbors, and classmates in detail. Hikaru inspires Tsubasa to try new things, trust others and believe in her own strength. Meanwhile, the background art (produced by the legendary Shinichiro Kobayashi’s studio Kobayashi Production) captures Hokkaido’s natural beauty as it changes with the seasons.

The other part is a grimy alien invasion story. The Maguar are drooling cyclopean horrors that can, and will, eat children like Tsubasa. Their mere presence poisons the earth and utterly ruins Hokkaido’s natural beauty. Figure 17 can beat them one-on-one, but the Maguar learn from every defeat, meaning that the only way to destroy them permanently is to invent new weapons faster than their defenses can evolve. Thankfully, Tsubasa and Hikaru are aided by two space cops, D.D. and Orudina. They’re a lower-budget support squad than Ultraman’s Science Team but better than nothing.

These two halves of the series are very different in terms of appeal. Viewers who enjoy Tsubasa’s life lessons with Hikaru in the woods of Hokkaido may be repelled by the vicious, slimy Maguar. Others who enjoy the Maguar and the technological arms race waged against them may nod off during the slice-of-life segments.

Yet rather than patch up its genre gap, the series instead makes it impossible to ignore. Figure 17 was aired on a monthly, rather than weekly, basis. Additionally, every episode is over forty minutes long. If a traditional episode of weekly anime might introduce its monster of the week twelve minutes in, Figure 17 makes the viewer wait twenty minutes or more. The series luxuriates in quiet scenes that other anime would have to ignore for practicality’s sake.

The fourth episode in particular provides a compelling example. The majority of its runtime is devoted to Tsubasa and Hikaru camping out at school with their class. They set up tents, cook their meals, and tell stories to each other late at night. Aside from chores and activities, though, there are plenty of scenes of Tsubasa, Hikaru and their friends sitting around doing nothing in the late afternoon shadows. These scenes would be cut for weekly syndication. That’s why it’s so meaningful that Figure 17 keeps them in.

Likewise, the series never allows the Maguar to invade Tsubasa and Hikaru’s civilian life. Certainly, the stress of fighting the creatures exerts constant psychological pressure on Tsubasa but there is never a moment where they crash into her civilian life. The Maguar remain an abstract threat from beginning to end, even though D.D. and Orudina insist the world is in peril. 

Tsubasa’s alien twin, Hikaru, is a different story. She’s the only alien character who interacts with humans on a daily basis. While D.D. and Orudina wage their secret war against the Maguar, Hikaru befriends her classmates and neighbors. She also works hard to convince Tsubasa that she can do anything she puts her mind to. These bonds of trust and friendship are valued just as much by the series as biomechanical space armor. I’d argue therefore that Hikaru exerts a greater influence on the plot of Figure 17 than any Maguar.

Which raises the question: why did the makers of Figure 17 include the Maguar at all? A story of a girl and her father getting by in Hokkaido already has plenty of dramatic potential. There’s even a famous 1981 TV drama on the subject called Kita no Kuni Kara, “From the North Country.” Figure 17 just adds aliens to that proven formula. 

Sadly there isn’t much information about the making of Figure 17 that I could find in English—at least, nothing that’s easily sourceable. But I think the best answer lies in the one thing that both halves of the show have in common: sincerity. Figure 17 plays its story completely straight despite being packed with contradictory elements. It is not a deconstruction or a parody. Every part of the series is acknowledged as a key part of the whole no matter how absurd.

Look at the Maguar, for instance. Every fight with them is hard won. They only become more threatening as the series enters its second half. Yet, at the same time, they are not torture devices to the main characters. They do not exist to drive Tsubasa or Hikaru to insanity or despair. Figure 17 is not at all a story about the desecration of youth in the vein of a Mohiro Kitoh comic. It’s something more than that.

It might seem strange that Tsubasa, a ten year old girl, is made to fight these terrible creatures. But the characters are aware of this. Space Cop D.D. hates the fact that he must rely on children to clean up the mess he made. He acts both as protector and attack, defeating the Maguar but also keepingTsubasa and Hikaru out of danger as much as possible. When Tsubasa later breaks down and refuses to fight, D.D. honors her request and handles everything for a while with Orudina, even though doing so nearly kills him.

Tsubasa and Hikaru are also surrounded by responsible adults. Their father might be absent at work much of the time, but he is wise and well-intentioned whenever he is around. Their teacher ably leads their class and gives Tsubasa much-needed guidance. Even the locals at Ibaragi Ranch, where Tsubasa lives with her father, watch out for the girls and their well-being.

Figure 17 also takes Tsubasa and Hikaru’s school life just as seriously as its monster attacks. It matters when Tsubasa overcomes her fears after nearly forty minutes to score a point in a port ball match. It matters when Hikaru insists on going to school and living as a human girl rather than hiding as an alien weapon. The staff for this show depict their grade school days with such delicate, soothing sweetness that it risks becoming saccharine at times.

Yet that earnest sincerity is Figure 17’s secret weapon. The show is truly at its best not just as a school story or a creature feature, but when these two genres reinforce each other–even when the Maguar themselves are nowhere to be seen.

Take, for instance, the seventh episode, one of the best in the series. Tsubasa and Hikaru’s classmate Sho writes a play for their class to perform. In it, Tsubasa and Hikaru play sister princesses who are separated by fate. Tsubasa’s character is brainwashed by an evil wizard into forgetting her friends and family. As Hikaru rehearses a scene where she calls out to Tsubasa, begging her to remember, she bursts into tears.

Hikaru isn’t just acting in this scene. With the Maguar on the run at this point in the series, D.D. is considering returning to his home planet and taking Tsubasa with him. This would mean erasing Tsubasa’s memories as well as those of every person in Hokkaido who knows Hikaru, too. Hikaru might be a weapon but she has the body of a ten year old child. Just imagining that the most important person in her life might reject her is more than she can bear. Yet how could she tell her sister Tsubasa? It would break her.

This sequence combines all the strengths of Figure 17’s two narrative halves. Hikaru’s sadness is portrayed with nuance and sensitivity by the animators. It is rooted in relatable feelings of loss that many children go through as they grow older. Yet it is enriched that much more by the harshness of Figure 17’s science fiction setting. The existence of the Maguar proves that there is darkness and cruelty beyond the beauty of Hokkaido. With that in mind, Hikaru’s fear that D.D. might sever her connection with Tsubasa forever is incredibly realistic and very believable.

The depth of Figure 17’s setting carries over from its science fiction aspects to daily life, too. Every character is given at least one scene that sticks in your memory. I thought that I understood Tsubasa’s rough classmate Kenta until the episode when we briefly see him at the hospital with an older woman. What was he doing there? It’s up to viewers to decide. Then there’s Mina, a girl in Tsubasa’s class who bullies her. She’s hard to like, but she plays the part of prince in Sho’s play admirably. Just like Tsubasa and Hikaru, she’s a kid too, living her own life.

The possibility is dangled before us, the audience, that while Tsubasa and Hikaru know some of the world’s secrets, they do not know all of them. Figure 17 can punch out a Maguar but not a cold Hokkaido winter. Loneliness, daily routines, the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth; these elements of life on Earth all reinforce the deadly stakes of the science fiction storyline.

At the start of the series, Tsubasa is alone and afraid in a new place, surrounded by new people and with her single father at work most of the time. The arrival of the Maguar is the worst thing that could ever have happened to her. But it’s also her chance to grow: she adopts Hikaru into her family, learns to trust her and finally discovers her own strength. The power to live as an individual without leaning on Hikaru. And Hikaru learns something about herself, too: just how much weight she will carry for Tsubasa’s sake without breaking.

That’s Figure 17: two children standing side by side. They are not the same, but then, why should they be? Tsubasa and Hikaru each stand on their own two feet, on the same Hokkaido soil.