A new Nippon.com series on trends in contemporary manga kicks off with a look at Alice, doko made mo (Alice, All the Way to Space), a four-volume work by Urino Kiko that explores the impact of education on youth and the desire to go as far as possible in life.
From Junior High to Outer Space
The leading roles of the space race always seem to be played by men. In part to rectify that, one of the stated goals of NASA’s 2019 Artemis Lunar Program was to put the first woman astronaut on the moon. Alice, doko made mo is a serious space manga with the same ideal.
The story—whose title literally means “Alice goes as far as she can,” with the destination written with the characters for “space”—starts at a press conference where Asahida Alice, the first Japanese woman named commander of the International Space Station, talks about a junior high school classmate who changed her life.
As an elementary schooler, the slightly ditzy Alice was a popular child who everyone called adorable. However, she struggled with hidden misery, having lost her parents in a traffic accident, after which she was raised by her grandmother. She also had issues with speaking Japanese naturally and struggled to put her feelings into words. She never knew exactly where her problems came from, but often wished she could be reborn and start all over.
The solution to her problems appeared when she met the brilliant but odd Inuboshi Rui. He recognized that Alice was what is called “semilingual.” Her parents had put her into multilingual education from a very early age, but their sudden deaths ended that education prematurely, leaving her linguistically undeveloped. Inuboshi was the fateful classmate mentioned at the opening press conference. He and Alice formed a private study group aimed at helping her achieve her dreams. A natural educator, Inuboshi helped Alice broaden her horizons and achieve her nearly abandoned dream of becoming an astronaut.
A Challenge to the Reigning Champion
You could say Japan’s postwar manga history began 77 years ago, with outer space. I am thinking of Tezuka Osamu’s Lost World, published in 1948. 1947’s Shin Takarajima is the more famous work, but I believe that Tezuka’s tendency toward SF and his journey as a storyteller both started here, with a story about traveling to another planet by rocket. It could well be called Japan’s first authentic science-fiction manga.
Space travel went on to become a major subgenre of SF manga, with works like Matsumoto Leiji’s Galaxy Express 999, Hoshino Yukinobu’s 2001 Nights, and Terasawa Buichi’s Cobra. When Japanese astronauts began taking to space in the 1990s and “astronaut” became a real career option, outer space suddenly became a much more familiar setting. Space manga had to show more realism, and did so in outstanding works like Yukimura Makoto’s Planetes. This period marked a major turning point for space manga.
It is widely agreed that the genre reached its peak with Koyama Chūya’s Space Brothers, which began serialization in 2007. This long-running series continues today and has raised the bar for astronaut stories, making it difficult to start a new one.
Alice, doko made mo began serialization in 2024. It is the first realistic space story in some time, and I find it fascinating to see how it directly challenges Space Brothers.
Fighting Back Against Oyagacha
The surprising thing about this work is that its original inspiration was not space. At the Manga Taishō awards ceremony on March 27 this year, the author, Urino Kiko, said it outright:
“The starting point was that this would be a story about a boy and a girl studying together, forming bonds, and overcoming obstacles. My editors asked me to create some kind of big goal for them, so the astronaut part came later. My original draft of the first chapter was basically the same in general content, but the outer space element wasn’t there at first.”
I was in the audience that day and one of those who gasped at that. I also felt anew just how original this story was.
The most impactful line of the manga comes in the first volume, when Inuboshi tells Alice, “Children have the power to change their own futures.”
The protagonist Asahida Alice pursues her dreams with help from the brilliant Inuboshi. From the first volume of Alice, doko made mo. (© Urino Kiko/Shōgakukan)
Inuboshi resents the idea of oyagacha—the genetic luck of the draw, where a child’s future is largely determined by the family he or she is born into, like randomly winning a prize from a gacha machine. He refuses to stand by and watch children give up if they didn’t win this “family jackpot.” It isn’t until the fourth volume that Inuboshi reveals that he is also being raised by adoptive parents, just like Alice, who lost her birth parents in a traffic accident.
“Inuboshi’s idea that children should do things on their own, without depending on adults, may have been something of a dark temptation for Alice,” says Urino. “But it’s also something that helped me find courage in my childhood. I think that has carried through since the debut.”
The title piece in the author’s 2009 debut collection Bara datte kakeru yo (I Can Even Write the Characters for “Rose”) focuses on a husband and wife couple. The wife is not like others and struggles with daily life, while the husband supports her along the way. Their relationship mirrors that of Alice and Inuboshi. Urino herself enjoyed studying, but reveals that when she was about the same age as Alice, she actually was placed in a difficult situation that prevented her from continuing her education. She says, “Maybe I still regret that today.” In many ways, it has become clear that she is putting all of herself into her work.
As Far as You Want to Go
Alice’s problem of being semilingual, with neither of the languages she learned reaching true native level, is apparently quite common among Japanese children who return after time abroad or the children of non-Japanese in Japan. There has been a recent increase in foreign citizens coming to Japan for work, and along with them a rise in children entering Japanese schools without the language skills to engage in class. It is a growing social issue. At public schools across Japan, children in need of language instruction have topped 70,000, including native Japanese. Children struggling with the same problem as Alice are no rarity. But with proper education, there is every chance they can overcome their problems.
When I ask Urino why she thinks study is so important, her answer comes at once: “I think it’s because it allows you to go as far from here as you want to go.”
Alice’s reason for wanting to go to space is that it’s as far away as is possible to go. And education is what gives her the wings to go there. In modern society, there is no shortage of obstacles that rob children of their dreams. Alice, doko made mo is filled with ideas to encourage children, including its denial of the whole oyagacha concept.
Alice, doko made mo author Urino Kiko, at left, accepting the Manga Taishō 2025 award, which is chosen by bookstore staff nationwide, from last year’s winner Doronoda Inuhiko. (© Kyōdō)
Space Brothers author Koyama Chūya just announced that next year’s volume 46 will be its last. This is surely just a coincidence, but I cannot help but see this as a turning of generations. This could well be another great change for Japan’s space manga.
(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: The first three volumes of Alice, doko made mo, which won the Manga Taishō award. © Urino Kiko/Shōgakukan.)