Emma MMF: Oh, and about that biplane...
Remember this?
Not being the right kind of geek, I didn’t know which plane that was, but I knew it wasn’t 19th century — no matter how late in that century we’d care to look.
So I put the question to my research staff [uclue.com] and got the answer back last night:
Uclue Guru Byrd (and by the way, if “Uclue Guru” isn’t the official job title, you guys need to fix that.) who is, in fact, an aviation enthusiast and pilot, went above and beyond and besides in tracking down the answer to my simple question. I’m about to quote liberally from his answer, because I paid for it.
First of all, the story takes place in the 1890s. The earliest biplanes
were built during that decade, so the timeframe is slightly plausible.
However, the design of the first biplanes were nothing like the one in the
drawing. See this account with images of the Wright Brothers first biplane,
built in 1899:
http://www.fi.edu/flight/first/before.htmlHere are a couple more links showing early biplanes from approximately the
same era:“Biplane Glider of Octave Chanute, c1896 (1910)”
http://www.heritage-print.com/pictures_1229916/biplane-glider-of-octave-chanute-c1896-1910.html“1900’s Wright Glider”
http://www.playle.com/listing.php?i=NKYPHOTOS120&PHPSESSID=a1910 Bristol Box Kite
http://www.military-aircraft.org.uk/other-military-aircraft/bristol-boxkite.htmYou’ll notice these very early biplanes look much different than the one in
the “Emma” drawing, which would be actually quite futuristic for the time
in which the story is set. Apparently this fact was noticed by others
also.In one review of the comic, the reviewer says, “the toy biplane on pg. 31 is
an anachronism,” which of course means something that cannot have existed
at the time stated.
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2010/03/07/emma-mmf-daily-diary-vol-1
[oh, yeah, I got a chuckle out of that bit.]
Apparently the author, or at least her staff agreed, as in a future edition
of Emma, according to another commenter, “Kaoru Mori got it half-wrong …
but the staff of the anime corrected her error. The anime still had a
flying model aircraft, but they replaced her relatively futuristic biplane
with a model of the Aerial Steam Carriage, an 1840s design that didn’t
fly but might have been known about by at least a few people (there was an
aviation display at the Crystal Palace, even if controlled, powered flight
had yet to occur):
http://etonia.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/review-emma-vols-1-2/According to this Wikipedia article, author Kaoru Mori attempted in Emma
“to recreate 1895 London with meticulous detail.” However, since there were
no biplanes flying around London in 1895, it’s obvious that she could not
have drawn an actual biplane from that time and place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_(manga)
After a little discussion, and the conclusion that it wasn’t an actual production model (or prototype) and certainly wasn’t extant in 1895, I asked Byrd to pick a date: He came back with:
Hi Mblind,I’m glad you were pleased with the research and information. I believe the
closest matches to the Emma drawing might be the Avro 504 (1916), the
Bristol Fighter (1916), and the Gotha Bomber (early 1917). Therefore my
best guess as to the vintage of the biplane in the Emma drawing would be
mid-WWI or 1916.
No insult or accusation is aimed at Mori in the case. It’s a great art detail, and also says quite a bit about both William and the Joneses, in just a single page. We’ll squint a bit and pretend it’s not 21 years too early.
##
I’ve used Uclue before (for one of the rethinking the box columns, among other things) and let me again restate my recommendation: it’s a great service, and they have excellent staff, and the turnaround time [in my experience] is usually just 24 hours.
Click here for the archive of all Emma Manga Moveable Feast links
Oh, and Uclue Guru Byrd:
I’d love your help in analysing Ghibli’s Porco Rosso and Castle in the Sky — and if you’re feeling really adventurous, Last Exile.
Open invitation. I’ll attach a dollar value to one of those questions in a couple of weeks.
Comment by Matt Blind — 9 March 2010, 20:57 #
Nice job on getting some kind of answer about the airplane in the manga. I’m the one quoted above about the Aerial Steam Carriage, but I never thought to look into what Kaoru Mori actually drew. ^^;
Someone else had doubts about William’s airplane in their review of the manga last year, and I made my initial comments in response to Lorena’s review of the first manga volume (as “Anonymous”). I’d forgotten where I first found mention of the anime’s airplane when I wrote what was quoted above. ^^;;
While having Google do a search this evening, I found (along with my old comments) an article entitled Five Great British Inventions and Inventors that mentions a little about the attempts to get the Aerial Steam Carriage off the ground, but that information’s probably elsewhere, too.
Oh well… That’s enough re-writing of this comment, so I’ll just send it on it’s way and let others point out errors of mine. ^^
Comment by Chris Miller — 10 March 2010, 03:05 #