Come Together Just Think of Tomorrow: Irresponsible Captain Tylor

Once upon a time, an anime blog called Reverse Thieves started a tradition called Anime Secret Santa. That tradition was continued this year by the good folks at Taiiku Podcast. Here’s how it works: all participants are paired. Person A recommends three anime series or films to Person B, without disclosing their identity. Person B then picks one of these three to watch and write about for December 24th. On December 25th, Taiiku reveals the participants and pairings. 

This year, I chose the science fiction workplace comedy Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Thus, I began my journey…

To be honest, I’m surprised I waited so long to see Irresponsible Captain Tylor. My college anime club screened it every year. I think I saw the first episode of the series, but somehow missed out on the rest. The opening credits sequence stuck with me, though. It’s bookended by Tylor, the protagonist, walking a tightrope through the sky to a big floating heart. The first time he falls and is hospitalized. By the end of the credits he’s back walking that rope with the friends he met along the way. Meanwhile, live-action footage of the vocalist is superimposed over footage of spaceships and explosions. It’s very much of its time but remains striking today.

The story goes as follows: in the far future, Tylor is a broke 20 year old who joins the military to make easy money. He earns captainship through a series of improbable coincidences. The military distrusts Tylor, so they assign him to the Soyokaze, a dumping ground for drop-outs and ne’er-do-wells. The doctor is a drunkard; the soldiers on board are ready to mutiny. The Soyokaze’s two career officials, stuffy Lieutenant Yamamoto and the genuinely competent Major Yuriko Star, are convinced Tylor will ruin everything. Yet Tylor scores victory after victory against the dangerous Raalgon Empire. Could he be a secret tactical genius? The world’s luckiest buffoon? Or, somehow, both?

Irresponsible Captain Tylor was adapted from a series of light novels by Hitoshi Yoshioka, titled The Most Irresponsible Man in Space. The first was published in 1989. None of these books are available in English, but later titles in the series (such as “The Cold Triangular Equations,” per the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) hint that the author was an avid reader of English-language science fiction classics. Some feature elements like time travel that never appear in the anime. 

Per the Anime Encyclopedia (3rd edition), Irresponsible Captain Tylor was also inspired by a 1962 movie called Japan’s Irresponsible Age. Comedian Hitoshi Ueki played a Japanese salaryman willing to do whatever it took to succeed, even if it meant embarrassing himself in front of all his peers. The Japan Times mentions Ueki’s “outrageous bow ties” and “array of primary-colored suits,” setting him apart from the conservative businessmen that surround him.

Captain Tylor’s influences immediately set it apart from its successors. Modern light novels borrow from contemporary anime, video games and high school romances. Tylor came out during a different period, when everybody wanted to copy from classic science fiction instead. Not just American or British science fiction, but Japanese classics like Space Battleship Yamato and Legend of the Galactic Heroes are paid homage throughout.

At the same time, the heart of Irresponsible Captain Tylor is closer to its modern successors than I expected going in. It’s another story about a mediocre young man who discovers an unexpected talent, accumulates power and attracts a network of potential girlfriends. Tylor accomplishes this without needing to change himself or prove his worth. Power fantasies like these have fueled genre fiction for decades. The popular tropes (reincarnation, portal fantasies) might change, but the appeal of the narrative remains the same.

There is one big difference, though: Irresponsible Captain Tylor never lets the audience know what Tylor is thinking. First person narration isn’t the universal standard for light novels, but it’s certainly common. Series like Mushoku Tensei ask that the reader put themselves in the place of the protagonist so that they might experience his joys. Others, like those by the infamous pulp novelist Nisoisin, place the reader inside the head of a complicated, sometimes unreliable narrator.

I haven’t read the original Tylor novels, so it may be the case that they are told from Tylor’s point of view. The television show, though, is not. Tylor is kept at a remove not just from his peers but from the audience. We have no idea why he makes the decisions he does, only that they tend to work out unexpectedly. It’s not so different from what Dorothy Dunnett accomplishes in her Lymond Chronicles. In those books, the dashing hero makes what appear to be cruel or ill-informed decisions, only to reveal that every choice was made for a good reason. Tylor is a very different character from Lymond, but the series builds suspense (and humor) through maintaining distance in the same way.

One benefit of keeping Tylor’s thoughts a secret from the audience is that it allows the rest of the cast to come to the forefront. An early beneficiary is the nurse Harumi, who appears early in the series. On the surface she’s “just” a kind and beautiful woman who attracts attention from the men on the ship. But the audience learns very quickly that Harumi is in fact a spy, an assassin and even an android (!!) She goes to great lengths to eliminate Tylor only to be foiled again and again through bad luck. Tylor’s seeming slow-wittedness is played for laughs, but the core of the story is Harumi’s frustration.

Another standout character is Azalyn, the young queen of the Raalgon empire. She befriends Tylor after he is taken prisoner by the Raalgon, and adopts him as a pet rather than let him be executed. Azalyn loves Tylor but also poisons him with Raalgon food because she doesn’t know any better. Eventually she returns with him to the Soyokaze where she plays an instrumental role in restoring his health. By the end of her arc, Azalyn has matured as a leader even though she remains a believably impulsive teenager. This is thanks to Tylor, of course, as the story revolves around him. But since Tylor remains an enigma, it’s really Azalyn that the audience roots for.

While Irresponsible Captain Tylor is primarily a comedy, the show’s unique perspective lends itself well to drama when the situation calls for it. Right in the middle of the show, when Tylor is imprisoned by the Raalgon, the crew of the Soyokaze defy the orders of their superiors to infiltrate enemy airspace and save their captain. The time they spent struggling with Tylor, miraculously, taught them how to think and act like Tylor. Best of all, because their perspective is the audience’s perspective, the audience has already been primed for this moment from the beginning of the series. It’s for this reason that while not every episode of the show is a banger,  I’d feel comfortable saying that the script is the strongest aspect of Irresponsible Captain Tylor. The set-ups and pay-offs are meticulously crafted.

Tylor’s greatest victory has nothing to do with strategy or military prowess. In the twenty-third episode, he finds himself in command of Earth’s fleet against the full might of the Raalgon empire. Classical music blares from the heavens as great ships navigate space. The delegated commander of the Raalgon fleet, Ru Baraba Dom, nearly drives himself mad deciphering Tylor’s strategy. Tylor’s own superiors are confused and upset. Only Tylor is able to endure the stress of the situation and find a solution in which, incredibly, everybody is spared.

This sequence is clearly riffing on Legend of the Galactic Heroes, with Tylor cast as an ersatz Yang Wenli. What’s amazing is that the show just about pulls it off. It’s a farcical battle that ends with a gag, but the message is serious: the only real victory in war is armistice. Irresponsible Captain Tylor is not necessarily anti-military (it respects veterans!) but it does single out honor and wealth as particularly poor justifications for armed conflict.

I’m unsurprised that Irresponsible Captain Tylor was the standard at my college anime club. It’s the kind of series that you might not think much of after seeing just an episode or two. Watch it over a long period, though, and the characters grow on you, just like in any good sitcom. From the perspective of 2023, I thought the series was pretty dated in its gender politics and not especially good looking (although the bio-engineered Raalgon ships look great!) I can’t help but think that to get the most out of the show, you had to be an anime fan from a decade or so ago.

That’s not such a bad thing, though. Anime in 2023 is relentlessly focused on the present and the future. Currently airing hits, upcoming projects, new and exciting technologies. Taking a trip to the past, even with all its warts, is a great opportunity to see where we’ve been and where we’re going. I think Irresponsible Captain Tylor has fans to this day precisely because at the time of its release, it found the right balance between celebrating its past influences and poking fun at them for modern audiences. Now it is itself a dinosaur. The stars turn.