Olga (Star) - for web site

[Saruta]

Olga is a robot woman whose main appearance is in Phoenix 2772. In human form, she has soft humanlike skin on her hands, arms, face and parts of the body; the rest is armored with bright red hard metal. She can talk and understand very well.

Ostensibly, she is a nanny for a child raised in a completely enclosed environment. Yet, she has several transformation forms only useful in an open space:

- a light automobile capable of carrying a person
- a light boat, again for a person
- a rocket plane, carrying a person using a support plank (not child-sized)
- a different rocket plane, unmanned, presumably recon

She can also transform into a small box with a carrying handle. She has a remote control and seems to need its signal to change forms most of the time, though she can operate it herself.

Initially a robot with no real emotion but with good programming as a nanny, she raised Godo (or Godah) Shingo, the movie's protagonist, from about age 5 to entrance into a pilot school. She was supposed to leave him at that moment, but stayed on his request. Gradually, she acquired humanlike feelings and developed a deep romantic love for Godo, which he failed to recognize for a significant time.

Olga also cameos in a chapter of the manga Rainbow Parakeet, named "Waiting for Godot".

The earliest appearance of a visually similar character is in Phoenix Nostalgia (drawn before the Phoenix 2772 movie), where the protagonist Romy and especially her moopie double sometimes like look exactly like Olga (especially the face and hair). However, they are not robots and do not have her robotic features, including the characteristic face side protection.

In a very early draft of the Phoenix 2772 synopsis, the pilot was Makimura and the robot was constructed by him, possibly to resemble Romy whom he once knew; however, the plot of the final movie has no obvious links to the Phoenix manga (except common characters like the Firebird herself and Dr. Saruta).

The last episode of Astro Boy 1980 features a girl robot Nikki who slightly resembles Olga, but looks much younger.

Being a "late arrival", Olga was not featured in more works and therefore did not gain a prominent place in the Star System; she is routinely omitted from Star System drawings. However, she became a forerunner of a very popular theme in anime and manga, that of human-robot love and a robot girl gradually developing feelings. The most famous example of this theme is probably Chobits.

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This is a candidate for publication on the site, following a Twitter conversation. I tried to give enough information without spoiling the plot of Phoenix 2772.

You can use screenshots as illustrations. I have them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... NOTORI2772 . In particular, I carefully captured all of her non-humanoid transformation forms - that's how I know the details of the rocket planes.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... 4006032706
https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... 3842032738
https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... 0475461282
https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... 5121591266
https://picasaweb.google.com/1047581121 ... 0436597090

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I wonder if most of her fans are gone now, moving to newer pastures. Looks like I'm #3 in the world of those who tarried. The first two are Japanese: olga2772 in Twitter and OlgaMaster, whose site is at http://www1.megaegg.ne.jp/~pancakeofolga/

[strobe_z]

Heh.. great job~! I'll adapt this for inclusion in the Star section as soon as I get a few more things cleaned up. With Vertical's release of Princess Knight, I've been spending a lot of time organizing those Series pages.