Part 1

“Before we begin the lecture, I want to direct everyone to the bold text at the top of your syllabus. And if you haven’t been able to print it off from my website yet, you can just read off the screen. All students will be required to spend at least twenty hours as ‘anime girls’ for full class credit.” 

I’d noticed the bold text before. I felt a shiver reading it again. I could hear some titters from the back of the room. Professor Brandt, who was sixty miles away from us, connected via video conference, could hear those titters through the live mic in the ceiling. She pushed her narrow, black-rimmed glasses up a bit and continued, “Now, I have listed alternative assignments for some of the course requirements but, really, the class is geared towards personal accounts and research. There’s really no class like this and some of it may feel outside your comfort zone but I believe anthropology requires the researcher take themselves outside of their familiar cultural experience. The first term I want to mention is participant observation…”

Immediately, the laptop keys around me started to click and pens went down on paper. I jotted a few things down on my syllabus because it was all I had in front of me. I would copy it to proper notes later. My eyes kept drifting back to the bold text. Still gave me the shivers.

The projector showed the front of the main campus lecture room where Professor Brandt was with about thirty, unseen students. The LCD screen to the side showed the first page of the syllabus. The screens at the back of the room showed the same thing. Despite the cold afternoon outside, the room felt stuffy because every seat was filled.  

This was the smallest of the video conference rooms on campus. We referred to it as the “padded room” because of the noise-canceling, white junk stuck to the walls. Most of the chairs were plastic, rigid-backed blue ones which looked like enlarged preschool chairs from decades ago and felt like sitting in ice, which wasn’t bad at the moment. A few chairs with plush cushions were set aside for those who needed them, but they felt like someone had tried and failed to make a generic office chair look friendly. They also itched like crazy.

The speakers were white boxes which hissed menacingly whenever the professor wasn’t talking. The most advanced piece of technology was the main camera, a black rectangle with twin, glossy eyes which could swivel and track students as they asked questions. Of course, it didn’t do that because the microphones left behind on the tables weren’t plugged in anymore, replaced by a single, super-sensitive mic which listened to everything and everyone and blasted it out as a raging cacophony to the other side whenever time came for discussion. I’d had a few of my early classes in this room before and the experience ranged from annoying to outright frustrating.

But all those concerns drifted away as Professor Brandt began her lecture in earnest.

“I will assume everyone here has a passing knowledge of what happened in early 2004. There is some scholarly and public debate about exact dates but the generally-accepted one is around March 24th. That won’t be on any tests, so don’t worry….”

I was in junior high when it happened, people appearing in the world who looked like living artwork, specifically like female characters depicted in Japanese, animated programs. The first appearances were around Tokyo, so it didn’t trigger that much alarm. Most figured they were actresses in good costumes promoting some new show. 

It wasn’t till they appeared in major metropolitan areas all over the world that it made the news. Those were crazy days. Class was cancelled and some regions declared martial law until the “arrivals” could be better understood. Professor Brandt outlined all this in passing but focused on the violent protests, connecting them to other eras of social unrest. 

“I’m sure it’s still fresh in our minds. Nothing like it had ever occurred. Probably the closest parallel one could imagine might be the landing of European settlers and explorers on the North American continent. This analogy was one which came up with fearful overtones in the days and weeks after the first arrivals. Fear of conquest, fear of illness, fear of the unknown. For some time, regretfully, fear ruled.”

I could tell she was alluding to what happened in Piedmont. I didn’t want to think about it. But the images were everywhere. Two of the girls were caught on a surveillance camera outside a convenience store. They would later say they were hiking (they had animated-style gear with them). All it took was one man with a history of mental illness and a shotgun in his truck. I never knew blood could be so bright red.

Somehow, they both survived the attack. The images of terror, of human suffering, struck through a wall of separation. The day before, they could’ve been colorful aliens from another planet (a theory some people held). After that, opinions changed. 

Despite the terrible thing which happened then, there was no retaliation like some worried. The girls appeared less for a while and many incidents were defused by the fact they could just vanish away, apparently back to their world.

Slowly, they started to appear again, each sighting heralded with sympathy and careful regard. Local governments offered protection for “visitors” but were often refused. Professor Brandt brought up little bits of history but mostly I was waiting for the next part. For the first ambassador from the other side. 

She arrived with some fanfare because there had been a letter delivered that an ambassador was coming. All the news stations were fixed on the event and the Internet was livestreaming all over the place. She just gave her name as “Olivia”.

Professor Brandt remarked on the choice of the Geneva office of the United Nations as the first stop by “Olivia”, noting, “An impromptu office for inter-dimensional affairs had to be established, growing out of the office which expected the first beings not from our Earth to come from space.”

It was really at this point that the first details of the visiting girls were made available to the public through “Olivia”. Professor Brandt even played a video clip of one of her first recorded speeches. I’d seen it live.

What struck me at the time was how much detail you could see in her long, river-like cobalt hair which flowed past her back and her olive-tinted eyes which took up so much of her face. When her mouth moved to speak, it looked human, only much simpler. Her voice was bigger than one would expect from someone barely five feet tall. 

“Greetings. I bring a message of peace and friendship for everyone of this world. I, and others like me, come from a sister world beside yours in the same space but a different dimension. We discovered the ability to shift between the dimensions which isolate worlds. We visited quietly at first, simply out of curiosity towards a world like nothing we had seen before. We did not mean to disrupt your world and we apologize for any chaos our curiosity has caused. I was selected as a representative to best speak for my world. I hope you all may receive my message and understand our peaceful intent.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The message was first given in English (which was a matter of debate and some controversy for a while). After this point, “Olivia” then translated the message into the major languages of the world, beginning with Standard Chinese and finishing with Tagalog after employing more than two dozen different languages to recite the same opening. “Olivia” then offered to provide further translations in whatever languages were desired (after given enough time for an accurate translation).

She didn’t take questions, though plenty were yelled at her by reporters. She did take some time to pose for pictures with representatives of the United Nations. 

Professor Brandt soon got to the core of the matter, noting, “She did take questions later. Some of them were answered. I have a list on the following slide.”

With a click, she brought up a text list with many of the details which we learned about “Olivia” and others like her in those early days. Their kind didn’t really call themselves anything except ‘Kinrae’, which had the same context as ‘kin’ or ‘kindred’. But they didn’t mind if people called them other things like ‘colorful girls’ or ‘anime girls’. “Olivia” even quipped, “I’ve been called cute a few times already and I have absolutely no issues with that.”

The term ‘Kinrae’ was something Professor Brandt lingered on, explaining, “Because it was one of the first observed terms they used themselves, in most scholarly writing about these visitors, the term Kinrae is often used as a name for them and a distinguishing tool. So, where I’ve written ‘anime girls’ or any other terms, you can use the word ‘Kinrae’, especially for academic purposes.”

Past the big, bolded term Kinrae, there were a few details gleaned in those days. They didn’t give a name to their place of origin but did mention there were many divisions of it, like the world had nations and regions. There were also fewer deserts and less variations in climate.  

And then the rest of the slide was revealed to be blank. Professor Brandt gave a slight smile as she explained, “Of course, there are those who have spoken to visiting Kinrae and gotten bits of stories and details about creativity and art. But they all seem far more curious about our cultures and learning about them. Some have come to refer to them as an absent culture because of how little we know about their beliefs, their traditions, their languages, or pretty much anything of cultural significance despite nine years of concerted effort by academics.”

There were some light comments from the other students. Brandt continued, “So, don’t feel any pressure if your observations don’t yield anything new. You’re not the only ones. There are a series of books which I consider foremost on the hunt for more information. I only have one of them as required reading but the rest are on reserve to help you think about what kind of focus you want to take with your observation write-ups over the course of this class.”

And then it was into full-on syllabus expectations mode like any other class. I took out the highlighter for all the deadlines. I also marked that we would be receiving the imitation devices in three weeks. There was a disclaimer page and apparently further paperwork to be signed on the professor’s website before we could even look at the devices. 

After “Olivia’s” worldwide tour, there were some treaties signed. Recognition of the girls as representing a political entity. Emergency documentation for temporary stays. Some governments (especially Japan and the Philippines) waved special documentation as an incentive to visitors. Like “Olivia”, many of the Kinrae visitors showed a swift aptitude for learning languages. 

Plenty of troublesome incidents played out all over the world. Certain nations and regions banned the strange visitors. In turn, the Kinrae left them alone. 

For those governments which signed treaties, they did share certain tidbits of information, like special technology in the form of the imitation devices. 

How they worked took many papers and examinations and reconsiderations of the law of the conservation of mass, even with the help of several eager Kinrae who were apparently just as mystified by the devices themselves. 

But from the study came recent discoveries about information storage in relation to quantum states and a bunch of other things my physics major friend, Ryan, spoke about breathlessly. All I knew was that most agreed the devices were harmless (though some claimed they were an insidious invasion tool), despite the effect of making the person who wore one look almost exactly like a Kinrae. 

As class seemed to be winding down, the Professor took some time to have us all introduce ourselves to one another, talk about our major, and why we wanted to take this class. Pretty standard stuff for most classes but I could tell by the looks my classmates were giving each other that the subject which caused titters before had reduced the room to guarded silence.

I took the initiative and cleared my throat near the microphone. All eyes turned to me. I gave a faint smile as the Professor acknowledged me.

Speaking across the disconcerting distance of the medium, I said, “My name is Sean Kurtz. I’m a liberal arts major. Mostly. I dunno. It’s still early enough I may double major. I’m a glutton for college.”

That earned some friendly laughs from the other side and a nod from the Professor as she then encouraged, “And why did you decide to take this class?”

Not needing a breath to steel myself, I said, “Because I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be an anime girl. Might be fun. Outside my experience. Who knows what you might learn?”

The Professor gave an approving nod as I leaned back in that painfully cold and uncomfortable chair. I could tell many of my classmates were staring. And I figured the banging sound I heard when I finished was my friend, Lissa, in the back banging her head against her desk.

None of the other answers were as direct as mine. Most involved cultural curiosity, a frank admission that it covered part of their core requirements, a chance to study a dynamic culture, and various statements to that effect.

I was really hoping Lissa would one-up my statement. She said, “Melissa Cohen. I’m a psychology major and I’m taking this class because... oh, why the hell not?”

I snickered, and she clarified that it seemed like it would be “enjoyable”.