Spirit of Wonder Blu-ray Box

Rediscover the spirit of science fiction. The heartfelt science-fiction fantasy Spirit of Wonder returns beautifully on Blu-ray, bringing back the memories of those days. The collection adapts stories by Seiun Award-winning manga artist Kenji Tsuruta.

Published by Kodansha, Spirit of Wonder is a treasured collection of science-fiction short stories. Its twelve original tales unfold through inventions that could never really exist.

In rural Bristol, England, a self-proclaimed group of amateur physicists has dreamed of travelling to Mars since childhood, inspired by pioneering Mars researcher Percival Lowell. They call themselves the Young Scientists’ Club. Windy, a lonely newlywed who feels that the club has taken her husband Jack away, is herself the author of the unconventional ether-current theory on which their plan rests. On the fiftieth anniversary of the club’s founding, its three members and Jack secretly set a plan in motion to fly to Mars.

Miss China runs the Chinese restaurant Tenkai in the English port town of Bristol. A beautiful woman in a cheongsam and an expert in kung fu, she is troubled by the self-proclaimed genius inventor Dr. Breckenridge, who lodges upstairs. He spends his money on suspicious inventions and never pays his overdue rent. She has feelings for his assistant Jim, yet their outrageous inventions keep turning her life upside down. One day, the doctor offers to make up for the unpaid rent by taking her to the Moon with his space-reflection telescope.

When Miss China kicks down Breckenridge’s door to demand the rent as usual, a mysterious beam from a device under test accidentally strikes her. Her body begins shrinking day by day.

On another occasion, Breckenridge and Jim offer Miss China a tour of Mars in place of the rent they owe. The space-reflection telescope takes them to the planet, where they inexplicably find dry canals and a ruined city that should not exist.

Under the moonlight, Miss China drinks alone by the sea. Sipping illicit liquor left as a keepsake by her father, she remembers the days when she came to England as an immigrant with her now-deceased parents.

The collection is housed in a newly illustrated storage box and includes a newly drawn short comic. A special booklet brings together reprinted Breckenridge newspaper material, a discussion of the works and an illustration gallery.

A sequel audio drama sees Miss China accelerated to supersonic speed by an invention of Dr. Breckenridge. The shock wave tears her cheongsam to pieces, and Tenkai disappears. Can she recover her restaurant? The collection also includes soundtrack recordings and supplementary commentary, a television commercial and promotional footage. Several extras reproduce material from the earlier Wonder-Box edition.