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JAPANoFILES #3 - In Search of... SEAMAN

[ This edition of JAPANoFILES revives an old tale from the depths of the sea in the shape of a fish with the head of a man. While it is true that Seaman has been covered by most existing videogame websites, there is a fascinating part of it which is still largely unknown to most. It relates to a curious viral marketing campaign launched by Vivarium sometime before the release of the game. The source for this article was none other than the Japanese book ‘Seaman Breeding Kit’: a tall, hard-cover edition whose pages tell an incredible story that begins in ancient Egype and culminates with the research work of a 20th century French scientist. ]

Hatching the egg

Seaman completed its tenth anniversary this July. Winner of the 1999 Japan Media Arts Festival’s Excellence Prize, this puzzling Dreamcast title was created by the game design virtuoso Yoot Saito, creator of the strategy game Tower (known abroad as Sim Tower) and its infamous sequel, the aptly named Yoot Tower. His work can also be seen in the obscure GameCube relic Odama, a delightful blend between voice operated strategy and Pinball table mechanics. Seaman was an exceptional success, especially in Japan, having sold a few hundred thousands of titles, due in great part to the booming Dreamcast console launch. Apart from the special editions of the original game, a sequel was made available in 2007 exclusively for Japanese PS2 users.

A true original, Seaman’s existence is as difficult to explain today as it was a decade ago. One can only wonder what possessed Saito to devote years of his life developing a project based on so obscure a premise: to verbally communicate with a talking hybrid between man and fish that lives and evolves inside a television set. In anticipation of the release, the underground Japanese designer thought of a very ingenious viral marketing campaign that would transcend the game experience, permeate the media and capture the public’s attention with its numerous allusions to fringe science and the domains of the paranormal. Boasting his remarkable knowledge of History and of Natural Sciences, Saito fabricated that which remains as the most intricate and outlandish viral marketing campaign that has ever been seen in the industry of games, all using an obscenely limited budget and resources.

Starting with the next paragraph, we will flow into a bizarre world ruled by strange lineages of creatures whose role, still unknown, appears to be of vital importance in the realization of Human destiny. Myth becomes reality, just as the very reality becomes the myth.

The Curious Case of Jean-Paul Gasse

The story told in this spartan-looking book is a long one, certainly too long to be transcribed in full. It starts during Egypt’s Third Dynasty when a man, son of the Pharaoh, fell in love with the daughter of a priestess. The legend says that their relationship was not approved by the ruling leader. The Priest sought the help of the god Thoth who was depicted as being a man with the head of a bird (Ibis), carrying scrolls where he would write down the record of all events. His role in the divine society was secondary although he was of particular importance when dead humans received judgment. As a solution to this conundrum, Thoth transformed the son of the Pharaoh and the daughter of the priest into a fish and a bird, respectively. In their newly acquired morphologies, both lovers parted. The Priest, whose hard work was being put into the construction of the pyramids, asked Thoth if ever his daughter would return: the god answered him that he needed to build a massive landmark that could be used as a beacon to help guiding the couple back into existence.

Thousands of years after, in the year of 1997, Egyptian newspapers circulated the rumour that a young boy, while fishing in the waters of Alexandria, caught a strange fish with the head of a man. Professor William Southerland, the director of the Anthro-Bio Archaeological Research Institute in France investigated the case and announced to the media that the case was genuine, and that the origin of the creature he named “Seaman” could be as old as the ancient Egyptian civilization time. Careful examination of the specimen, through its dissection, revealed that it contained four eggs, immediately sent to France for further studies. This discovery, however, is deeply related to the previous events in the life of an obscure French scientist named Jean-Paul Gasse. His pioneering work about this new species shocked the scientific community of the early 1990’s. His belief was that the field of anthro-bio archaeology was of the outmost importance in the study of ancient Egyptian finds.

The discovery of this unknown animal has been covered by media from all over the world.

Gasse’s life was filled with struggle. Having been born in the Parisian suburbs in 1899, he felt divided between the roots of his parents; her mother came from noble families while his father came from poor families. Because social distinction and prejudice was so common in those days, Gasse felt deeply shattered by the fact that his father would not attend festivities or gatherings held by his mother’s family in order to avoid shame and public ridicule, thus becoming an opponent of all the materialistic culture of Paris’ high society.

His family’s wealth, however, allowed young Gasse to attend the best schools and be granted the best education possible. Science was becoming a popular phenomenon, at the time, as a consequence of the Nobel Prize awarded in 1905 to the Curies. His interest in Nature and Biology developed around the time of the first World War, following the death of his father from tuberculosis and the unbalanced life he led from then on, constantly moving from one residence to another across France.

Jean-Paul Gasse as a child and as an adult in two very credible photos.

A common dinner table photo illustrating the merry and wealthy life of the French bourgeoisie.

After entering the University of Paris, commonly known as La Sorbonne, he travelled in an expedition to Egypt as an archaeologist investigating the biological ecosystem of the Nile. In his thorough research he found puzzling fragments of bones from mutated creatures that seem to have suffered a sudden adaptation to the changes in the Nile Valley. These fragments also hinted towards another discovery made at the time such as the Hieroglyphics found in the pyramids of the third dynasty. Gasse was shocked to learn that the fragments of unknown creatures matched some of the mythical beasts depicted in ancient Egyptian art. From these images of the past, he was able to conclude that such creatures were not only known to ancient Egyptians, as they related to them and, given their morphology, were indeed able to communicate verbally. Some of the older local residents were also aware of this creature long ago, back when their ancestors named it Sea-Man (the man from the sea).

This bas-relief sculpture depicts deities and holy men: on the lower right, an interesting Egyptian-style depiction of the abnormal half-frog, half-man creature.

Investigation ensued back in Paris, after Gasse returned with some Sea-man eggs to the laboratory. Using a controlled environment he started experimenting with these eggs, in an attempt to bring one such creature to life inside an aquarium. His painstaking annotations were kept in a journal. Later he wrote to his friend and colleague Kimo Masuda who helped him with the research.

My dear friend, Kimo,

I came across a strange living creature by chance in the marketplace in Alexandria on the 7th Egypt Investigation sponsored by the French government. I brought an egg sample back to my lab. This legendary creature is called man from the sea by the locals, or “Seaman” in English.

While trying to reproduce Seaman’s region and environment, I continued making experimental mistakes the lab-based aquarium. While doing so, I realized that Seaman was not an ordinary creature.

These Seamen live together, reproduce and breed by parasitism and spawning, feed on one another, capture, transform, and emerge. The Seamen changed quickly and drastically, while powerfully repeating all the activities maintained by creatures on the Earth. It was like the embodiment of Darwin’s theory of evolution that we were so keen on when we were young students in Paris.

There was one thing that did not change, however, and that is his face. This creature’s face is just like a human being’s.

Furthermore, it seems the Seamen continue evolving. They begin to mature intellectually. As time passes, they are more able to comprehend my words. Surprisingly, I’ve verified the fact that they can even speak their own mind. It’s surprising but although this creature has very primitive characteristics upon being hatched, through the transformation and complicated generational change processes, dynamic changes occur.

This living creature is without a doubt made from organisms that exist on land. However, this creature may be a warning sign from God about civilized society or a new creature on Earth. Nobody knows. There’s one thing I can say - that it’s an anomaly to what we biologists know.

I would like to meet with you as soon as possible and look forward to showing you this odd creature.

Yours truly,

Jean-Paul Gasse

Information on subsequent events is scarce. Although the Seaman Diary of Gasse was detailed, there were no actual records to be found as to what conversations he engaged with, although Yoot Saito, the chairman at the Japanese Institute of Anthro-Bio Archaeology - the new branch of Biology inaugurated by Gasse - speaks of some facts known from the actual effects of dialoguing with the Seaman: claiming that through this strange entity, people are taken to the depths of their subliminal unconscious as if some strange variant of psychotherapy.

A drawing of the dissected organism showing the unusual digestive system and skeleton.

Also it is known from this diary that the experiment was a failure because the creature eventually died in its early stages. By dissecting this creature, Jean-Paul Gasse entered phase two of his investigation whose results were edited in the historical document “The Examination of the Evolution of Living Creatures as Seen through Seaman’s Adaptation to His External Environment and Speed of Organic Change”. Here, Gasse gave the creature a scientific name, Habibi de Kimo (Habibi from the Arabic “Best Friend”) and concluded that the creature would become increasingly closer to Human by means of acquiring knowledge from those around him. He added that this specimen did exist in ancient Egypt times and was probably used as a means through which Egyptian mathematics from older civilizations - long before the Egyptian civilization - transmitted them such knowledge.

Kimo Masuda’s photograph near the Giza plateau appeared cover of the branded science magazine National Geo…metric?

But the document came to cause more outrage than astonishment in the scientific community. Scientists and peers received the document with high skepticism, not surprisingly, since the theory enclosed in those pages changed the face of Natural and Human History, as well as western academic traditions. Summarizing Gasse’s career, Mr. Saito said, “Gasse’s devotion to research threatening to undermine the most basic idea of human history - the assumption that it is indeed a History of Human beings - constantly places him at odds with authority and destined him to a life of tragedy”.

Before and after Seaman

Viral marketing, as a concept of advertising, can be very complex. Instead of advertising a product directly and using regular promotional channels, this strategy often tends to publicize a concept beforehand, using a format that is not usually associated with advertising in order to captivate the attention of the audience. When properly executed, this strategy tends to originate a scenario where information is transmitted and debated among the different members of the target audience, spreading naturally like a virus. For this campaign, Yoot Saito searched well beyond the videogame playing public as the target population for his campaign: he sought to create something on the same scale as a new myth that could be presented to different audiences across the world. As a result of that, it is said that a number of people still believe in the existence of the Seaman to this day.

There are sublime details to this false account that could only have originated from either extensive knowledge or thorough research work. The entire narrative fits perfectly to the very first moment of the game, where a voice (in the case of US release, the voice of none other than Leonard Nimoy) presents the laboratory of Gasse, providing instructions on how to bring a Seaman to life. Secondly, the ideas regarding communication with the sea creatures as being therapeutic is an excellent analogy to the game experience taking place in a silent, dim-lit and relaxing environment where the player is merely asked to perform routine tasks and talk to his screen pet.

These animal’s anatomy is composed by a very atypical combination of bones and fish spines.

Furthermore, the narrative is also related to the existing branch of Cryptozoology, a field of expertise on legendary or seemingly non-existing animals of nature. Defined by skeptics as a pseudoscience, this is a field of animal research that is older than its very definition, whose initial steps might have been performed by a number of private researchers who did not agree with Science’s dismissal of unidentified animals. Recurrent reports of sightings include unknown beings such as the Yeti, Bigfoot, Dragons, giant snakes or octopuses. Some of these creatures are still being investigated today; others are inexorable parts of local folklore as seen, for instance, in the unique case of Thailand’s minuscule Water Elephants.

An unsettling photo of a preserved specimen (this prop was later donated to a Japanese museum that specializes on singular artefacts).

Modern Cryptozoology derives mostly from the work carried out by one of the first full-time researches in this field, none other than Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans who, not surprisingly in the context of this tale, was born in France. Both to skeptics and mainstream scientists, the field of unknown animals is ofte n grouped and tagged along with other non-scientific and largely theoretical investigations that gained strength during the 60’s and the 70’s – what some call of “new age”. This term is also frequently applied to the field of alternative archaeology or “new age archaeology”, defining a range of different theories from lucid to insane, concerning an alternative and highly confrontational chronology of human civilizations. Interestingly, New-Age archaeology is intimately connected to the field of Egyptology, namely in the suggestion that the ancient Egyptian gods referred to existing beings not known to modern man, sometimes pointed as beings from other worlds.

Production of this campaign went to lenghts in order to achieve convincing results, judging from this competent reproduction of ancient art.

Perhaps the most macabre of all photos included in the book, this still shows the actual bones of the Seaman creature in its final amphibian form.

Seaman’s viral marketing was certainly forgotten by most, although a few seem to remember it quite clearly to the point of using as an inspiration source for their own work. One of the most notorious examples of this following would be the magnificent production behind the “Giants” viral marketing supporting the release of Shadow of the Colossus, in which several pictures or videos of the game’s colossal figures were shown in false newscasts, private videos and websites. Additionally there was the forged account of a scientist named Arkadi Simkin who reported the finding of traces of ancient giants buried in the snow during an expedition.

Another recent example is the book “The Excavation of Mushroom Island”, an analogous albeit more humorous implementation of Saito’s methods in the form of a scientific report on the supposed creatures that inspired the universe of the Super Mario games. Authored by an archaeologist named Logan Zawacki, the book includes maps of the remote Pacific Islands where the remains of the creatures were supposedly found, detailed sketches and even a chronology of their appearance through different periods of pre-History.

1: A mock newspaper clip from the LA Times reporting the find of a gigantic fossil in Iran, as a part of the Shadow of the Colossus publicity campaign / 2: The bone structure of a Goomba, from “The Excavation of Mushroom Island”, a witty new book musing over the possibility that the characters of the mushroom kingdom in the Mario series were, in fact, inspired by real fossils from a remote island.

Final thoughts and considerations

Yoot Saito is irrefutably one of the most unconventional minds in the sect of alternative Japanese game designers. He does not fit well into categories or labels and his posture towards the industry has always been that of a truly independent creative force. When founding his small studio, Vivarium, Saito showed no interest in generating profits: not in one occasion has he budged an inch under the pressure of sales. Judging from this book and its contents, not to mention the very game it introduces, Saito wished to give birth to a modern myth that would make his virtual laboratory exceedingly more complex than what the language of games could provide.

Using a witty sense of humor together with a wonderfully suggestive chronicle, Yoot Saito has managed to write a new chapter in the employment of viral techniques in the promotion of an aberrant and unpredictable game concept. One may ask about the actual purpose of such a complex deceit that, in spite of being a fairly economical solution, implies a considerable amount of work and craft. I believe we are in the presence of a meticulously devised allegory was meant to instill a stronger feeling of enthusiasm to the very experience of nurturing and dialoguing with the bizarre beings that fill the screen. A whole ten years time after its creation, this marginal title remains one of the paradigms of dynamic life in a digital environment.

Additional Links Yoot Saito Blog Seaman Official Website Seaman Diary 7 Days in the Life Mock Seaman figure

See also “The Coming of the Giants" “Excavation of Mushroom Island" “Korean Human Face Fish video"

More JAPANoFILES features #1 - Reintroducing Rimo Cocoron #2 - Urban Myths in Yuuyami Doori Tankentai

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