Saber Marionette J
Otaru Mamiya is an adolescent working-class laborer, single, independent who's about 18 years old, and living on his own in the fictional city state of Japoness. Employed as a fish peddler and running a morning's catch, he is hit by a car driven by Mitsurugi Hanagata, an acquaintance, spoiling his merchandise and sparking a fight the two agree to take elsewhere.
Traveling to a gully outside of the town, the boys continue their quarrel on a bridge where a skilled Otaru makes quick work of his opponent. In an unfortunate turn of events however, Otaru, balancing himself on a fencepost which breaks off, is dumped into the river below where he is helplessly washed away.
Moments later, having drifted ashore in a small pond, Otaru finds himself at a rural athenaeum, the Japoness Pioneer Museum. He curiously explores the decrepit building, falling through a trapdoor and into a secret underground basement where he finds and awakens an encapsulated marionette. She introduces herself as Lime, embracing the dumbfounded boy with a laugh and revealing an unprecedented ability to express emotion.
=== Setting ===
The prologue of Saber Marionette J is set sometime into the 22nd century, when Earth's population has grown to such a magnitude that humanity cannot feasibly continue without colonizing space. The initial stages of the project make a promising effort of moving civilization into orbit, however it is during travel to a planet name Terra II that a transport vessel, the Mesopotamia, experiences a catastrophic fate, destroying all but a lone escape pod of people who plunge to the surface below. Of the handful of survivors however, only six males survive the crash, a ratio that both cripples their manpower and leaves them unable to reproduce.
Marooned and without communication, the men turn to genetic engineering as a method to produce clones of themselves, enough to populate the planet and sustain habitation. The effort is critically fruitful, and over a course of three centuries, each of the survivors and their successors establish individual settlements in the form of six city-states.
In spite of the remarkable success however, notwithstanding even advancements in technology, Terra II remains uninhabited by women. An effort to substitute this absence is made with the manufacture of feminine androids name marionettes; creations that, while they serve their purpose, operate without sapience, emotion, or free will.
=== Themes ===
Saber Marionette J contains several groups of notable themes, mainly in the names of characters and locations. The focal heroines, Lime, Cherry, and Bloodberry, are named after fruits, while their counterparts, Tiger, Luchs, and Panther are named after animals, specifically of the Felidae family (using the German words and pronunciations for tiger, lynx, and panther due to their Galtland origins). Ieyasu Tokugawa, the fictional shogun of Japoness, derives his name and appearance from Tokugawa Ieyasu, while Gerhardt von Faust, führer of Galtland, is an allusion of Adolf Hitler whose name may be derived from Faust, a character of German folklore.
The city-states established by the male survivors are also based on the political and developmental histories and periods of countries. Japoness is a reminiscence of feudal Japan, Galtland portrays the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany, Peterburg is structured after Soviet Russia, New Texas is representative of the modern United States, Xi'an paints the image of Imperial China and Romana takes after the Roman Empire. The letters that affix the titles of the franchise have also been explained to represent the city-state in which a particular series is set in. Saber Marionette R, for example, takes place in Romana while Saber Marionette J, occurs in Japoness.
Besides the show's botanic, animal and historic references, as well as its generally comedic overtones, Saber Marionette J briefly explores deeper motifs as well. One such motif, outspoken by Mitsurugi, is the discriminatory notion that marionettes are of no importance to humans beyond their menial labor, and should be disenfranchised to the affection or privileges of people. This idea becomes more recurrent later in the series when Otaru finds himself growing closer to the girls and questions himself for it. Another visited theme is the exploration of life, its senescence, and death. These truths have a major impact on the girls' developmental identity as they come to terms with themselves and humans.
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