Learning to Shudder

What do Jim Henson's the Storyteller and the Japanese anime series Full Metal Panic Fumoffu have in common? Well, not much- except that both of them have an episode based on my favorite Grimm's fairy tale: "The Story of the Youth who went forth to learn what Fear was." I first encountered this tale in Bergamo, Italy, where I picked up a book of local fairy tales and legends. I've since encountered a similar version in Grimm's.

It's not surprising that Jim Henson's the Storyteller,which pulls directly from German folk tales, used this tale which is, after all, the fourth of two hundred ten tales in The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales. Henson tells the story of a tailor's son who is a little too simple, a little too dumb, to have ever been afraid. At the urging of his father, the young man leaves family, home, and his true love behind and goes on an adventure to seek out his first fright- to learn, as it were, how to shudder. The journey leads our hero on a number of adventures that are supposed to frighten him, but do not. He finally ends up in a haunted house, where a ghoul comes tumbling down the chimney (in the Italian version, this ghoul falls down the chimney in many pieces, in Henson's version, he is separated in just two pieces, his legs scampering away from his upper half). The ghoul challenges the young hero to a game of nine pins, for which the prize is winning the hero's legs. The young man wins the game, survives the night, and finds great riches in the haunted house. He goes home a wealthy man, but he still hasn't learned to shudder. It's not until he returns home to tell his father his fortune that he learns his true love has fallen deathly ill. Summoned to her side, the young man is certain his true love will die, and fear of losing her makes him shiver in terror for the very first time.

Compare this traditional tale to the romantic comedy/sf war (yes, you read that correctly) manga and anime series from Japan, Full Metal Panic. In the Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu portion of the series, we have spunky Japanese high school girl, Kaname, showing the foreign-born soldier, Sosuke, the ropes of teenage life in Japan. Sosuke has learned that high school can be more challenging than the battlefield, where he spent most of his childhood and young adult life. In Episode 6, "The Patient of Darkness," Kaname is telling ghost stories to her friends. The only one she can't scare with her stories is the battle-hardened Sosuke. Kaname takes him to an abandoned hospital that the locals believe is haunted. Right away the duo sees an elderly patient who died at the hospital staring at them through a broken window. Inside, a defunct telephone line rings. The caller is trying to reach the hospital- but he's already dead. Bloodied children from the pediatric ward begin to chase them down the hallway with cleavers. Through all these increasingly scary situations, Kaname is jumping out of her skin, but Sosuke remains unmoved, pointing out at each juncture that old ladies and even small children with weapons are no match for his soldierly skills. The pair are about to discover the true nature of the hospital hauntings, when some old floor boards give way and Kaname falls through to the hospital's basement. The next scene shows her in a heap of rubble, unconscious. There is blood everywhere. Enter Sosuke, sweating and shaking, stuttering- in other words, he's terrified. Like the fairy tale hero, our level-headed soldier has learned what fear is.