Guyver Timeline Project (Potential Spoilers)

[Apocrypha]

I figured I would like to contribute to our knowledge of the Guyver universe and decided to start this timeline project. I found a page on the wiki for the real-world history of Guyver, such as publishing dates and the figma releases, but I decided to undergo a research project to find a good flow of time for the universe within the pages. Also shout out to Cannibal for sparking my interest in the timeline itself.

 

Disclaimer: This is not a guide to the events of the manga. What I do is analyze each chapter for time-skips and transitions of day to night or speech that reflects the passage of time. I will try to mention events only for a reference within a chapter. I am warning now, this will probably contain spoilers if it serves the project. 

 

I AM THE SPOILER GHOST! BEWARE!

 

That being said, I will use this first post as my main update point and will just respond to stuff in new posts.

 

Current Progress: Chapter 21

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First thing to hit is the year(s) that all of this occurs. This is a date that I know I will find after running through and actually doing my notes so for now I'll just throw down the only actual date I can recall off the top of my head I remember being mentioned. Nov 0X 2000. I procured this date from the scene in the Nov 2012 chapter found in Volume 30, where Agito and Shizu are standing in the Zeus' Thunderbolt cemetery and we see Yohei's headstone. So I copied that image and threw it into Photoshop and blew the picture of his gravestone way up (like 900%) and this is what I found:

 

Blown way up I changed the pixel coloring from the black to red and simply followed the pixels that were a deep black and traced it. I made out the Nov and 2000 easily enough, but the date in the middle was a bit hard to get. It looks like 06, but it could be anything from 01-09. Doesn't really change much in the big scheme. So what this ultimately tells us is that Chapter 70 - Volume 12 happened in Nov of 2000. Chapter 70 is when Yohei sacrificed himself to the Enzyme III to try and protect Agito. Now I doubt Takaya would place this date incorrectly and even then in the real world we don't place people's death date on the wrong day. So that's what I have for now on the year. I'll bring more up when I get past the first ten volumes as that's when a bunch of time skips happen through the following volumes.

 

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As for specific months and days I am going to leave this section empty until I get to the chapter of X-Day - August 17, 199X. My main reason for this is because based on a bit of logic concerning the date of when Summer Break starts in Japan. In Chapter 10, Sho's school let's out for Summer which implies that it is July of that year. In the 90's Japan's summer break for schools was based on a Holiday called Marine Day.

 

 

Marine Day (Third Monday in July)

Established in 1996, Marine Day is a relatively new holiday in Japan. It was originally declared as July 20th, but with the revision of the Holiday Law, the holiday was changed to the third Monday of July. The Holiday Law defines Marine Day as a day “to be grateful for the blessings of the ocean and wish for the prosperity of the maritime nation of Japan.†Marine Day is based on Marine Memorial Day, established in 1941 to commemorate the return of Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito to Yokohama Port after a visit to the northeast area of Japan on the steamboat Meiji Maru in 1876. On Marine Day, events related to the ocean are held all over Japan.

SOURCE

 

The Happy Monday System  saw Marine Day moved to the third Monday of June in 2003. If the time frame is the 1990s then the date of Chapter 10 would be July 20, unless this happened before 1996..but still July seems likely. Below is a snippet of an article I found regarding Japanese education. Granted it does not cover high school specifically, but the Japanese educational system seems uniform from my research. 

 

Summer vacation at most Japanese public elementary and middle schools now starts on Marine Day on July 20 and usually lasts for around six weeks through the end of August. In some regions like Hokkaido, though, where winters are very cold, summer vacations are sometimes a little shorter and winter breaks longer.

SOURCE

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That's all I have for now. Once I get to past Volume 10 I will publish my list of exact dates and that should be within the week. From there an update schedule should be about I'll do three volumes before I post another update. Here's to Guyver and the pursuit of knowledge that you didn't even know you wanted.

 

[*Chernaudi]

That's the biggest issue with Guyver as far as establishing a timeline.  The manga has been so long running that any of the events could conceivably take place between 1985 to present. 

 

Of course, I don't know how seriously this is to be taken, but looking at vehicles in the manga do reveal possible continuity issues, because a lot of the cars in the story are real-life based.  Shizu's and Yohei's Toyota SUV is from the late 1980's it seems, but we flash forward to when Val makes her appearance, the cars she's seen with are a mid-late 2000's Lamborghini and a Porsche 911 Turbo of similar vintage.

 

That, of course, could be explained away with the advances that Chronos has brought since their take-over.  If they can make Zoanoids, imagine what they could do with the automobile.

 

I wouldn't expect to make a lot of detailed timeline stuff until the manga ends, because the manga has been so ongoing, yet only covers like about two or three years of time within canon.  But within canon, I wouldn't expect it to make a whole lot of difference, either, because at least Takaya usually has an understandable explanation for what goes on in Guyver.

[Apocrypha]

I'd noticed that thing about the vehicles as well. I mean Murakami drives an RX-7 and the generation he drives was built from '89 until '91 and Yohei's SUV is a Hilux according to the scanlations I have and it seems to be the version from the late 80s...but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have older vehicles if the timeline is further along. I drive a Ford F100 from 1977 for pete's sake. 

I did notice Val had the nicer cars in her chapters as well and I wondered how those fit.

 

My main point of doing this is to cover the passage of time in canon really. Its a side project that gives me something to do until I resume schooling a few weeks honestly. Plus someone might have some use for it when I'm done. And you're right about Takaya usually being on point with his explanations. Granted it takes him nearly 30 years to move the story forward three, but he does a good job with it. 

[*Jess♥]

I'm really impressed with this project you have started. I didn't think to check the gravestones for dates.

looking closely, it does appear you are correct with yohei's date of death, this puts the manga at that time five years in the future of takaya as he wrote it. that volume was published in 1995.

 

I think that the results of your project would go really well in the second section of this page http://www.japan-legend.com/wiki/index.php?title=History_of_Guyver

 

Something else that should be noted, the date on one of the other headstones is 2006. another one of them is a little unclear but could be 2008/2009.

[Apocrypha]

I know that really threw me off, but I also realize the flow of time in Guyver is probably not reflected by the real world either. Or if it is and the timeskips are only noted for plot's sake that is just a bit goofy. I know the vehicle thing Chernaudi pointed out makes sense if it was based on real life time flow, but just it doesn't seem like it would with our flow of time...unless it really is? I mean it is stated X-Day happens one year after the events of Chapter 52.. and there is a one year gap between those volumes.. Well crud...I might have been looking at this all wrong.

[*Jess♥]

I personally think the manga is a tighter time frame than the real life schedule.

like perhaps the beginning was set in the early to mid 1990s and the most recent chapters are based around about 2009 or thereabouts.

[*Chernaudi]

We do have to wonder how much the characters have aged.  I wouldn't take my line of thinking as the gospel, but considering the main time skip was a year and that weeks and months pass between events, it's possible to say that Sho, who was 17 when the manga began, could be 20 or so by now? 

 

Granted, this is a work of fiction and is a manga, but most of the characters who popped up early in the story and have been with us for a while (long time in our time) don't seem to have aged much.  Is that accurate, or am I missing something?

[LordSpleach]

I personally think the manga is a tighter time frame than the real life schedule.

like perhaps the beginning was set in the early to mid 1990s and the most recent chapters are based around about 2009 or thereabouts.

I've been under the impression that the story timeline is as tight as around 5 years based on anytime a timeskip has been mentioned.