Hammerspace
From Free net encyclopedia
Hammerspace, or occasionally katanaspace, is a fan-envisioned, extradimensional, instantly accessible storage area in fiction. The concept is jokingly used to explain how characters in animation, comics and games are capable of producing objects out of thin air. The name is a portmanteau of Hammer and Hyperspace.
While this practice is best known from Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies and Disney animated cartoons, the term itself both originates in and is generally associated with Japanese entertainment.
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Origins
Hammerspace draws its name from a semi-common cliché in humorous anime and manga: Male character Y offends or otherwise angers female character X. X then draws a wooden mallet—ranging in size from large to downright ludicrous—out of nowhere and bashes Y with it. The act is purely for comic relief, and neither advances the plot nor causes permanent damage. The term was largely popularized by fans of Ranma ½, as character Akane Tendo is a particularly vigorous malleteer. Kaori Makimura of Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter series may be one of the longest-running malleteers, spanning 14 years of shows (from 1985 to 1999). In the Transformers universe, "subspace" is a similar concept used to explain where weapons and additional mass goes when a Transformer changed between one mode and another.
Hammerspace does have parallels in western animation. Inexplicable production of items dates back to the very beginning of animated shorts, though it was not similarly conceptualized, and was a fairly common occurrence during the golden age of animation. Warner Bros. cartoon characters are particularily well-known for often pulling all sorts of things—guns, disguises, umbrellas, bombs, anvils, hammers (mallets)—from behind their backs. The Toon role-playing game refers to this space as the back pocket. In Futurama, the robot Bender has access to Hammerspace in his chest cavity.
Hammerspace in games
Hammerspace is also useful in explaining the peculiarities of many video games. This explains why a game character wielding a sword bigger than himself does not appear to be carrying one until he actually enters combat. It may also shed light on how characters in MMORPGs (for instance, Everquest) can carry up to eight backpacks and have none of them visible, or how a marine in Doom (and in other First-person shooters) can carry multiple big guns and still look like he's armed with only one. In fact, most First-person shooters use hammerspace, because of the players huge weapon-carrying capacity allowed in the game, and the game developer choice to not show the weapons the player is not using.
Adventure games are the best example of "hammerspace", as the player can often carry all the items he can pick up. Monkey Island 1 & 2 are among the most notorious, and had various hilarious situations when the hero (Guybrush Threepwood) put humongous objects (much larger than him) inside his pants, and later take it off. Other notorious adventure games were Space Quest ("You take the ladder and jam it in your pocket. Ouch!"), Simon the Sorcerer (Simon stored sizeable objects, such as a ladder, in his wizard hat), and the cartoonish Sam & Max. The Legend of Zelda is also well-known for this phenomenon, with the hero Link being able to somehow stash a bag of large bombs within his apparently pocketless tunic, as well as very numerous other tools and weapons.
Some games actually depicts the hammerspace as normal occurrence. For instance is the upcoming game .hack//G.U.. It is depicted (from the trailers, since the game has not yet been released) that the main character Haseo could pull out weapons such as a huge axe or a chainsaw-claymore from behind his back even though he is shown barehanded (and carried absolutely nothing on his back) before battle. This is not strange since .hack//G.U. is a game within a game.
Properties
Not much of the nature of Hammerspace is known; only that it is possible to fit absolutely anything, no matter how huge, into it. It's clear that the Hammerspace laws of physics are fairly peculiar. This can be observed in, for example, the way that many Final Fantasy heroes are able to carry 99 Potions and 99 Super-Potions with no trouble, but have no room to carry a 100th Potion no matter how many other items they have.
It's not certain whether, to remove an object from Hammerspace, the person must have first personally put it in, or whether they need simply to know that it is, somewhere, existant within Hammerspace, and therefore all they have to do is reach for it. In video games, it is universally the former, since the player has to collect a potion or weapon before they can later pull it from their vast inventory. The large variety of signs produced by the Ranma ½ character Genma Saotome whilst in giant panda form suggests the latter possibility, although it can also be argued this is due to foresight and careful planning or, since he is occasionally seen writing the signs, an uncanny writing speed.
Pockets of Hammerspace, or something similar, exist behind some trees, tent-strings, rocks, and other small objects, allowing cartoon characters to hide behind things much smaller than themselves.
Notes
- Hammerspace is often confused with the Magic Satchel. The main difference between the two seems to be that the Magic Satchel is an actual physical thing containing a link to Hammerspace, while Hammerspace is a distortion in space.
- Hammering has spread to a number of Japan-influenced webcomics, such as El Goonish Shive and Okashina Okashi. The latter spoofs traditional manga by acknowledging Hammerspace and, for example, having characters ask others if they have a particular item in there.
- Hammerspace could also be applied to certain non-animated situations, such as the live-action Highlander films and television series, where the sword-wielding Immortal characters often have their weapons readily available despite their lack of a suitable container or article of clothing in which to carry a concealed sword.
- Despite the postulates of the theory of relativity, Hammerspace is not related to Hammertime, which is not related to Peanut Butter Jelly Time.