They Were Eleven

Did You Know?

• The manga's premise was a precursor to later social deduction games such as Raging Loop (2015), Among Us (2018) and Gnosia (2019).
• The anime film's English dub voice cast includes Wendee Lee as Frol and David Hayter as Doricas Soldam IV.

Story

Ten young space cadets are placed on a decommissioned spaceship for a final test; passing it will fulfill their lifelong dreams. Upon arrival, they discover an eleventh crew member, and no one can recall the original lineup well enough to identify the newcomer. As days pass, suspicion grows among the cadets, and they learn the ship is in a decaying orbit around a star, causing rising temperatures. A sickness spreads among the crew as they work to stabilize their orbit and uncover the spy.

Media

They Were Eleven was serialized in the September, October, and November 1975 issues of Shogakukan's Bessatsu Shōjo Comic magazine. Shogakukan collected the chapters with three unrelated short stories by Hagio into a single bunkoban volume on July 20, 1976, and reissued it in 1978, 1986, 1994, 2007, and 2019. Viz Media licensed the series for English release in North America, publishing four floppy volumes in 1995 and the anthology Four Shōjo Stories in 1996.

Denpa re-licensed the series in 2021 and released it in 2025. The series is also licensed by Ediciones Tomodomo in Spain and Japonica Polonica Fantastica in Poland. A sequel manga series was serialized in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic from December 1976 to February 1977, collected into a bunkoban on August 20, 1977, and reissued in 1978 and in collected editions of They Were Eleven in 1986, 1994, 2007, and 2019. Denpa licensed the sequel for English release in 2021, scheduled for the second quarter of 2025.

A 45-minute live-action television film aired on NHK's Shōnen Drama Series on January 2, 1977, with a screenplay by Mamoru Sasaki, starring Taizō Sayama as Tada and Haruka Yamashiro as Frol. A 91-minute anime film was released in Japan on November 1, 1986, licensed by Central Park Media in North America on VHS with English subtitles in the early 1990s, then with an English dub in 1996, and on DVD in 2004. Central Park Media discontinued the release in 2004, and MYC & Associates liquidated the license in 2009.

Voice cast includes Akira Kamiya as Tada, Michiko Kawai as Frol, Hideyuki Tanaka as King Mayan Baceska, Toshio Furukawa as Doricas Soldam IV, Tesshō Genda as Ganigus Gagtos, and Hirotaka Suzuoki as Amazon Carnias.