Rurouni Kenshin and Villain Designs

One of my blogs will be drawing a lot from Rurouni Kenshin at certain points, intentionally so.  One of the ways is that I'm going to be writing an arc with a group of ten villains, as a nod to the Juppongatana (or "Ten Swords") arc.  Of course, ten characters is a lot, and since I pride myself on creating strong characters, I started thinking about what exactly these villains are going to be like.  I realized that the job ahead of me was going to be harder than I thought.

You see, I want to pay homage to my inspiration, and that means creating villains in the same style that Watashi did.  And Watashi made some very memorable villains.  Almost all of them had not only a unique design, but a unique fighting style as well.

For example, the Juppongatana included Anji, a monk who knows a martial arts technique that can punch through stone; Usui, a blind, revenge driven man whose ears have become sharp enough to hear a person's heartbeat and sense changes in their body and emotions from it; Kamatari, a cheerful crossdresser who wields a giant scythe; and Henya, who has starved himself to the point that he can propel himself into the air with explosions and gain limited flight using his cape.  And of course, there's their leader himself, Shishio, whose skin consists almost entirely of second and third-degree burns after being burned alive.  In addition, he uses a serrated katana, which he sets on fire using the human fat that's accumulated on it.

These are only a brief description of just a handful of villains from one arc of Rurouni Kenshin.  Some are sympathetic (Aoshi, Anji, and Enishi come to mind), some are monsters (Usui, Shishio, and Gein), but they all have a certain flavor to them.  Something about them that's quirky or unusual enough or that just pushes the willing suspension of belief a little bit further (without breaking it) that makes them extremely memorable.

Now, let's compare this to another series.  One that's fresh in my mind since I'm currently rereading it: Shaman King.  Shaman King's villains seem similar to RuroKen's in some ways, at least in the terms I described.  But later on, when the villains gain more actual flavor and become more numerous, they lose a certain aspect to them.  You see, while they do have a lot of visual flavor, they lack the personality to be memorable.  RuroKen's villains always had a strong design and strong fighting method, and usually had strong personality as well (though some didn't get enough screentime to get to that point).  In Shaman King, the villains had a strong design, and not much else.  And unfortunately, a lot of these designs boiled down to stereotypes.  Sure, they were cool to look at, but they started to lose a lot of appeal when you found out that they weren't much past mariachi, cute witch girl, Gothic Lolita girl, or guy-who's-made-out-of-blocks-that-totally-aren't-legos.  They're good designs, but they lack the substance an the execution to make them good characters and, consequently, good villains.

So what's my challenge in this?  Well, I need to come up with ten characters who have a memorable design, and to make sure that I execute that design in a way that is memorable.  They all need to be unique, though.  Easily identifiable from each other.  Strong motivations.  And I need to do all of that without resorting to cliches or stereotypes.

This should be fun.

Project Updates

Just an update on what I've been working on lately:

Writing

Wandering from Death: My one openly ongoing Slenderblog.  I'm largely in the development phase for my plot at the moment, but I've got ideas.

Warrior, Wizard: a short story about, well, a warrior and a wizard (or, more accurately, "mage").  The two become close friends but are both forced to deal with their feelings of inadequacy as their growths differ.

Operation Stirling: A collaborative Slenderverse project that is currently remaining secret.  Let's just say that I'm finally starting to get to the meat of my part of the project, though.

I've also reacquired a ladybug bucket hat, so my "DaLadybugMan" persona can finally get back on camera and do some reviews I've wanted to.  I'm leaning towards House of Leaves for the first one.

In addition, I'm also occasionally working on A Terrible Fate, my Zelda fanfic, and a commentary for Don't Shoot The Messenger, though those are less frequent.

Reading

I'm currently reading Chronicles of the Black Company, a compilation of the first three Black Company books.  I'm also picking back up on reading the Trigun manga and have managed to find the first two copies of Video Girl Ai (by the same guy who did I"s, one of my favorite manga), though acquiring the rest of both series might be difficult as the former is fairly expensive and the latter is pretty hard to find.

Watching

I've finally decided on an order to watch the shows I'm catching up on in.  Top priority is ABC's Once Upon a Time, an entertaining (if not fairly campy) show about a town in Maine where storybook characters are living with their "Happily Ever Afters" taken away and no memories of their former life.  Kind of like LOST if LOST had magic OH WAIT

The next two on my list are Trigun, which is about a gunslinging pacifist on a desert planet, and Fullmetal Alchemist, which is about...a kid who's an alchemist, I guess.  A hotheaded alchemist working at his craft under the government.  There's obviously more to both shows, but that's the best I can put their concepts.

Playing

I finished Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and was excited to transfer my info and launch into the sequel, Radiant Dawn.  Then I found out that my disc was one of the ones that didn't recognize Easy Mode saves (since the PoR "Easy Mode" came about when the translation was made easier; it didn't exist in Japan).  I COULD play Radiant Dawn anyway, but I want those few bonuses I get from transfering a PoR file over, dammit!  So basically, I'm going to have to pay through all of PoR again.

I've also gotten my hands on No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.  I've beaten the first three (of 10) bosses in the former, and so far I'm not particularly impressed.  I'll stick with it, though.  See if it improves.

Anime First Impressions: Upotte!!

This is how my friend recommended this series to me: "The girls are guns.  'Nuff said."

Of course, he had only seen the first episode.  I decided to check it out because, hey, the girls are guns, 'nuff said.  So I watched the first episode and was met by a show with a lot of promise.  A catchy OP, some fanservice and amusing innuendo regarding guns, an interesting premise....

And then, a few episodes later, I had sort of given up.

You see, Upotte!! contains girls who are anthromorphic guns.  Now, while some series would take this concept and make it ridiculous and fun, Upotte!! quickly makes it clear that it's about guns.  It frequently goes into explicit detail about the guns.  Now, maybe this is enjoyable to some people.  Maybe some people actually care.  But me?  I'm not a gun guy.  I couldn't care less about different models.  I think that an entry under Widget Series puts it best: "anime viewers who like moe [a sort of loosely defined "cute" visual style] will be put off by the guns, and gun fans will most likely be put off by the moe. Only those who can appreciate--or tolerate--both genres will be able to watch this show."  In addition, a lot of the humor is pun-based, and there are obviously some puns that don't translate very well.  There's fanservice, but it's almost not worth the time spent slogging through gun facts.

Really, I've come to the realization that it's basically Hetalia with guns instead of countries and yuri instead of yaoi.  If that's what you like, good for you.  Go watch your show about cute gun girls.  But anyone else will probably find it pretty boring once the novelty of the first episode or two wears off.

Anime First Impressions: Mysterious Girlfriend X

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything (not like my 2 followers have noticed), so I figured that I'd give my first impressions of a show I've been watching lately: Mysterious Girlfriend X.

When I started Mysterious Girlfriend X, I knew two things about it: that it was going to involve a mysterious girlfriend and that the title contained an X.  As a result, when I first started watching it, I thought it was the weirdest shit I had ever seen, even by anime standards. 

Basically, the story seems normal enough at first.  There's a guy (Tsubaki) who, as the protagonist, will naturally become the significant other of Urabe, the Mysterious Girl who is their class's newest student.  Of course, hints of the whole weirdness start fairly soon, as Urabe does several fairly unusual things.  First, she's extremely terse when addressing people, and second, she suddenly bursts out into hysterical laughter for seemingly no reason in the middle of class.  But that's fairly standard fare for anime.  The really weird part starts shortly after, when Tsubaki encounters Urabe asleep in the classroom after school, wakes her up, and then, after she leaves, um...tastes her drool.

It is at this point that my thoughts of the show went to "this is fairly mysterious" to "this is fucking weird."

So shortly afterwards, Tsubaki gets terribly sick (maybe because, oh, I don't know, he licked some random chick's drool), and Urabe comes to visit him at his house.  She tells him to open his mouth.  Then covers her finger with drool and shoves it into his mouth.  He instantly feels better, and she tells him that it was because he was going into withdrawal.  Why was he going into mouth-juice withdrawal, exactly?  Why,  because he was lovesick, of course!  From there, Tsubaki eventually asks her to be his girlfriend, and she says that the day she burst out laughing in class was because, while she glanced over at him in class, she heard a voice say that he would be her first sexual partner.

Um...what?

The theme didn't actually play until the second episode either, and once it did, there were three thematic images throughout: drool, scissors, and lemons.

Seriously, wtf?

Really, the thing that makes the show seem so weird at first is because, despite the elements that seem almost supernatural (the drool acting as a medium with which they can sense each other's emotions, the mysterious voice that comes out of nowhere) and strange premise, it is determined to play itself seriously and realistically.  Is it a science fiction or fantasy anime?  Nope.  It just has magic spit, and even then, that's treated as if it's a completely natural thing.  The tone of the show is also somewhat surreal and gives the feeling that something is slightly off.  Nope.  That's not it.  Although it's still enough to make me suspect that there's something otherworldly about Urabe that the show is going to reveal yet.

Once you get past that initial weirdness, though--once you've been watching it for a few episodes and can say "yeah, I'll buy that"--then the show becomes a lot less weird.  Mysterious Girlfriend X is a very appropriate title (minus the X; I'm not sure how exactly that plays in) just because Urabe is really the only mysterious thing about the show.  She doesn't seem to know how to conform to normal social standards, has a strange obsession with scissors (going as far as to keep a pair tucked in her panties at all times), and doesn't seem to know how to show affection, but it's clear that she does care for Tsubaki, and in Tsubaki's mind, it doesn't matter that she's strange.

At the heart of the show, however, lies something that I'm such a sucker for: awkward first romances.  Sure, the show's framing device is a mysterious girl who has a bond with a boy through drool.  But the show isn't really about that.  What the show is really about is the struggles both Tsubaki and Urabe have trying to figure out how exactly to have a relationship.  Not even big things like sexual encounters or even first kisses--not yet, at least, though the show seems to imply that both will eventually happen.  No, the show focuses on little things, like how to hold a conversation with your significant other, how to show your affection, dealing with feelings of possessiveness, and even something as small as whether or not to call your significant other by their first name (bit of a cultural gap here: in Japan, people know each other largely on a last-name basis).  It's about budding relationships and the difficulties.

So is the show any good?  Yeah, I think it is.  I picked it entirely randomly and I'm still watching it.  It's maybe just because it's the type of show that I like, but the show sets itself apart from others of the genre.  It's, if nothing else, an intriguing show, and one that's definitely worth looking into.

Thoughts: Circus Afro; or Madagascar 3's Genius Marketing

Yeah, you've seen this.  You've seen this fucking commercial, or at least this fucking clip.  And if you're anything like me, you fucking hate it so fucking much.

But here's the thing: people hated it so much that they began to love it.  It became a weaponized joke.  You'd start singing it or you'd post the picture of it, and everyone would rage at you because you got that fucking song stuck in their head and couldn't get it out.  It became a new Rickroll, and arguably a better Rickroll.

The Circus Afro dance is annoying, it is narmy, and--worst of all--it is catchy.  That is exactly what gives it so much potential for a meme.  And a meme it became!  A meme that, as part of a frequently aired commercial, became prevalent that even the people who don't know anything about memes can and will recognize it.

Madagascar 3 looks stupid.  It looks so incredibly stupid.  It's a type of movie that most people will look at and say "does there really need to be another Madagascar movie?"  It looks objectively bad.  And yet, the commercial manages to weaponize that badness.  The entire Circus Afro sequence, like I said, had potential to become a meme.  And that's exactly what the team marketing Madagascar 3 intended to happen.  They knew they had a pile of shit on their hands, and they knew that they could capitalize on it somehow.

You see, we live in an age where ironic enjoyment of things goes beyond a joke.  People will watch something bad for the sake of watching something bad.  That's what shock films like The Human Centipede and films full of bile like The Room are for.  If The Room wasn't so famous for how bad it was, would you even consider seeing it?  No.  But right now, there are people who are looking at this clip and thinking "Wow.  Madagascar 3 looks terrible.  I want to watch it so that I can laugh about just how terrible it is with people."

Yes, folks.  The marketing team at Madagascar 3 is selling their movie on the entire premise that it is bad.  The Circus Afro dance is an incredibly stupid trainwreck that makes you think "how could Chris Rock have fallen to this level?" and then makes you curious enough to entertain the possibility of actually going to see how far Chris Rock has fallen.  The catchiness ensures that you remember it and don't just simply wave the commercial off.

Madagascar 3 set out to sell a bad movie on the premise that it is bad by creating a meme.  And some of us will fall for it.  Some of us will actually go and watch Madagascar 3 for the Circus Afro, just like some of us watched Death Note for the potato chip scene or played Portal because of the cake and Companion Cube.  That, my friends, is genius marketing.  I applaud whoever made Madagascar 3's trailer.  You, sir(s) and/or madam(s), are brilliant.  I applaud you, but I will not fall for your wily ploy.

Project: A Terrible Fate

I know what you're thinking, considering that I write about the Slender Man and I'm a fan of that BEN Drowned creepypasta.  But no, this isn't another horror work.  It IS another Zelda work.

A Terrible Fate is a blog where I'm going to be posting a series of academic articles about Majora's Mask.  Think of it as a dissertation on Majora's Mask that isn't really a dissertation.  A pseudodissertation.  That's what we'll call it.

It's something that I'm really excited for, which is ironic since it's currently something that's driving me crazy.  I've been working on it for about a week, and I've finished the introduction and the plot overview.  I'm about halfway through the glossary, which will need to define characters, races, locations, enemies, Zelda terminology, and gaming terminology.  Basically, I'm hitting the tedious parts of writing it, which is unfortunate.  Necessary, but unfortunate.  At least I've finished the overview now, and while I wish it were better, I do like how I framed it.

Anyway, the next article I'm working on for it is going to go into the game mechanics, which is actually not boring since the mechanics really emphasize the theme.  After that, I'm not sure.  I'll probably cover either Link or the Bombers.

Project: Urban Legacies preview

I've been writing seriously for about seven years now, and in that time, I've grown to develop some rather nasty opinions of fanfiction.  Despite the fact that I know it can put new perspectives on things, that it can explore avenues not canonically taken, and that it's a great way to learn how to write (my first writings were fanfiction, specifically of Star Wars in 6-7th grade, Bionicle in 5th grade, and even some very short stories about characters from the Mandie series when I was just starting school), I have a huge amount of disdain for it.  In my mind, it's not "real" writing.  It's poorly-written self-indulgent fantasies about shipping and how things "should have gone" and is just overall lazy writing that is, by nature, worse than original writing.

I'm telling you this to let you know just how hard it is for me to swallow that pride and say "I'm writing a fanfiction and I'm very serious about it."  Urban Legacies (working title) is a three-part Legend of Zelda modernfic--i.e., a fic that takes place in a modern time.  I've actually been working on it on-and-off for two years (because it's mainly a side-project) but I've done a lot of work with developing my world and outlining my plot.  I do have a ten-chapter draft of the first part, but I'm doing a near-complete rewrite because it was basically the "diet" version of the story I wanted to tell.  This draft will both improve my interpretations of certain elements of the series and expand on the stories that were important but never had a chance to be properly portrayed.

Anyway, just as a preview before I really get into it again and start putting it up in readable places, here's the first segment from the prologue.

The din in the empty lot was growing, but not even the few who braved the night tried to investigate.  Anyone who dared to be out at that hour recognized the noise and, more importantly, knew to stay away.  You never, under any circumstance, risked getting caught in the middle of a brawl between two blin gangs.

This particular fight, faintly illuminated by the bright Malo Mart sign, was a territory dispute being settled by a bokoblin gang leader and a moblin gang leader.  The two were evenly matched, and a jeering circle of both their underlings surrounded them as the struggle went back and forth.  The moblin had dominance, his hands around the throat of the pinned bokoblin, but the latter was still fighting, his punches wearing away at his opponent.  Unable to shield his face or withstand the blows, the moblin released the bokoblin, and the two split apart.

The two were both visibly limping as they circled, locked into their deathmatch by the other members of the two gangs.  The bokoblin grinned as he rubbed his neck.  “I ain’t goin’ down that easy, pal.”

The moblin shot him a death glare, the hair lining most of his body matted with both of their blood.  “You’re on moblin territory, kid.  You’re not leaving here alive.” 

The sole outside observer, watching from the roof of Malo Mart decided that it was time to break the stalemate.  He stepped out of the shadows, his face hidden by a mask—its piglike features providing a mocking caricature of the blins—and drew his gun, measuredly and methodically leveling it at the two figures in the center of the circle.

A shot rang through the night, silencing the throng’s roar.  A bullet ricocheted off the cement, chipping out a mark directly between the two.

“Awww, goddesses,” the failed assassin groaned as the crowd below turned as one to his hiding place.  He dove backwards, flattening himself against the roof as shots rang out from below, indiscriminately rechristening the store “AL ART.”  The man swore, discarding the gun, and listened as the clips emptied and the blins began turning on each other.  Each side blamed the other for the failed interference, and while neither side had particularly high qualms about maintaining their own honor, they were quick to insult the other faction’s lack thereof.

The man, already long forgotten, took the opportunity to climb down.  Somehow, by some fortunate chance, things had turned out better than expected.  Both sides were enraged now.  It would be a complete bloodbath.

The masked man’s feet hit the ground, and he casually strolled around the building.  Yes, it was a chaotic, frantic mess.  And he, he thought with satisfaction as he drew the sword slung across his back, would help clean it up.