001 ✮ Video

[otakusurrogate]

[ This is a remarkably cool phone, much better than the one she's got, and she was pretty excited about it, too. Of course, now she'll have to change all the desktop pictures and ringtones, but customization is its own reward. She can't find a hook for a phone charm, though, which was an important thing that would need reconciling.

So yeah, have a high school girl that definitely knows how phones work, but is gonna press her face too close to the camera anyway as she records for broadcast. ]

Hello, hello!

This is Konata Izumi. Oh wait, there's a little anonymous thing right here, I should have done that first, maybe I could have spooked some people. Oh well.

[ She starts flicking through some of the other settings on the video, cycling through a few different filters as she tries them out. ]

Anyway, I just woke up in the egg! Hazzah! Unfortunately rather than an adorable wet yellow baby bird you have received a slothful otaku. Condolence cards have been mailed in advance, fu fu fu.

The lady in the hologram was very informative of the parts that I listened to. I was rather distracted because her outfit wasn't really thematically appropriate for a hologram, you need to have the proper costume to fit with the technology level, and a lacy white dress doesn't go with sci-fi, it needs more of a Major Kusinagi vibe but instead it's more like Princess Tutu. Not that crossover genres can't be good, but they're really hard to pull off, and you're probably gonna lose some of your initial audience by going against expectations like that, ya know what I'm saying?

Also I feel kind of cheated because after being interdimensionally transported, my welcoming committee is a hologram that's like 'okay find a place to live and work', like shouldn't there be an intimidating handler who is cynical about my presence but will eventually warm up to me enough to explain how their previous partner died and how I remind them of them, along with a big-breasted personal assistant in a form-fitting suit that never talks but is an expert in four kinds of martial arts, and they're here to explain my pivotal role in a millennium-long conflict with a rival insect empire? It just seems very narratively messy to use this kind of mechanism for such a mundane purpose, that would be like giving everyone super powers like in Inou-Battle but then leaving out the entire plot of the fairy war and just continuing to have them go to school like nothing changed.

It would subvert expectations but you'd get a lot of people who continue to expect that plot thread to culminate in everything, and while there's gonna be some hardcore fans that figure there's gonna be a sequel series that addresses it, in the meantime your main audience is gonna get impatient and just pick up the latest copy of Azumanga Daioh instead.

Comments

[youfool]

[Ted listens attentively, trying to keep all these proper nouns straight. He has a lot of questions, but is so confounded that he only remembers one of them.]

"Um, yes, well...

Uh

What's 'Azumanga Daioh'?"

[otakusurrogate]

[ She's not sure if that means that there's no Manga here, or if this is just someone else that doesn't follow comics. The latter wasn't really that surprising at all, since that was most people she ever talked to, but it was disappointing either way. ]

It's a manga series about a bunch of schoolgirls in Japan. Do you even know what Japan is? I'm not really up to giving a crash course on world history and geography or whatever.

[ Perhaps the weight of realization was finally dawning on her. ]

[youfool]

I thought I did. But somewhere past the hair color, the immodesty, and the suffusion, the idea got away from me.

Welcome to Genessia anyway; you'll find many of your countrymen here. Perhaps even one of your goddesses, though I'm sad to say she's the worst of the bunch. I'm sure your narrative difficulties will resolve in time.

[otakusurrogate]

[ What are you talking about her hair is naturally this way ]

Don't worry I get the immodesty thing a lot from my "countrymen."

[ She used airquotes there, btw. ]

But tell me more about this goddess chick.

[ Konata has no clue who that would even be, especially since it sounded like the Japan he knew was some alternate universe version where people didn't have highly saturated hair (if you are a main character). Not only did Konota not really spend any time studying formalized religion, but like, which one would you pick? Did Buddhism have any evil goddesses? ]

In what way does she suck? Is she just super petty and jealous, or is she the trickster sort, or is she like Satan or what?

[ She actually knew christian gods a little better than japanese ones just because so many manga loved to make use of poorly translated foreigner material to be 'edgy.' ]

Text

[nrgsvr]

[ There's a text of addresses for the places his closet otaku boyfriend likes to shop at.]

Text

[otakusurrogate]

[ She plugs the addresses into her maps app and finds out that they're all comic shops. ]

Nice, thanks!

[ She should probably go find out about like, housing and job stuff first, but... well apparently one of those is really close, so just stopping by real quick shouldn't hurt right? ]

Text

[nrgsvr]

[ There's also the arcade, places for buying video games, including dating sims, where bishoujo figures can be purchased, and a book store that sells his brother's manga. Some of those places are hiring.]

(･ω･)b

[ Then he adds the Job Center and Welcome Center.]

[otakusurrogate]

[ Bleh, 'Job Center' we'll just conveniently ignore that one.

Welcome center is probably good info too, but MANGA. Mmm, she has worked in a manga store before so she MIGHT consider applying but she wants to figure out whats up with all the magical cities before she does that. There's sights to see, people to annoy! ]

໒(☆▽☆)७

[video]

[knowledgeandshadow]

Is there a point to your useless blathering, girl?

[ Patchouli is very much unimpressed with all of this foolishness. It sounds completely ridiculous in every way to the witch's ears. ]

[otakusurrogate]

Yes. It was a magical spell to summon you. It worked!

[knowledgeandshadow]

How wonderful for you.

[ Said in the most deadpan manner ever. ]

[ video ]

[hemoeroticism]

Uhh... what's Azumanga Daioh? ☆

[otakusurrogate]

[ She already answered this question once so it's time for fake trolling answers. ]

It's a forbidden tome that banishes the skeleton army, but only if you correctly cite the passphrase!

If you say it wrong, even if it's just coughing out the last word because you didn't remember what it was, it'll suck you up and spit you out in a burning hellscape and you'll have a chainsaw for an arm.

[ruby_roses]

[Little Red Riding Hood is just going to stare for a bit. What even were half these words!?]

U-uh... Weiss always dresses like that...

[otakusurrogate]

Well she should really reconsider her wardrobe, or at least accessorize correctly, like maybe she could try adding like a single cyberpunk arm guantlet wrap, or maybe even just replace it entirely with a robot arm!!

Even if she just changed the fabric would work like go for a gunmetal gray dress with red light-up stripes. She also needs the correct weapon accessories like maybe a gun or a really oversized sword. She really needs to push the dictator look, you can't have a futuristic setting without some kind of corrupt authority figure, like a Big Brother - Big Sister doesn't really work because of the inherent gender dynamics like Big Sister is more like a mentor than Big Brother, thanks to 1984 and its various references.

[ruby_roses]

Well, she has a sword. Dunno what 'cyberpunk' means though. And she's not trying to be a dictator or anything. She's my friend, she's not interested in gaining power to do... weird ditctatory... things.

video;

[stairsbro]

[ a new challenger approaches ]

Okay but if we're going full anime here then you've got it all wrong. It's a double-subversion putting you into a position where you should have some talking animal consort rambling off all its spiritual guide nonsense at you to get you to accept your fate as main character because you've got the bullshit chosen one status on the basis of having natural blue for a hair color but like there is none. You figure that shit out on your own. No fairy guide because we're twisting the genre and throwing it out the god damn window of animes.

The first couple of introductory episodes are all going to be setting and character set up then the show plays out as usual with the inevitable love triangle involving your best friend that turns against you dramatically at one point. There's this big bad that never makes an on-camera appearance and stays this vague shadowy figure with all these fucking clues being dropped. The mandatory beach episode has a eerie quality to it you can't put a damn finger on but that episode sure is there and you think it's a filler. You assume there's some off-camera love interest break up scene with you because they stop popping up after that fun in the wacky kawaii sun. But you still think this is some typical anime shit.

The audience might wanna go check out some Sailor Moons instead but what-- god damn. You love interests body washes up on the sparkling sugoi sands of that beach episode beach. The filler episode is the most important episode of the show and all the ones you thought were important were the fillers. You learn your chosen one predecessors all died brutally at the hands of your ex-best friend slash new rival. You think he killed your love interest who only wore short skirts and had the biggest damn jugs.

You go confront him at the end of the season where the double-genre-subversion combo comes back into play by revealing who you thought was the main bad guy was actually your animal consort spirit guide in the form of a winged asshole the entire time and you're a laughing loon with a killer notebook or some shit. Your best bud slash rival who had a cape is the hero and killed your predecessors and turned against you because they all did some horrible things and you killed the love interest, Boobs McLolita-chan. The plot twist is that you're the big bad and have been teaching the animal consort spirit guide how to be a boss ass villain. Subversion city. Boom.

fckin masterpiece

[otakusurrogate]

Blue hair as symbol of chosen one status, huh? I don't know its not as strong as cool scars or birthmarks, especially the ones that go vertically down the eye but obviously never actually impact vision.

[ Just gonna jump through some fucking hoops right here to try to figure out how to logical-out Konata not realizing hair color is a trope since her show fucking codifies it. ]

And even though blue is a rare color its not really a 'main character' color, usually you need something warmer like red or orange for the hot blooded shounen characters or you need something really pastel for the shoujo ones. If anything my blue hair would be another subversion like if you had a really agile fat character or a really strong tiny one.

There's a lot of things happening in this story to appreciate though, like a loli character with big boobs! We could probably get away with giving her glasses and a lolipop too, since we're already throwing away convention and relying more on satire than fanservice. It's almost like a statement of contempt for the audience to then fridge the character, especially in a pivotal genre shift moment.

I think the audience will just be tired of plot twists by the Death Ledger^TM reveal and any kind of emotional investment will have been long lost so they're just kind of grabbing the handrails as they go through a really silly roller coaster, which can definitely be entertaining but it would never manage quite the cult following of say PMMM (read: Pretty Magus Madsdaka Magnifica).

takes a bow

[stairsbro]

Nah, those scars blow and should stay on their asshole killer God Dogs. Is that actually natural? Jesus. So. The most plain lookin' one has to be the main, removing your main character status.

Wait, I got it. We switch her with your BFF-rival. We have like that trio where everybody grew up together backstory to establish this shit.

I don't know that one but I'm sure as fuck not letting it beat me at satire with my nonexistent animes.

video

[xuwu]

[ He could say something constructive, or ask what half of those things even are because they sure doesn't exist in the Han dynasty's China, but the only thing he'll do is, well, laugh at her. ]

[otakusurrogate]

Thank you, I'll be here till Wednesday.

[xuwu]

Only until wednesday? What a shame. The little human is quite amusing.

[fragrantic]

[ What the hell.... ]

...are you serious?

[ More like "are you for real" but anyway.. ]

[otakusurrogate]

Not if I can help it, hee hee. [ Man what is with you jerks being mean to the new arrival, just because she's annoying and weird. ]

[fragrantic]

[ He's not being a jerk or mean. He just doesn't get what's going on with this girl. ]

...do you intend to make these sort of posts in the future too? Who introduces themselves like that?