Raiyuu

Name: Jack Fox Age: 24 Description: Jack is a private eye of the old school, and dresses like his [I]film noir[/I] heroes. That means a long cream trenchcoat over a faded and worn dark grey suit jacket and trousers, light grey shirt, and cream fedora shadowing his face. He has neat orange fur and lets his tail show out the back of his coat. Biography: When he was young, Jack's parents were framed for a high-level security leak at HedgeTech, Inc. and fired, leaving the family penniless. His father's ingenuity at software design helped them get back on their feet, but Jack has since harboured deep resentment for big companies and their unscrupulous principles, and keenly felt every injustice he witnessed in the world around him. In school, for instance, Jack was always the one that stood up for the kid getting beaten up for their lunch money. That overactive sense of justice has got him into trouble before, but it's what keeps food on the table these days. Jack dropped out of University where he was reading Forensic Science to pursue his dream of being a big-city PI. He's crossed paths with Espio a couple of times during the chameleon's short stint as an investigator, and disliked the chameleon's methods even more than he disliked Espio himself. Jack specialises in sniffing out corruption at the highest levels of big business, but is forever disappointed when the giant multinationals manage to evade responsibility through the tiniest legal loophole. He will never refuse a chance to try and bring HedgeTech, Inc. low. Personality: He may have an overblown sense of justice and a burning need to help those who have been wronged, but Jack finds it difficult to connect to people on a personal level. For this reason the 'lone wolf' life of the private investigator suits him to a Tee: he is always meeting new people, but they disappear from his life as soon as the case is closed. Special ability: Jack has better than average observational skills developed from a lifetime of searching for tiny clues, and a knack for asking the right questions in order to get at the truth. He has a decent working knowledge of forensics from his time studying at University. He is also a crack shot with a Cougar Magnum. He's never happy about packing heat, but when poking his nose into other people's business in Station Square, it's a very necessary evil.

I've started posting character ideas on myOtaku. My username there is still Blackjack so just search for that. Only Kyo's up there at the moment as I kind of decided to get the story plotted out before doing loads of character work, but as I develop each character I'll post the stuff I do. I've edited the original post to include the new character names suggested by mangakiwi and sakura18. Thanks for the assist, guys!

I've never seen Inuyasha although I've noticed people here go on about it a lot, so maybe I'll have to check it out. I can't draw to save my life, so yeah, I'm trying to get people interested in drawing this for me. No plans for perverts thus far but I'll consider it ... :smirk: I'm a bit stumped for a name tbh. I thought of some things along the lines of 'TwinSoul' or 'Double Soul', or the title could be something to do with 'balance' as it's the notion of balance being knocked out of kilter that it's all based on, but I've yet to hit on the exact right combination of words. sakura18, hi! I'll pm you about those names. Cheers for the offer :)

I mostly see sci-fi stuff like Nadesico and Bebop so the souls/dæmons stuff actually feels like quite a departure for me, but I do know what you mean about souls and dæmons being a little overdone. That's why I'm trying hard to put a slightly different slant on it, having it all set in modern day and with the creatures of the night not being exactly the same as in everything else (for instance, vampires don't have weaknesses against crosses etc as there is no reason for them to under the physics of the world). Any other ideas to help escape the stereotypes of the dæmon/soul genre are welcome. I like Asuka as a name, cheers for that one mangakiwi! Is any of your art posted anywhere so I can take a look? Colouring isn't really a problem, I mean it'll be important in the end as I want to use colour to differentiate between Corporeal and Æthereal, and also between true souls and dæmons, but I'm sure you're not as bad as you think you are, and there's got to be someone out there who can colour well right? Alternatively anyone got any other ideas of how to portray those things? :Edit: I've just read the posting in manga workshop rules, sorry moderators: it says that detailed story descriptions should be in the Literature forum, does that mean this thread needs to move there? Sorry for the trouble if it does :sweat:

Right, my manga idea. A lot of the events and things hinge on a few basic principles of how the world works, so I'll explain those first. (This is gonna be a long post. You might wanna get a drink or something before sitting down to read it :smirk: ) The Universe consists of two parallel Realms, the Corporeal and Æthereal. Your body exists in the Corporeal Realm, and your soul or spirit exists in the Æthereal Realm. As you get old and infirm, the bond between your soul and body weakens, until one day it breaks, and you die. We all know what happens to the body. The soul ends up drifting aimlessly in the Æther. If you're lucky, it'll chance across a conception, enter the new life and you'll be reincarnated. You cannot be reincarnated as an animal because they don't have souls. The longer the soul drifts unconnected in the Æther, the weaker it gets and the harder it becomes for it to reconnect with a living body. Eventually a line is crossed at which it can no longer inhabit a living body. From this point on it is no longer a soul or spirit, it is a dæmon, and can only possess dead flesh and inanimate objects. Now the pattern reverses and the longer the dæmon drifts in the Æther, the more powerful it becomes. So if it possesses a body soon after it 'falls', the creature created will probably be weak. The dæmon will be unable to exert enough will to hold the flesh together and so it will be rotting and the slightest damage will shock it back into the Æther. Hey presto, a zombie. A bit longer after its fall, and the dæmon can hold its body together, even repair it to look like living flesh, and has enough control to walk like a human. But it isn't so long since it lived that it can't remember what being alive was like. It remembers warmth and craves it; it obtains this by drinking the warm blood of the living. Hence, vampires. And so on. I have explanations for were-beasts and more powerful creatures that I won't go into now (because of space and so as not to give it away). The other basic principle is that the world's harmony is maintained by a balance of eight elements. That's right, eight. There are the traditional four: earth, air, water and fire, which are the 'good' elements. But these can be soured by the 'bad' ones: earth by salt (which makes it impossible for things to grow), air by smoke, water by blood or ichor and fire by a mysterious herb I haven't named yet, which turns the flame green and makes it Æthereal, so it burns the soul instead of the body. Phew, there's the basic physics of the story's Universe out of the way. Here's the story. (Anyone who speaks any Japanese, could you please let me know if any of my characters' names mean anything daft or if they've been used before in manga or anime?) A demon worshipper (or demon worshipping cult, I haven't quite decided) perform a ritual that knocks the harmony of all the elements out of kilter. This unleashes a huge red wave through the Æthereal Realm. It hurtles across the planet. When the wave hits you, your spirit is carried away with it, but your body stays where it is in the Corporeal or 'real' world. Basically, almost the entire population of the world is wiped out in an instant, and to cap it all we've got billions of unattached souls roaming the Æther but no [I]new[/I] lives for them to inhabit. In short, it won't be long before the world is mostly inhabited by dæmon-infested undead nasties. Some people didn't die. Those with exceptional strength of will were able by a mammoth effort to hold their body and soul together long enough for the wave to pass. These are a tiny minority, scattered and alone across the planet. Our hero, Kyo (finally! a character!) survived because at a young age he nearly drowned in a swimming pool, so having been separated once from his body, his soul's connection to him is abnormally strong. His twin sister Asuka was not so lucky: however, as the wave is passing and he's holding onto his body for dear life he sees her soul zooming past him and on instinct, grabs her Æthereal hand. Their souls are fused, both inhabiting Kyo's body. Having their souls briefly separated from their bodies has not failed to affect the few survivors. First, they are all more aware of the Æthereal Realm and can 'see' people's souls (a useful skill when not everybody you meet has a 'true' soul). Some have other new skills; one of the characters will be a 'Sensitive', who can sense other true souls from extremely long distances away, for instance. Kyo himself has increased spatial awareness and agility. Okay, longer-term storylines: Kyo and Asuka are both being driven mad by inhabiting the same body, so Asuka ends up entering Kyo's sword. This gives the sword a presence in both Realms, allowing it to kill the undead far more efficiently. Asuka sometimes possesses other objects to help Kyo; eventually she'll settle on a bird or other familiar as her main body, but still retain the ability to flit into the sword and other things. The first challenge for them is: they find a cry for help on an Internet message board from another survivor not all that far away from Tokyo (where they are, forgot to mention). They make their way there by train, battling stuff along the way. They find an originally English girl named Cassiopeia. She knows where the ritual took place (all the survivors saw it in a dream, but she actually recognised the place from her early childhood) so a massive Odyssey to England ensues in the hope that it can be reversed there as well. Another group of survivors, containing a Sensitive and a helicopter pilot, find them and recue them while they're beseiged by vampires in a metro station. The pilot's name is Aki Kasahara; Aki is asthmatic, and because of all the smoke polluting the air from the ritual, has to wear a gas mask. Also here is Nibori Takahashi, an occult-obsessed biologist who is suspiciously (but helpfully) knowledgeable about all the different types of undead beastie they encounter. By the very end there'll be a showdown with the guy who orchestrated the whole cataclysm in the first place, with a big twist I won't reveal. So, any feedback/interested artists, post on this thread. Hope to hear from you all soon.

If they start looking apprehensive about me wasting my money on DVDs full of what they see as cartoons, I tell my parents these things: 1) Anime is made for an older audience than Western cartoons. They are not cartoons at all, they are [I]animated series[/I]. 2) It's my money :tasty: 3) They're foreign, therefore I'm experiencing [I]culture[/I]. Usually they'll see reason then.

I wanted to strangle Tatsuo Sato for the end of [I]Nadesico: The Prince of Darkness[/I]. Not because I thought it was a [I]bad[/I] ending, but because of the way Akito had changed from the series as a result of what happened to him in the intervening years (I won't go into the details as it'll spoil the movie for the uninitiated). Of all the characters in all the anime I've seen (which admittedly is not that many) I identify with Akito more than any other. To see him changed the way he was, with no conceivable way he could return to his old self, was a real wrench. I suppose the strength of feeling I experienced towards the writers and director are testament to the power of their writing, but that doesn't mean I'm going to forgive them for messing with my buddy Akito.

I watched [I]Cowboy Bebop[/I] all the way through in one sitting with my friends and loved every minute. I love the way it switches from gritty realism (or as close a sci-fi gets) while they're just hunting general bounty hits, to completely psycho weird surrealism like Mad Pierrot and Spike's mutated lobster in the fridge. However, I did find Vicious a bit underwhelming as a villain. I mean, he's good and he fits in with the series and everything, but ... I guess I just can't help comparing him to [I]Trigun[/I]'s Legato Bluesummers because they look so similar, and out of the two, Legato is the better, more sinister, more manipulative villain. :devil:

Didn't this thread start out as being which anime characters you WOULDN'T date? Oh well. Megumi from Nadesico is the one for me, really. She's intelligent but vulnerable, and gets on well with everyone. In fact, she seems to be the only character in the show who isn't, one one level or another, a bit of a social retard. On the subject of anime girls, I was searching Google for images of the Nadesico crew to use as result images for my hopefully forthcoming quiz on theOtaku (shameless plug, shameless plug!) and came across some things that seemed very wrong, namely: :flaming: Who are the [I]hentai[/I] that draw Ruri-chan naked? :flaming: She is [I]twelve years old[/I] in the series and fourteen in [I]Prince of Darkness[/I]. I'm sorry, I know they're only drawings and it isn't hurting anyone, but does anyone else think it's a little too close to child pornography for comfort? (Sorry if that was a little off-topic but I felt it needed saying.)

First off, I worship Gai Daigoji. He manages to be an obsessed otaku without being uncool, and is a true, died-in-the-wool hero to boot. Gai Daigoji? Gai Dai[I]god[/I]ji more like. Second, Spike. He's a combat master [I]because[/I] he's so relaxed and cool. I want to be him.

I only started watching anime very recently: about February this year. I've been making up for lost time by having days at my and my mates' places where we watch an entire series in one sitting. I've now seen [I]Trigun [/I] and [I]Cowboy Bebop [/I] from start to finish, I've collected all of [I]Martian Successor Nadesico[/I] on DVD, and I've seen about the first 12 or 13 episodes of [I]Excel Saga[/I]. I'd recommend anime marathons to anyone. A message to any new anime fans like me: [I]Martian Successor Nadesico[/I] is a great series to start with. It's accessible and fun, but just as rewarding as any other series. [I]Don't[/I] start with Excel Saga. In fact, don't watch it at all unless you've read the manga, as it makes, if possible, evenless sense then. I thought my friends and I were insane, but that series nearly melted my brain.

It's a no-brainer. [I]Cowboy Bebop[/I] has the best music of any anime series. How I know? It's only only anime series I've ever watched and thought, "I have to see if the soundtrack is available to buy". 'Tank!' is not only the best anime theme tune ever, it's one of my favourite tunes, full stop. While on the subject of music, does anyone else think 'Fly Me to the Moon' seems a little out of place as the closing theme for [I]Neon Genesis Evangelion[/I]? It doesn't seem to fit with the general gloomy mood of the series, and lyrically it doesn't seem relevant. But that might just be me.