Fake Anime Fan

[soc_puppet]

Backstory: Our local anime con (I say "our" because I help staff it) is going online only this year, free to anyone interested in "attending", etc. It's this weekend. I thought it might be fun to make a Twine game for folks to play as a little perk, to simulate the convention. Would anyone be interested in helping me come up with a bunch of fake anime titles and summaries? I'd love to have twelve (or even more!), though I can probably make do with as few as eight. If you contribute and I manage to put the game together, I'll be sure to include your name in the credits!

Here's some genre ideas to get us started:

School drama

School comedy

RomCom

Magical girl

Shounen fighting anime

High fantasy story (portal fantasy accepted)

Space opera story

Fanservice story (I am least excited about this one)

Sci-fi story

Supernatural story

Historical story

M/M story (can also be any genre above)

F/F story (can also be any genre above)

The latest Miyazaki film


Combining any of the above is also fine.


Edit: The demo version of the game is live! Thank you, everyone, for all of the ideas you've contributed! I'm still hoping to get enough for a second video room, though, so ideas are still very welcome. Hearts! ♥

Comments

[gullwhacker]

All The Worlds Are Other To Me: Why Can't I Just Be The Heroine?
Nicknamed WorldsOther by the fandom, this is a high fantasy series inspired by a series of light novels. The heroine of the story is a sorceress who's lived under the threat of the Demon King's hordes for years, but the local temples promise that one day the Chosen One will be summoned from another world to set things right. Well, the day is here, and there seem to be at least four 'chosen ones' - who all claim to be from other worlds, argue about the details, and seem to be more interested in dating than actually doing what they're supposed to and stopping the Demon King. Fine, if their absurd powers are going to waste, maybe she can just save her country herself...

[soc_puppet]

Love this one; it's got a lot of potential for me. I can pull a panel and a cosplay photoshoot out of this minimum.

...shit I just remembered the Masquerade. Crap. I have to come up with something for that now.

[soc_puppet]

From Discord:

School comedy: ohayo gozaimasu, it’s early

Kid who is too tired for morning classes but is there anyways
I just love how I had that phrase explained to me as not “good morning” but as “it’s too early for this” [Suggested by CallMeDale]


Wanbon-Chan Goes To School, a slice of life kids anime about a puppy school

Anthro and just familiarizing the kiddos with the concept of school [Suggested by ghostlyhamburger]


My Life as a Chronically-Overworked Teen Idol-Turned-Superhero: ML except told from Adrien's POV and he just really wants a nap [Suggested by norakwami]

Socchan's notes: Gotta have a girl protag if it's an Idol, might be the Magical Girl option. Maybe also the F/F one?

[soc_puppet]

More from Discord:

The Life and Times of a Background Character
A teenager/young adult who has a million part-time jobs is constantly witness to major scenes from everyone else's stories. From the meet-cutes at the coffee shop to the superpower granting mix-ups at the lab and even that one time the villian had an epiphany and a change of heart. [CheshireMadd]


[CallMeDale] Earth is Space Australia-'verse?


[ghostlyhamburger] Ice Cream Matchmaker


[CallMeDale and Socchan] Tech Wizard - person who has an absurdly good reputation for repairing spells and stuff, turns out they've been using mundane methods the entire time and no one will believe them.

[soc_puppet]

Romcom: Ghost Girlfriend: A high school boy moves into a house in a new neighborhood; turns out it's haunted by the ghost of a teenage girl! She has an absolutely enormous crush on him, but he is absolutely oblivious. Twist: Her ghost status is under Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast rules: If someone falls in love with her and truly loves her to the point where they confess their feelings and mean it, she'll get to restart her life as a human. Ghost girl is constantly fighting to keep her hopes from getting too far up, and also has resolved not to confess to Main Character in case it would pressure him into anything. Meanwhile, absolutely everyone around is trying hardcore to matchmake them.

[soc_puppet]

[ghostlyhamburger] Portal Fantasy, but main character has been sucked into the fantasy world from a high tech sci-fi world, possibly bringing a mecha of some sort.

[soc_puppet]

[AlexSeanchai] I'm not sure I can titles atm but a summary might be something like friends-to-lovers where one is cursed as previous (exact nature of cursedness whatever would make good fanart I guess) and tells her best friend all about it; the best friend is determined to fall in love with her herself, because the curse doesn't (as far as they know) care if the cursed one loves the curse-breaker back. and there are worse things than everyone thinking you're queer, and one of those is your best friend never able to find her real true love, right?
(guess where this is going)
Possible title via Socchan: Sunset Eyes


[Socchan] Moth and Friends: Adventures of a moth and her buggy friends as they hang out around a lamppost; adapted from a 4koma strip.


[CallMeDale and Socchan] Crave: Story of a vampire who was adopted by humans and has no idea she's not also human. A series of super weird coincidences has kept the discovery from happening until she's in junior high or high school, when she begins craving blood. She becomes aware of other supernatural creatures when she discovers her own nature.
All of her friends team up to make sure she gets however much blood she needs on a regular basis (which, at least while she's still young, isn't too much yet).
Has a lot of harem shippers

[gullwhacker]

Courtesy of eastofthemoon

Help! I'm In Love With The Villainess!

Girl ends up being reborn as the heroine of an otome game. The problem is that she never had much interest in the game's canon love interests, but really liked drawing fanart of one of the 'rival' characters...and she's even more stunning in person.

[gullwhacker]

Courtesy of another (non-DW) friend, who just had this lying in his back pocket apparently...

[7:31 PM] Arcomage: Please Don't Tell My Mom I Flunked My Magical Girl Academy Entrance Exams
[7:31 PM] Arcomage: It's the year 21XX. Society has shifted, magic has been discovered, and it's now gotten to the point where an actual official academy has been opened to help teenage magical girls get the most out of their talents before they have to resort to dealing with any red-eyed bunnycats. However, overbearing parents remain a constant regardless of the date. Our protagonist, one Arika Izumi, does have significant magic as well as the mathematical talent to apply it to spell formulae, but she'd much rather put that to work as a programmer or an accountant. Fighting manifestations of the darkness in human hearts simply does not appeal to her, though she does kind of like the outfits. So when she gets back her entrance test results from Mahou Gakuen and it turns out that her magic is very much style over substance and the examiners don't think she could keep up, it's actually kind of a relief, especially since the acceptance letter from the local high school came in the same day and it has a pretty good reputation.

Unfortunately, she can't quite bring herself to tell her mother this. She'd been setting up the 'Congratulations on becoming a magical girl' party for a week, and even went so far as to brag about it to her neighbours. What's a fifteen-year-old to do? Lie, of course. The schools are not too far from each other, so she can quite reliably fake setting off for one when going to the other. Her new friends at the Drama Club are even willing to go so far as to set up 'random battles' in her neighbourhood where they get to dress up like evil mooks and magical girls and ham it up something fierce, aided by Arika's extremely flashy magic.

Things spiral out of control when Arika's magical girl persona starts to get a reputation for being an actual Magical Girl of the pre-Academy type, doing the best she can without government oversight, and it prompts all sorts of philosophical questions amongst the students and staff of both schools.

[alexseanchai]

oooooh

[soc_puppet]

I can definitely do something with this and East's suggestion 👍

[soc_puppet]

[Socchan] Nobunaga and the Warring States: A Hetalia-esque historical cartoon featuring Oda Nobunaga and other historical figures, and the personified States. Possibly Nobunaga has to constantly break up petty squabbles between the States? Urgh, I gotta research more Japanese history.


[Gullwhacker] Swept Away: Sports series, with all the dramatic tension and yaoi undertones, centred on curling.


[ghostlyhamburger] Guardian Treasures: Japan's Three Treasures have been reincarnated(???) as mechs.


[ghostlyhamburger] Eclair and Coco-san's Sweet Adventure: two girls are brought to a war torn fantasy land and decide to brighten up everyone's spirits by opening a pastry shop

[chanter1944]

I would watch the heck out of the first two of these, especially the first one. Surprise? :P

I'd also watch the moth and her buggy friends around the lamppost one. I'd probably recommend the puppy school one to my nieces, the elder because cute critters are cute, the younger because she's teeny enough not to be of school age yet. The elder might like the moth and her buggy friends too, but the younger's a bit bug-phobic.

[soc_puppet]

Extra characters I came up with for the puppy school one to help flesh out the description and for panel needs: Tarou, a wheely dog; and Naoko, a cat who's pretending to be a dog to go to puppy school. (I didn't actually think through any of the implications about Naoko before coming up with her, but she might be a good early trans narrative.)

Moth and Friends would absolutely be as cute-ified as possible, though I understand even that doesn't help everyone with bug phobias.

[chanter1944]

Clockwork Under City Lights: The interconnected stories of a dozen tiny magically-powered, steampunk-ish self-aware constructs created in the shape of large insects, miniature forest animals, mythological creatures (nothing humanoid), etc set loose in a big and bustling city somewhere on a world a little aside from our own. Life can be beyond interesting as well as startlingly mundane when you're a metal and stained glass griffin the size of a teacup. Adapted from a webcomic. Suitable for all ages. Very popular with fan artists of multiple stripes - visual artists have a ball, but replica makers do too. Quite a few fanfic authors love worldbuilding here, including writing backstory for human characters.

[soc_puppet]

I'm getting a sort of magic realism vibe from this, and I love it! I forgot to update this post to say that I have enough anime options for the game's viewing room, but I should still be able to squeeze a panel out of this, which will be quite helpful 👍

[chanter1944]

Squee! :) Also, magic realism or reality washed with the fantastic seem to be how I roll.

[soc_puppet]

His Majesty's Guard; harem anime. Ordinary Japanese high school student learns that he's actually the heir to a vaguely European-ish country. Since the previous ruler was assassinated, Genta has been assigned a full team of highly trained guards, each specializing in a different weapon and/or fighting style, and each head-over-heels for Genta. His Majesty's Guard has gained a fair amount of attention for one of Genta's guards being a male character (Ichiro), even if they are not expected to be the endgame ship.

[soc_puppet]

More (originally posted here):

Heartbeat Rhythm Magic - A typical magical girl series with a rhythmic gymnastics theme. The villain is trying to throw off/destroy the rhythm of the world and use the energy generated by hearts beating out of sync to take over the world (or whatever); the main characters use the magic and skills of rhythmic gymnastics to set it right again.

City Heist - Based loosely on a dream I had. A recently released movie; may take up two time slots? A teenage girl recruits an old kaitou and some other heist-y characters to help her steal the heart of a city.

Nexus Point - Possibly a western cartoon with anime fan crossover appeal instead of an anime, so not shown in the viewing rooms; takes place at a school named for the alternate universe crossing point it's situated on, hosting students from and classes in at least five different worlds. Still needs a main character/storyline.

Alien Lifeswap - A space alien abducts a teenage boy and takes his place in order to study humans/the earth in general and help make a decision about whether it should be introduced to the wider galactic alliance or whatever. The show follows both the alien in its attempts to pass as the boy, and the boy in a special not-quite-classroom with aliens from at least four other species who are undergoing basically the same trial, plus a teacher from the species that is taking the boy's place. Shenanigans ensue.

Rue 63rd - School drama with gender stuff. Starts out as a story where a boy and a girl basically want each others' lives and swap places, gender included; gradually turns into a story where each of the main characters realize that they're actually trans in addition to generally wanting to do whatever the other person wanted to do. (Frex, the "girl" wanted to go to a specific school with a really cool science program, but it was an all boys school, while the "boy" wanted to go to an all-girls school with a different specific program; they take care of the registration stuff for each other, then swap places.) The title is because one of them has the character for 6 in their name, and the other 3, and they have a lot of conflicted feelings about what they're doing and how they got there, but still don't want to give up their new lives! (And also is definitely a reference to Rule 63 of the internet.)

---

New: Where Is My Master? Possibly a fanservice title; main character is a dog who has been reincarnated as a human in the same world as their former owner, or a pet that has been randomly transformed into a human for some act of kindness (or possibly mischief), and their efforts to locate and stay with their human master (who is in the same world and is still human).

[alexseanchai]

DCLXVI: an angel, a demon, a witch, and Shenanigans. f/f/f probably.

Bridge Over Dragon Run: painfully mundane modern setting, until Our Hero goes for a walk by a stream in the woods and trips over a dragon egg. (either it's hatching when she finds it or dragons are telepathic enough that she finds it because either not-yet-hatched baby or dying mama is calling for somebody to help baby.)

Inherit the Flame: okay so have you heard the legend of Cadair Idris? if not go listen to Sharon Knight's "Fire in the Head" or at least read the lyrics and liner notes. (the blog post link is deaded; try here. there's more in an interview with her.) now draw the King under the Hill modeled after Idris Elba and smush that concept up with something like Heather Alexander's "Dance in the Circle" and/or "Faerie Queen". queer het?

Praying Mantis: a mantis is someone who does divination, in ancient Greek (the word is related to any English word ending in -mancy). the title character isn't a priestess, probably, and she is certainly not an oracle, but she is devoutly religious and she does tend to talk in riddles like all the most famous prophecies from that general placetime. if people think she's a wandering oracle, that's their problem. and if she happens to overhear people asking for divine help with some matter that she (and, if she does not travel alone, her companions) might be able to supply mundane help for, well, that's her problem…

who, me, cribbing off novel ideas I abandoned years ago? nope not me

[soc_puppet]

Like I didn't do the exact same thing with at least two of the ideas in comment 12. And like I'm not going to go back to those or any of the other ideas I've had at a moment's notice.

[alexseanchai]

😛

[soc_puppet]

Trial summary for Inherit the Flame: A critically acclaimed movie, heavy with symbolism and rich with mystery. Legend says that anyone who sleeps at the foot of the mountain Cadair Idris will end up dead, mad, or a poet. Would-be poet Matthew goes to test this one night and ends up taken into another world, where his heart is removed and put in a cauldron of flame. Matthew instantly find that his skills as a poet have increased a hundred fold, and he joins a party of dozens of other artists who have come to challenge their skills over the years. As the night wears on, however, he meets Isabel, a fiddle player who misses her home, and he realizes that he, too, wants to go back to where he came from. Together the two of them put their skills to the ultimate test to wrench their hearts from the cauldron and return home.



Thoughts? Improvements? Stuff for people to be discussing in a panel about it? (Such as: Did they both make it home okay? Did they return to the same place and time, or did they end up somewhere different? The ending music strongly implies that they got to keep some of the skills they earned in the other realm, but is that true? Etc.)

[alexseanchai]

*clappy hands*

also: the same place and time they each came from, or the same place and time as each other, which is possibly a different timespace moment altogether?

[soc_puppet]

Yes good, all those Rip Van Winkle shenanigans!

As for the queer het aspect... Right now I'm planning to make a new panel about queer representation in anime for the convention, so it'll definitely come up there, but I'll try to also work it into the main panel. I'm thinking that Matthew may have looked considerably different before going through the whatever portal? Like, he was definitely somewhat less broad of shoulder before falling asleep at the mountain, and also now he has a very nice beard. And then Isabel's backstory can include romantic moments with folks of multiple genders. That sound good to you?

[alexseanchai]

*happy squeaks*

[soc_puppet]

Awesome! 😊

[soc_puppet]

CallMeDale: The classic [Isekai] set up of getting hit by a bus but the bus that hits the person gets taken to another world with all the people on board; The god character that does the introduction gets all flustered because they grabbed the wrong thing. Also a side plot of investigating the “hit and run” of the bus. The subplot just leads to wilder and wilder conspiracy theories about what happened to the bus.

Me: 🤣 Title is "Isekai Tour Bus", I think.

Dale: Omg! If it’s a tour bus then they can all have wildly different backgrounds.
Like you already have a bit of that with the public transport option but this way they’re probably not even from the same towns.

Me: I was thinking it's just a regular bus, but since they got booted to another world, the bus driver was going to make the best of it, but an actual tour bus works, too!
Can't decide if the bus driver or the actual tour guide should be an expert on whatever world they get stuck in (or both, or neither).

Dale: Bus driver won’t let anyone else take the wheel because they lack the license class. They take pictures the whole time and have a photo album of the other world.

Me: 🤣

[gullwhacker]

Bolt Turners In The Sky
In the wake of some unspecified disaster (an ongoing mystery on the series) simply called The Hungry Earth, humanity has adapted by taking to the skies above. People live their lives on city-fleets of assorted air vehicles - dirigibles, single-engine planes, helicarriers, and so forth.
The series focuses on the Bolt Turners - a group of technicians who travel from vessel to vessel, fixing mechanical issues to keep the fleet flying. Most of them are fairly young - justified by small and light people being better suited to cramped tunnels and wing-hopping.
It's very Ghibli-esque - both because of all the aircraft, and because the end of the world below still has purple working together. Occasional tension, but it's an uplifting series (pun intended).

[gullwhacker]

Forgot to mention, but there are absolutely some cool older lady mentor figures. Ghibliesque, after all.

[eastofthemoon]

A Sprinkle of Love
A romantic comedy about a young engineering woman named Yuki who enters a baking competition with no grand prize besides the title of Best Baker. She meets the other competitors and gets along except for that one grumpy young man named Ken. Due to a misunderstanding, they get off on the wrong foot, but during the course of the competition they get to know each other better. The biggest turning point is when Ken ruins his icing and has to make from scratch and Yuki comes over to help.
It's not long before these feelings turn to love, but at the end of the competition nears and they are the only two left standing, can their love survive the heat?

[soc_puppet]

Hana's School Days
A school drama about a fat girl named Hana and her experiences in junior high and high school. A very sympathetic look at a fat girl character, who has been given a cute character design, and how she deals with the bullying and microaggressions she faces in everyday life.