My brilliant completely original idea
Jul. 15th, 2008 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2For one of the many fantasy stories that I've started over the years and never finished, I came up with a demon hunter that dressed in a sort of gothic lolita outfit -- basically a deadly warrior who looked like a Victorian doll. And I was dumb enough to think that this was a really original idea.
A week or so ago I picked up two new manga -- Tetragrammaton Labrynth and Venus Versus Virus.
Tetragrammaton Labrynth is about a young nun who is a demon hunter, and her sidekick who appears to be a young girl, but who has been alive for many years and can not die. This is one of those manga that takes this idea to its logical conclusion -- since your character can't die, they regularly get chewed to bits, shot up, stabbed, and even have parts of their body chopped off. That's a standard schtick: in 3x3 Eyes, for example, once Yakumo learns that he's become a sort of immortal zombie (his life is tied to Pai's, his soul tied to hers when she brought him back to life -- he is now her servant and protector, and as long as she's alive he can never die) he becomes practically casual about being smashed or squashed or chopped up, and uses it as a part of his battle strategy. Likewise, in the manga/anime Hellsing, the police girl who becomes a new vampire in the first episode winds up being treated similarly -- shot, stabbed, you can do anything to a character that doesn't die. Vampires are especially good for that sort of thing.
But anyway, my main point is that this character, Angela, is a young girl who dresses in gothic lolita fashion and hunts down demons. She also may or may not be a demon herself, it's hard to know exactly what she is just yet (I've only read the first volume). But essentially, there's my brilliant character idea right there.
It's a good manga, too. Very bloody, as I said, but quite interesting so far. It's marketed as a "yuri" title because there's supposed to be some sort of "special" relationship between the two main characters (both female), but frankly they spend all of their time killing demons and solving crime so I'm not sure how much yuri action there is.
Venus Versus Virus I picked this one up because it was advertised in the back of Tetragrammaton Labrynth and it sounded interesting. Also, the artwork caught my eye just as much as the art for T.L. did. (There's an anime for this one too, so I'd heard the name before, but didn't know what it was about.) This one's completely different from T.L., because the main character wears an eyepatch and isn't a young girl. But, eh.... and... monster hunter, dressed in gothic lolita fashion, lots of blood, teamed with another girl and they share a very close relationship, (see, it's the older girl that's the dangerous one this time...) well yeah. It's the same basic concept.
It also occurred to me that Vampire Doll, while mostly being a comedy, features a gothic lolita clad girl who happens to be a vampire and sometimes hunts down other monsters.
Not to mention that my favorite character in Negima! is probably Evangeline A.K. MacDowell, the vampire sorceress who has been alive for hundreds of years but is trapped in the body of a very young girl (I think, in her case, because she was that young when she became a vampire)... and who routinely dresses in gothic lolita fashion.
I could say something about this curious Japanese fetish for adorably cute young girls who are really old or immortal... but eh, I probably don't want to (or need to) go there. Even one of my all-time favorite manga, Battle Angel, is built around such a character -- Alita (Gally in the Japanese version) is a cyborg brought back to life when Doctor Ido finds her head in a scrap heap. She doesn't remember her past life, but was clearly some sort of highly trained soldier.
And frankly Vampire Doll is funny in part because it makes fun of that whole line of thought (super powered super cute gothic lolita girl) (while simultaneously making fun of a lot of bishonen conventions as well).
Anyway, so much for my brilliant character idea. "Woo, a gothic lolita demon hunter! Nobody's ever done that before!"
Or I could look at it from a different angle... these two new manga are exactly what I've been looking for. ^_^
Or I could write a fan fiction based around all of these characters at once. :p
(Side note: while looking for images for this post (I eventually just scanned scenes from the manga myself), I came across a page dedicated to one guy's favorite type of character -- blonde girls who wear black and kick serious ass. Evangeline was on the list, of course, and everyone else pictured here could qualify, except for Alita I guess (Black hair? White wedding dress? Seriously out of fashion!)
A week or so ago I picked up two new manga -- Tetragrammaton Labrynth and Venus Versus Virus.
Tetragrammaton Labrynth is about a young nun who is a demon hunter, and her sidekick who appears to be a young girl, but who has been alive for many years and can not die. This is one of those manga that takes this idea to its logical conclusion -- since your character can't die, they regularly get chewed to bits, shot up, stabbed, and even have parts of their body chopped off. That's a standard schtick: in 3x3 Eyes, for example, once Yakumo learns that he's become a sort of immortal zombie (his life is tied to Pai's, his soul tied to hers when she brought him back to life -- he is now her servant and protector, and as long as she's alive he can never die) he becomes practically casual about being smashed or squashed or chopped up, and uses it as a part of his battle strategy. Likewise, in the manga/anime Hellsing, the police girl who becomes a new vampire in the first episode winds up being treated similarly -- shot, stabbed, you can do anything to a character that doesn't die. Vampires are especially good for that sort of thing.
But anyway, my main point is that this character, Angela, is a young girl who dresses in gothic lolita fashion and hunts down demons. She also may or may not be a demon herself, it's hard to know exactly what she is just yet (I've only read the first volume). But essentially, there's my brilliant character idea right there.
It's a good manga, too. Very bloody, as I said, but quite interesting so far. It's marketed as a "yuri" title because there's supposed to be some sort of "special" relationship between the two main characters (both female), but frankly they spend all of their time killing demons and solving crime so I'm not sure how much yuri action there is.
Venus Versus Virus I picked this one up because it was advertised in the back of Tetragrammaton Labrynth and it sounded interesting. Also, the artwork caught my eye just as much as the art for T.L. did. (There's an anime for this one too, so I'd heard the name before, but didn't know what it was about.) This one's completely different from T.L., because the main character wears an eyepatch and isn't a young girl. But, eh.... and... monster hunter, dressed in gothic lolita fashion, lots of blood, teamed with another girl and they share a very close relationship, (see, it's the older girl that's the dangerous one this time...) well yeah. It's the same basic concept.
It also occurred to me that Vampire Doll, while mostly being a comedy, features a gothic lolita clad girl who happens to be a vampire and sometimes hunts down other monsters.
Not to mention that my favorite character in Negima! is probably Evangeline A.K. MacDowell, the vampire sorceress who has been alive for hundreds of years but is trapped in the body of a very young girl (I think, in her case, because she was that young when she became a vampire)... and who routinely dresses in gothic lolita fashion.
I could say something about this curious Japanese fetish for adorably cute young girls who are really old or immortal... but eh, I probably don't want to (or need to) go there. Even one of my all-time favorite manga, Battle Angel, is built around such a character -- Alita (Gally in the Japanese version) is a cyborg brought back to life when Doctor Ido finds her head in a scrap heap. She doesn't remember her past life, but was clearly some sort of highly trained soldier.
And frankly Vampire Doll is funny in part because it makes fun of that whole line of thought (super powered super cute gothic lolita girl) (while simultaneously making fun of a lot of bishonen conventions as well).
Anyway, so much for my brilliant character idea. "Woo, a gothic lolita demon hunter! Nobody's ever done that before!"
Or I could look at it from a different angle... these two new manga are exactly what I've been looking for. ^_^
Or I could write a fan fiction based around all of these characters at once. :p
(Side note: while looking for images for this post (I eventually just scanned scenes from the manga myself), I came across a page dedicated to one guy's favorite type of character -- blonde girls who wear black and kick serious ass. Evangeline was on the list, of course, and everyone else pictured here could qualify, except for Alita I guess (Black hair? White wedding dress? Seriously out of fashion!)
